G7 summit is the time for leaders to deliver on child labour commitments

As the G7 leaders meet in Apulia, Italy, from June 13 to 15, I dare to ask if, and when, they will deliver on their commitments to eliminate child labour and forced labour? At the summits in Germany in 2022 and Japan in 2023, the leaders of the G7 countries—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union—committed to the elimination of child labour and forced labour in supply chains. In 2015, they committed to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. I urge action from each of the leaders: current G7 President and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; U.S. President Joe Biden; Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, French President Emmanuel Macron; German Chancellor Olaf Scholz; U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak; Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; and Charles Michel, president of the Council of the European Union, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. Target 8.7 of the SDGs is for countries to take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers. By 2025, the goal is to end child labour in all its forms. Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, in front of the Palazzo Chigi in Rome, Italy, in May, is a Guatemalan journalist and human rights activist. Photograph courtesy of Stefano Carofei The reality of child labour and forced labour today is—due to the greed of corporations with business models that are the opposite of the SDGs, and to governments turning a blind eye to the rule of law—there are tens of millions of children exploited in the supply chains of the G7 nations, and forced labour has increased in the last decade. There are also millions of children working inside the borders of G7 nations and of the European Union. In recent years, the U.K., Germany, Canada, the European Union, and several American states have promoted or adopted laws and directives that protect the exploiters, not the exploited. I refer to the U.K. Modern Slavery Act, the German Supply Chain Act, Canada’s Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act, and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. In the U.S., there has been a political movement to weaken child labour laws in states across the country since 2022 with the purpose of allowing employers to use cheap child labour. All of these are corporate rights laws that allow businesses to continue profiting from child labour and forced labour, contrary to the obligations of all G7 nations and the EU to protect and fulfill human rights in their countries and abroad. Of all G7 countries, only the U.S. publishes a periodical report with an official List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor. Politicians in all other G7 nations and across the EU have refused to adopt a law or a directive to create a similar report of goods produced by child labour or forced labour that would serve as a guide for customs officials and all other authorities. I demand that all G7 governments and the European Union co-operate to create a global list of goods produced by child labour or forced labour. Today, even the EU member states and the European Commission don’t co-operate on such an important task to deliver on their obligation to eliminate these types of labour. Child labour and modern slavery have increased in all G7 nations. In recent years only the Italian Prime Minister Meloni’s government has admitted how many children work in a G7 country: more than 300,000 exploited between the ages of seven and 15, according to reporting in 2023. Admitting a problem and making a study about its true dimension are extremely important first steps to addressing any serious problem of this magnitude. Nearly one million children work in the U.S. today, and close to two million children work in the EU. Yet, politicians and governments have refused to conduct serious studies of the dimension of child labour in their countries. This, once again, protects the exploiters. In all G7 nations there are corporations and uber-wealthy families that profit from the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of non-white child workers to reduce costs and increase profits. They seem to exploit these poor and defenseless children with the complicit support of the G7 governments and of the EU. Most even benefit directly or indirectly via non-governmental organizations from so-called ‘development aid’ instead of being prosecuted for their criminal activities. Another example of the sad state of child labour in the world is the fact that 53 years after the World Economic Forum was created supposedly to “improve the state of the world,” there are tens of millions of girls and boys working in the supply chains of the 2,500 WEF members, while top political leaders and hundreds of journalists attending the body’s 2024 forum in Davos, Switzerland, look the other way. I ask all G7 and EU leaders to take concrete steps to eliminate child labour and forced labour using all legal means available. We cannot continue living in a world where human rights and children’s rights are less important than the rights of corporations to exploit the poor. Fernando Morales-de la Cruz is a Guatemalan journalist and human rights activist residing in Strasbourg, France, who has investigated misery, child labour, and forced labour in the supply chains of corporations and developed nations for more than 10 years. The Hill Times