An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 children work in Mali’s artisanal (small-scale) gold mines, where they dig pits, work underground, carry, and crush ore. They also touch and inhale mercury, a highly toxic substance that is used to extract gold from the ore. Mercury attacks the central nervous system and is particularly harmful to children. Most child laborers in mines never go to school; some are as young as six years old.

Every year, tens of thousands of migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan travel to the Central Asian economic powerhouse of Kazakhstan in search of employment. Thousands of these migrant workers, often together with their children, find work in tobacco farming, where many are subjected to abuse and exploitation by employers supplying tobacco to Philip Morris Kazakhstan, a subsidiary of Philip Morris International, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies.