We are going to be talking about child labour in less developed countries today.

Did you know that there are currently over 218 million child labourers over the world? That there are more child labourers now than 10 years ago? And that 1 in every 3 children in Sub-Saharan Africa are workers? This is a picture showing world child labour ratios of children between the ages of 5-14. The darkest regions represent over 50%. Child Labour Is work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity. In many cases, working conditions for child labourers are very harsh - they are enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses, underfed and physically abused. The prevailing reason for child labour is poverty. Even though they are paid very low and irregular wages, children in developing countries significantly contribute to the household income. Parents encourage their children to work and sometimes even sell them as slaves. Child labour isnt a problem faced just by a single country or sector. The cheaper production cost of employing children is a temptation to companies in all sectors, like service, industry and agriculture. This is harmful to the childrens mental, social and physical development. The Hershey Company (Click!) Did you know that 70% of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa? (Click!) And that of this 70%, 40% of this comes from the Ivory Coast with over 600K cocoa farmers and 30% comes from Ghana with over 700K cocoa farmers? Much of West African countries' economies depend on their exportations of cocoa beans. (Click!) The only drawback to this is the amount of child workers working in the cocoa industry. Today, there are over 500K children who work in both these countries. The Hershey Company is the largest chocolatier in North America. Last year, Hershey was accused of illegal child labour due to its use of cocoa from West Africa mainly from Ghana and the Ivory Coast by law firm Grant and Eisenhofer. It was believed that many children working for these communities were unpaid and forced to work. This risked Hershey developing a bad reputation that will likely affect the consumer demand for Hershey products. As a response to this accusation, Hershey promised to ensure that all their cocoa suppliers meet international

standards by 2020. Hershey also claimed to be working with its public and private partners to eliminate child labour in cocoa communities. Victoria's Secret As of 2009, there are over 240K cotton farmers located in Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world with one of the lowest human development indexes. Cotton is one of the top three exportations in Burkina which shows the country's dependence on this industry. Victoria's Secret is of the large corporations that purchase their cotton from Burkina. In 2011, Victoria's Secret bought Burkina Faso's entire cotton crop for the season where children work forcedly to harvest cotton. This is due to the country's dependence on the cotton industry where buyers will pay a higher price to get fair-trade cotton. With this in mind, farmers don't have the money to hire workers, therefore they are forcing children to work in their fields under harsh conditions. Victoria's Secret claims that it buys minimal cotton from Burkina Faso and believe that the conditions in Burkina Faso violate the company's morals and values. The company claims to prohibit child labour and will speak with its stakeholders to investigate.

NIKE is an American Multinational Corporation with a market value of over $70Billion. In 1964, Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, each pledged $500 and started selling athletic shoes out of their cars trunks, and now, it one of the largest suppliers of athletic shoes and apparel. Since the 1990s, Nike has been facing accusations of employing child labour in their factories. In 1995, Nike admitted to having a contract with football factories that employed children in Sialkot, Pakistan. They assumed that the factories were employing adults who worked under acceptable conditions and wages. However, these factories sub-contracted out to villages where children were employed. Nike issued an apology and insisted that any factory found to be employing a child must take that worker out of the factory, pay their wages, provide education and job opportunities when he/she is old enough. And in 2000, BBC uncovered evidences of child labour, poor working condition, low wages and forced overtime in a factory used by Nike in Cambodia. The documentary focused on 6 girls who worked there and described their terrible quality of life. Several other reports of bad working conditions in Nikes factories as recently as 2011 have been released. Nike responds by saying instances of the illegal use of child labour were extremely rare, with only five cases.

The economic concepts that are involved with child labour are: supply, employment rate, profit, currency exchange rate, comparative advantage and trade. When companies are getting children to work in foreign countries, the cost per unit of a good is decreased. When this occurs, the number of units produced increase when capital is limited. The supply will increase which will lead to an increase in aggregate supply of the good. For example, if a company can produced only 100 shirts in a developed country like ours, because the cost per shirt is high, they might be able to produce 500 using the same capital if they locate to a third world country with children as workers. Employment rate in Canada will also be affected. When companies take manufacturing to another country, they are taking potential job opportunities away from Canadians. This will affect the manufacturing industry. Canadians will be laid off and instead, someone in another poor country will be manufacturing the goods, someone who could be a child. The result is that unemployment rate in Canada will go up. In addition, companies will also make more profit if children are being used to produce goods. If costs such as wage rates and resources are decreased, and revenue remains constant, profit will increase. Another factor is the currency exchange rate. The Canadian dollar is significantly higher than the currencies of many countries with child labour. Instead of paying at least minimum wage at $10 to workers in Canada, companies choose to go to countries such as India where $10 may be able to pay someone for days. In fact, in 2008, a popular clothing brand, Primark, was discovered with sweatshops in India and using children as young as 11 to sew beads in poor candle lit rooms. Around that same time, children were discovered working in refugee camps under same conditions. The young boy in the picture is only 9. He said that "Sometimes we get major orders in and we have to work double quick. I get paid a few rupees for finishing each garment, but in a good day I can make 40 rupees. The currency exchange right now that $1 is around 59 rupees, but in 2008, $1 was around 40 rupees. Imagine being 9 working under candlelight, only to make a dollar a day, and thats on a good day. They have a comparative advantage compared to workers in Canada. Children produce around the same amounts at a lower cost. The opportunity cost is therefore low and efficiency is high. International trade is affected by child labour in many ways and vice-versa. Globalization has boosted international trade and put considerable pressure on the manufacturing sector to produce more goods via child labour. But, shutting down production centers all around the world will drive the children to seek other ways of making money, rather than go back to school. However, Globalization can also be the cure to child labour. When people around the

world become more aware of child labour, they can exert pressure on governments to pass legislations and tighten trade standards. Also, consumer outrage can force companies to set up community development projects in impoverished communities. International trade agreements include labour standards that restricts trade of goods manufactured by child labour. Also, countries like USA have national trade policies that direct trade to promote childrens rights. Finally, research carried out by independent firm concluded that child labour is less prevalent in countries that trade more because countries that trade more are richer, and children work less in richer countries. Therefore, growing trade in developing countries can aid in eraditcating child labour. Our Opinion: We believe that more efforts should be put into ending child labour. Since there are more child workers now than there were ten years ago, we think that this needs to become a more prominent issue in todays society. Even though child labour benefits large companies, it cannot be at the cost of violating human rights. One main reason is that employing children hinders economic growth because work is being taken away from employable adults in order to save costs. This leads to climbing unemployment rates and that leads to a lower GDP and long-term economic growth. For example, child labour was put to an end, more jobs will be available in our countries, leading to a prosperous economy. At the same time, children will have a better quality of life and can contribute to the economy of their country in better ways by gaining an education. By depriving children from education and a healthy life, we are losing future human resources. If the current trend persists, future generations will face a shortage of trained labour in many parts of the world. This would be devastating because human resource is essential to our economy. Human resource and skills is a key factor in developing natural resources. These resources need to be processed and used by employed consumers. Finally, child labour exploits human rights. The social, mental and physical development of children who work in factories with harsh conditions are severely impaired. Working at a young age to support a family, it takes away time for children to act their age. They have no time to play with others or go to school. In effect, they havent learned the basic skills such as communicating and working together with others. If affects their mental development because the environment that they work in is stressful and abusive. Factory owners might physically abuse the children if they do not work fast enough or if they make a mistake. Living in fear has a deadly consequence on a childs mental development. Last but not least, it affects their physical development because of repetitive work with their fingers and are constantly sitting down, which affects their spine. In addition, working in a poor lit room may affect their eyes.