Nearly 700 million, or almost half of the world’s children, breathe air polluted by second-hand smoke. In almost all cases, they have no choice in the matter, as they are unable to protest or protect themselves.
Tobacco companies have been implicated in child labour in the major tobacco producing countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Malawi, the USA and Zimbabwe.
In August 2009, Plan International, a London-based NGO that aims to promote child rights and end child poverty, released a report ‘Hard work, long hours and little pay’. The report highlighted conditions facing child labourers on tobacco farms in Malawi.
The situation in Malawi was also the subject of several television documentaries, including BBC World News.
Child labour: the tobacco industry's smoking gun
The hazards of child labor in tobacco do not end with hard labor, it also affects their development. Children are sent to work on estates with their families, which means they cannot attend school. Poverty and lack of education keep children at work in tobacco. This perpetuates the cycle of poverty as the children are exploited and denied an education.
Playing with Children's Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi
Commercial production of tobacco in Malawi goes back as far as 1889, when settlers from the U.S. state of Virginia introduced the crop. In those days “foreign masters” forced the native people and their children to work in the farms for little or no pay. Over a century later, this exploitation continues -- with no end in sight.
Increasingly, critics are demanding that the tobacco companies take responsibility for ending the abuses. Given their key role in Malawi's economy, they wield significant clout. Malawi derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from agricultural crops, and the tobacco industry makes up 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Malawi’s exports account for five percent of the world's total tobacco exports and two percent of the world's total production.
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