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Child Labor

  • Dispatches: No Virginia, Tobacco Fields Are Not a Place For Children
    Feb 5, 2015
  • VA House Bill No. 1906 Testimony
    Feb 2, 2015

    For more than 15 years, Human Rights Watch has investigated hazardous child labor on farms in the United States and around the world. In the last two years we have conducted in-depth research on children working in tobacco in the four major tobacco-producing states, including Virginia, and published a report on the topic.

  • A Move To Protect State's Children
    Jan 20, 2015
    Each year, when school lets out for the summer, children as young as 12 — and sometimes younger — start working long hours tending tobacco in Virginia and other big tobacco states. They absorb nicotine through their skin, get sprayed with pesticides and use sharp axes to hack down rows of tobacco taller than they are — all in the extreme heat and humidity common during the summer months in the South. The work makes many of them sick.
  • HRW Submission to the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA)
    Jan 14, 2015
    Human Rights Watch welcomes the opportunity to review the draft IRMA Standard for Responsible Mining. Below are recommendations based on research conducted by Human Rights Watch in various countries. Human Rights Watch has carried out extensive research on business and human rights issues, including on human rights and mining in India, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Ghana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mali, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
  • Helping to Reduce Child Labor on Farms
    Jan 12, 2015
    More children work in agriculture than in any other industry in the world. But the scale and complexity of the problem is no excuse for tolerating a practice that traps children in multi-generational cycles of poverty, or, worse, leaves them injured, maimed, or dead.
  • World Bank: Investigate Uzbekistan’s Forced Labor
    Dec 17, 2014
    The World Bank’s internal watchdog should investigate whether bank projects are contributing to forced labor in Uzbekistan. The Cotton Campaign, a coalition of human rights, labor, investor, and business organizations dedicated to ending forced labor in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan, echoed calls that independent Uzbek groups made in a November 2014 letter to the Inspection Panel.
  • Dispatches: Tobacco Industry Moves to Stem Child Labor
    Dec 17, 2014
  • Bolivia: Fix Laws That Undermine Rights
    Dec 15, 2014
    Bolivia should amend several laws that undermine the rights to freedom of association and expression, due process guarantees, and children’s rights. These laws, which are incompatible with Bolivia’s international human rights obligations, were approved during Morales’ second term, from 2010 through 2014.
  • US: Tobacco Company Bans Hiring Children Under 16
    Dec 12, 2014
    The decision by the US tobacco company Altria Group to prohibit growers in its supply chain from hiring children under 16 could protect children working on US tobacco farms, Human Rights Watch said today.
  • Dispatches: Tobacco Industry Pledges Global Action on Child Labor
    Dec 9, 2014
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