Child Labor - Child Miners

This is another post regarding child labor. Today I want to focus on child miners. In many areas around the world, particularly where poverty is prevalent, children are exploited to work in mines because of their size. These children are exposed to injuries, health hazards, and dangerous conditions in these mines. This, among other worst forms of child labor, must be eliminated. Children work in mines all over the world, from the Cote D'Ivoire to Niger to Peru to the Philippines, from gold mines to other gem and mineral mines. In mines, risks to children include collapsing tunnels, falling ore, exposure to poor or dangerous air quality, physical strain, and asphyxiation in gold mines.

Follow this link to papers presented by the ILO (International Labour Organization) regarding child labor in small-scale mining - an example from three countries.



Ever heard of the gem tanzanite? It's pictured above. Isn't it pretty? It can only be found in one place - one place in all the world. You might have already guessed....that place is Tanzania, specifically in the town of Mererani. While the stone is beautiful, only recently have I discovered the sad story that lies behind this beautiful gem. Mererani is home to a 300 million dollar Tanzanite industry and yet, according to IRIN (the humanitarian news and analysis published by the UN), 30% of the 200,000 people who live there survive on less than a dollar a day; and even so, people from all over Tanzania move here in hopes of improving their lives by finding that rare gem. And of course, those who suffer the most are the children and their mothers who have to watch their children suffer. Even if the government is working to eliminate this form of child labor in the Tanzanite mining industry, they face obstacles - not enough schools for children to go to and the poverty that still remains, so the children inevitably turn to the mines.

Read the IRIN article on this story. The article was published last September, but is still relevant today. I don't know if any of you own Tanzanite jewelry, but I hope that no one will until the mining conditions have improved for this gem which includes the elimination of all children from the mines.