Child labour is a well-documented problem within the garment industry, and many of the big brands have received high profile attacks on how their clothes are made. With the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, public awareness is growing about child labour in garment factories, and factory legislations are being tightened up, but people still turn a blind eye to other areas of the supply chain that traditionally exploit young children.

Uzbekistan is the world's third largest cotton producer, and the cotton industry yields about £500million annually in export revenues for the Government2. The cotton industry is completely controlled by the Government, which sets strict quotas of how much cotton should be picked each year. During the harvest period, children are brought in to make up these quotas, and can miss up to three months of school at a time. Many of them receive little or no payment for their labours and, after reductions for food and transport, are left with a pittance. As well as receiving little in the way of monetary rewards, children are expected to toil long hours in the hot sun, in fields treated with dangerous pesticides and chemicals.

This problem is repeated throughout the world, with six of the world's top 10 cotton producers reported to use children in their fields. In South Asia, many children are sold into bonded labour in order to fulfil loans given to their parents. Others only receive payment after the end of several months work. Along with the hard physical labour they are expected to complete, often working 12-hour shifts, the children then return ‘home' to sleep in cramped, overcrowded dormitories with no electricity and little running water for washing3. Food is scarce and disease rife. As if this is not enough to contend with, reports of girls in particular suffering sexual abuse, rapes and physical beatings at the hands of their employers are common across India, Pakistan and China. As many as 22,000 children die each year across the world in work related incidents.4

Despite the fact that many of these countries do have legislation against child labour, the problem still exists, and as long as multi-national companies are still putting pressure on farmers to complete quotas, and keep to unrealistic deadlines, it will not disappear. Many of the larger companies constantly pit factories against each other to come up with more competitive quotes with a faster turnaround time, and even switch suppliers mid season if their demands are not being met.

As these factories are not able to invest in machinery or equipment to speed up manufacturing times, the only place to squeeze out results is from the workers. In the words of an Indian cotton farmer: "We can't afford adult workers. They charge three times more than child workers... I can employ adults if companies pay me more."5

Although many companies do have their own ethical standards legislations, and conduct audits of the factories, these are not sufficiently enforced. Auditors often spend as little as three hours in a factory, and are not given a clear picture of the actual working conditions of labourers. Many companies blame the complexity of their supply chain in making it very difficult to ascertain when child labour has been used in the many different areas of cotton growing and garment production. 

However, there are companies who are proving that it is not a hugely expensive or complicated process to insist on transparency in the supply chain. High street stores including Tescos and Marks and Spencer have refused to use cotton grown in Uzbekistan, and have committed to looking into all areas of how their garments are produced6. Companies who source the cotton and production of their garments from factories and farms which have been audited by FLO ensure that their supply chain can be as ethical as possible. It is also up to the consumer to insist on an ethically produced garment, and be willing to pay a slightly higher price to ensure their clothing is sweatshop and child labour free. 75% of world clothing imports are accounted for by European and North American consumers7, so with that kind of influence, we set the boundaries of how the clothes we buy are manufactured.

1. Clean Clothes - ‘Who pays for our Clothes' report
2. ‘White Gold: The True cost of cotton' - Environmental Justice Foundation Report
3. ‘The Children behind our cotton' - Environmental Justice Foundation Report
4. ‘Tackling hazardous child labour in agriculture: Guidance on policy and practice' - ILO-IPEC
5. "Withering cotton kids" - Roli Srivastava
6. Clean Clothes - ‘Who pays for our Clothes' report
7. The Children behind our cotton' - Environmental Justice Foundation Report

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