By Gabrielle Mead
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that upwards of 100 to 300 million children are illegally employed throughout the world today. At a time when trade borders are crumbling and economies are becoming increasingly integrated, the rights of children are being dangerously ignored. As the side effects of NAFTA have shown, children rapidly are becoming the casualties of the global push for free trade. And yet when the White House presents its congressionally-mandated evaluation of the first three years of NAFTA on July 1, 1997, very little of it will be dedicated to the impact of the agreement on the child labor situation in Mexico, the most negatively affected of the three NAFTA partners. By neglecting this distressing reality, the Clinton Administration will be repudiating its oft-repeated concern over children's protection. To seek fast track authority to expand hemispheric free trade without first guaranteeing their welfare and safety would be the height of heartlessness.
The 1990 Mexican census estimated that those in the 12-15 year age group constituted 2.7% of the economically active population in the country's formal and informal sectors, a figure most experts consider a politically motivated understatement. A 1994 study released in Washington calculated the number of Mexican children under the age of 15 in the labor force had reached approximately 8-11 million. David Bacon, in his January 1997 The Nation article, reported that on one farm in the Mexicali Valley, "perhaps a quarter of the workers . . . are anywhere from 6 or 7 years old to 15 or 16." These statistics exist within a context of Mexican law prohibiting children under the age of 14 from working and setting strict regulations for those up to 18 years old.
Children sometimes work in order to go to school and most often to contribute to the family subsistence. While some researchers believe that a job can be beneficial to a child's development and self-esteem, most children are forced to work for the welfare of their immediate family or others close to them. Furthermore, the working conditions for young children are often so abusive that they in fact significantly hinder their maturation. The scarcity and inadequacy of educational resources in many rural areas also prevent schooling from being a viable alternative for working children. Cultural and social traditions, as well, deprive many underage Mexicans of access to learning, as their parents see education as irrelevant to their fixed fate of manual labor.
The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), a 39-page document attached to NAFTA designed to defend labor rights not addressed in the main pact, professedly protects children from abusive labor. But, in fact, NAFTA's implementation could be said to encourage such illicit work, especially in Mexico. As AFL-CIO trade researcher Greg Woodhead has noted, the peso devaluation of 1994, often attributed to the accelerated trade negotiations brought on by the agreement, eventually produced an economic crisis in Mexico which dragged more children into the labor force. The post-NAFTA migration of foreign businesses into the country also has played a significant role in promoting the use of child labor. Bacon says: "Since NAFTA was signed, profits have gone up for U.S. growers who relocate production across the border, drawn by lower labor costs," a major attraction for such employers who typically pay children half of an adult's earnings while expecting the same effort and output as an older employee.
The efforts of the NAALC to protect children's rights have been thoroughly ineffective. Where there are provisions to defend them, dispute resolution procedures "do not always succeed in generating conclusive results," according to an extensive study produced for the Texas International Law Journal, nor are enforcement capabilities well-defined. Woodhead believes that demands for the protection of children in the labor force should be addressed in the main trade document, noting that a side agreement "lacks the necessary enforcement."
The Child Labor Deterrence bill (S.332) and the "Truth in Labeling" initiative, both co-sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), would limit U.S. imports involving child labor. Harkin declared during a July 1996 speech, "Our laws prohibit the importation of endangered species such as the spotted turtle. Our laws prohibit products made from prison labor. But our laws fall silent when it comes to products that are made by exploiting children . . . That's nonsense and it must change." Also noteworthy is that the U.S. is one of only two UN members who have not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As the White House looks to extend free trade throughout the hemisphere, it first must act to protect the rights of the world's youth. To do otherwise would be to caricature its alleged great concern for children.