Child Labour and Cotton

Across the globe some 250 million children are compelled to work. The vast majority (70% or more) are employed in agriculture, where they are at risk from exposure to pesticides and other chemicals, machinery and arduous labour.

The cotton industry is no exception and from West Africa to Egypt, India to Turkmenistan, children are employed in a variety of tasks from cottonseed production, to pesticide spraying and the annual cotton harvest.

Even more disturbingly, the industry relies on a high level of forced child labour – a clear contravention of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour.

In Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and India, children regularly work in the cotton fields during, or following, the spraying season when levels of pesticide residues are high.

Pesticides exposure is particularly damaging to children because of their smaller body size, differing metabolism and rapidly growing and developing organ systems.

In Egypt, each year an estimated one million children aged between seven and 12 work to manually remove pests from cotton plants. For periods of up to ten weeks each year, they work eleven hours a day, seven days a week. Abuses reported include exposure to pesticides, beatings from foremen and overwork.

Child workers in the agricultural sector generally work for very low wages and in some cases for nothing at all. Research in Egypt in 2001 revealed that children working harvesting cotton in one region earned US $1.08 per day, while adults earned around 50% more. Children working in cotton pest control – a task rarely done by adults – earned even less, between US $0.68 and US $0.95 per day.

In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, an estimated 100,000 children below 18 have been reported to work 13 hours a day in cottonseed production for less than half a euro per day. These children are often bonded by loans given to their parents, since many farmers are unable to pay the local minimum wage and advance money to parents who are then bound to send their children to the fields.

In Uzbekistan, although prohibited under the Uzbek constitution, there have been estimates that hundreds of thousands of children are forced by the regime to hand pick cotton during the harvest season with little or no pay. In one region alone, it has been estimated that up to 200,000 children work in the cotton fields. Some children miss up to three months of schooling each year while picking cotton. Those who fail to meet their quotas or pick poor quality cotton are punished by scolding, beating or detention.