Foreign Efforts Against Child Labor See Mixed Results in 2019

An annual report that companies use as an input into risk assessments and to conduct due diligence on their supply chains shows that most of the 131 countries and territories reviewed are continuing to make progress toward eliminating the worst forms of child labor. Doing so is one of the criteria for eligibility for trade benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences, the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, and the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Companies are also paying more attention to this issue in the face of increasing efforts by federal agencies to enforce prohibitions against imports made with child labor and forced labor.

For more information on the trade-related impacts of child and forced labor, please contact Nicole Bivens Collinson or Elise Shibles.

The annual report from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs tracks from year to year whether a country has made significant, moderate, minimal, or no advancement in eliminating the worst forms of child labor. It also includes more than 2,000 country-specific recommended actions on how best to combat labor abuses, of which more than 60 percent concern improvements in labor and criminal laws and enforcement. To aid businesses, ILAB has released an updated version of its mobile application that provides detailed guidance on how to develop robust social compliance systems that prevent, detect, and address child labor in global supply chains.

For 2019, eight countries received an assessment of significant advancement, 67 achieved moderate advancement, 43 made minimal advancement, and 11 saw no advancement. In the chart below, green indicates that the country moved up from the previous year, red indicates that the country moved down, and black indicates that the country remained in the same category.

 

Significant advancement	Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Namibia, Paraguay, Peru
Moderate advancement	Albania, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Guyana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Montenegro, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Norfolk Island, North Macedonia, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Thailand, Tunisia, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
Minimal advancement	Armenia, Azerbaijan, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cook Islands, Dominica, Falkland Islands, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iraq, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Maldives, Mauritania, Mauritius, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Saint Helena, Ascensión, and Tristán da Cunha, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, São Tomé and Príncipe, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Uganda, Ukraine, Vanuatu, West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Western Sahara, Yemen
No advancement	Afghanistan, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Grenada, Montserrat, Niue, South Sudan, Tokelau

 

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