Business

Forced Labour And Child Trafficking In India's Garment Sector

The ILO estimates that in India, 5.8 million children from 5 to 17 years old work under poor conditions, representing the highest rate of child labour in South Asia. While the agriculture industry has the highest number of forced child labourers, increasingly, other industries such as the garment sector are attracting more child workers as they expand.

India's garment sector employs about 40 million workers directly and 60 million indirectly, and is the second largest provider of employment, after agriculture. India's 2011 census reports there are 8.2 million child labourers in the 5-14-year-old age group. The Global March Against Child Labor estimates that 100,000 children work for more than 14 hours a day in the illegal sweatshops in and around Delhi. A study by the India Committee of the Netherlands suggests that almost half a million children-the majority of them girls from Dalit (low caste) and Adivasi (tribal) families-work on cotton-seed farms.

Despite these high figures, a number of national legal frameworks surrounding human trafficking and forced child labour have been put in place in India since independence. Article 24 of the Constitution prohibits employment of children under 14 in factories, mines, and other hazardous employment. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act enacted in 1986 and amended in 2016, aims to regulate the engagement of children in certain "hazardous" occupations including handling of toxic or inflammable substances or explosives, mining, and other hazardous processes.

However, the 1986 Act deals only with the organised sector, which accounts for only 10% of the child labour force, leaving the other 90% in the unorganised urban and rural sectors and family units outside of the Act's regulations. In response to ongoing criticism, India's government strengthened the Act last year, establishing that "no child (under the age of 14) shall be employed or permitted to work in any occupation or process, with the exception if that child helps his family or family enterprise in non-hazardous occupations or processes, after school hours, or during school holidays." Child rights activists are contesting the provision for a number of reasons, including that it would be hard to find out if the employer is indeed a family member of the child labourer. In June 2017, India ratified the two core ILO Conventions regarding admission of age to employment (138), and on the worst forms of child labour (182).

While these are positive signs, the concern today is not over an absence of laws, but the lack of strict enforcement of the existing laws to deter perpetrators who exploit young women, girls, and children through trafficking and exploitative work conditions.

Civil society groups and activists have made a number of recommended next steps to help curb trafficking and forced labour of children in the garment sector supply chain, including:

· Stronger implementation of existing laws to prosecute fraudulent labour recruiters and employers of child labour.

· Investigate credible allegations of official complicity in trafficking, forced, and child labour, and prosecute officials to break the impunity of perpetrators.

· Enact new legislation on the lines of California Transparency Act of 2012 and the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015 to improve supply chain traceability and transparency of the suppliers.

· Implement stronger outreach to communities to shift engrained cultural mindsets away from acceptance of child labour.

· Work in closer collaboration with all stakeholders in the supply chain, including contractors and suppliers, demand-side companies in other countries, trade unions, NGOs, and the child workers themselves.

In June 2016, India's government announced a US$ 937 million special package for the textile and apparel sector, aiming to create 10 million new jobs in the next three years and increase exports by US$ 30 billion. The government is also planning to introduce a new National Textile Policy soon. This would be an ideal time for global businesses to employ leverage with their supply chains in India, and insist that the "Make in India Programme" could be jeopardized and stigmatized if child labour persists.