Child Labor Today: Not Gone, But Forgotten (Part 3 by Gospel for Asia)

WILLS POINT, TX — Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report on forced child labor today: Millions of Children Trapped between Extreme Poverty and the Profits of Others

New Developments to End Forced Child Labor

Supply Chain Enforcement

If this special report accomplishes nothing else, even though it is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, it should make readers aware that every effort to eradicate child labor has failed. That is substantially the reason for the title being “Child Labor: Not Gone but Forgotten.”

Despite consistent failures, new proposals continue to be set forth. The two most recent propose supply chain management solutions.

A number of countries that are major importers, including the United States, have launched campaigns that place the onus on prohibiting the importation of products that have been produced using child labor and all forms of forced labor or debt bondage. The U.S. program is operated under the auspices of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Forced Labor Program.

The results of the program thus far indicate that in FY 2017, ICE:

• Spent $12,682,597 investigating cases of international forced child labor.
• Spent $16,660,000 investigating cases of domestic forced child labor.
• Made 150 domestic and 66 international arrests related to forced child labor.
• Obtained 120 domestic and two international indictments related to forced child labor.
• Obtained 73 domestic and no international convictions related to forced child labor.
• Seized a total of $626,327 in assets from domestic and international investigations on forced child labor.

You do the math. Is there any better way to spend nearly $30 million to aid the cause of child labor?

Blockchain Enforcement

In an effort to combat forced labor, major corporations, including IBM, Ford and Coca Cola, are advocating the use of the current poster child of rapidly evolving technology: blockchain. It is a potentially effective means of ensuring that the products they market do not include child labor or any kind of forced labor from the beginning to the end of the entire supply chain process.

Blockchain proposes to be a secure and accurate digital ledger for recording assets, how and where they were obtained, and by whom.

Theoretically, companies would refuse to purchase from suppliers at any point in the supply chain who use child labor. All assets, locations and employees would be required to be “tagged” so they could be identified as a legitimate part of the supply chain. Miners like Lukasa and indentured fishermen like James Kofi Annan would not be able to work because they would not be registered in the blockchain.

Products sourced from conflict zones or that were created using child labor would not be able to enter the global market.

Exhausted and broken, these children carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Already, more than 152 million children worldwide have exchanged their futures for only a few dollars, and more join them every day. Enslaved in forced labor with no hope of a better future is no way for a child to live. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO / © ILO/Joseph Fortin

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