List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor

Abstract

[Excerpt] Executive Order (EO) 13126, Prohibition of Acquisition of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor, mandates that the Department of Labor, in consultation and cooperation with the Departments of State and Homeland Security (the three Departments), publish a list of products (EO List), identified by their country of origin, that the three Departments have a reasonable basis to believe might have been mined, produced, or manufactured by forced or indentured child labor. The EO also directs executive agencies of the U.S. Government to enforce the laws prohibiting the manufacture or importation of goods mined, produced, or manufactured by this form of exploitative labor. This year, for the first time in the 13 years that the three Departments have been producing the EO List, we include narrative descriptions of the forced or indentured child labor occurring in the mining, production, or manufacture of each of the listed products. For the first time, we tell some of the story behind each listing – the areas of a country where the good is mined, produced, or manufactured and the forced child labor is concentrated, how widespread the problem is, whether bonded labor is used, and how threats and other kinds of coercion force children into this worst form of child labor, and keep them there.