San José, Costa Rica. Saturday, April 18, 1998 |
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Organizations unite against exporting child laborBy EFE/ J. BOONE Wire Services/ La Nación SAN JOSE - Casa Alianza, a non governmental organization that works with street children in Mexico and Central America, called for a stamp of guarantee that ``no child labor'' was used in the production of a good or service exported from one country to the another. The petition was a planned part of the Global March Against Child Labor, a movement against the exploitation of minors which involves more than 2,500 organizations in 90 countries and which arrived in Costa Rica yesterday. The end of the march will be in Geneva, Switzerland on May 30 for the meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO) of the United Nations and will draft an international convention designed to eradicate all forms of child labor in the world. Bruce Harris, the British regional director of Casa Alliance, explained that the powers that can really eliminate ``this social plague'' of cheap child labor are the market and governments. ``I do not believe that anyone would not rather see the children in schools than on plantations picking coffee, on banana farms bathing in pesticides or in the red light districts selling their bodies for money,'' declared Harris. He added that a country shows common sense when it invests in the education of its children in order to have a more qualified labor pool with the intellectual capacity to produce. Harris affirmed that his group intends to involve the World Trade Organization - as an obligatory measure- to mandate that each exported product have a certification that that no exploitation of children was involved in the production of that good or service. Not having the certification could result in the refusal of entry for that product into another country. ``We also have to educate consumers so that they look for a guarantee that in the production of the good no child labor was used, and if there is no guarantee, to look for another brand,'' he added. He recalled that this type of campaign has been very successful in the multi-million dollar rug industries of Pakistan and India, where, historically, thousands of children have been exploited in production. After pointing out that only rugs with child-labor-free guarantees are sold in Europe, he asked, ``Why not now with bananas, mines and garment factories?'' The Costa Rican minister of Labor, Farid Ayales, who met the Global March, supported the proposal of Casa Alianza and condemned all types of child exploitation. ``Child labor is a scourge that must be eliminated,'' said Ayales. He said that if the proposal is not promoted, they will be dividing the world into two continually differentiating groups: the illiterate mass, condemned to the lowest forms of work, and the others with access to the technological trends shaping today's economic reality. The Global March, which arrived in Limón on Thursday from Panama, reached San José yesterday, will visit Puntarenas on the Pacific today and then head for Nicaragua © 1998. LA NACION S.A. The material included in La Nación Edición Electrónica cannot be reproduced, transmited or distributed totally or in part without previous written authorization from La Nación S.A. If you need more information or if you want to contribute your suggestions, please write to webmaster@nacion.co.cr |
