Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Humanity Behind the Numbers

By Lea Despotis
Artwork by Lea Despotis

A staggering 152 million: the total number of child laborers today, worldwide. Let me reiterate: 1-5-2-0-0-0-0-0-0 children currently toil in atrocious conditions—a gut-wrenching figure equal to roughly half the population of the United States. In the wake of the 2020 Supreme Court case scrutinizing the liability of Nestlé USA and Cargill on cocoa plantations overseas, the thorny problem of child abuse once again reaches the spotlight of the global conversation. Facing allegations of “aiding and abetting human rights violations,” the Court is tasked with arbitrating the fragile standards of human dignity. As the Justices probe through 15 years of records to unearth deep dark secrets, the stakes remain consequential, carrying groundbreaking implications for the corporate giants and—more importantly—the lives of millions of innocent children.

National attention to the victims of acclaimed brands ripens the fruit of reform but does little to assuage the skepticism of child rights advocates. The breadth of exploitation extends far beyond the grasp of a court’s isolated verdict. While Nestlé and Cargill shoulder the brunt of the headlines this month, they are not the sole instigators of an age-old oppression designed to bolster profit margins. Twenty years since the major manufacturers Hershey’s, Nestlé, and Mars vowed to abolish brutality abroad, the taboo practices of child abuse still remain wedded to the industry. 

In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2020 report identified a disheartening 14% increase in children working in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms in the past decade. Along with the chocolate trade, not a single multinational enterprise can credibly hail immunity from child labor abuse in its supply chain. From extraction to processing and manufacturing, corporate exploitation continues to mar all tiers of outsourcing. Breeding throughout 77 countries, child labor stains the production of apparel, coffee, electronics, medical gloves, automobiles, cosmetics, and virtually every prized commodity. From the foods we consume to the clothes we wear and the products we buy, our mindless routines remain only a few degrees of separation from a child thrust into bondage—requisitioned as another faceless entity amongst the 152 million.

However, the shiny packaging cannot hide that big business operates on a modern-day collision course in the race to drive down prices and secure cheap labor in a vastly competitive market. The grim and disproportional toll on those miles away from corporate headquarters is nothing short of jarring. Private industries sacrifice a meager $1 per day to laborers who put their blood, sweat, and tears into harvesting their raw materials, while they collect $150 billion in illegal profits every year, according to the International Labor Organization. 

So how can these sweeping human rights violations persist in an age of robust regulation and oversight, and are those at the top held accountable? On the surface, perhaps the answer is yes. Leading industries publicize a corporate rhetoric that boasts of strict policies and safety protocols. Multinationals collectively invest hundreds of millions of dollars, claiming “responsible” supply chains and a “deep commitment” to ethical sourcing. 

Yet when you dig deeper, a gruesome tale lingers beneath the surface. While conducting an extensive investigation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2016, Amnesty International documented abhorrent cases of child rights violations in extracting the mineral cobalt for the world’s leading electronics brands. In the poverty-stricken nation, children as young as five work as human mules, subjected to backbreaking labor, paralyzing injuries, and even death. When directly confronted, the offending companies issued the same calculated response: they could not verify such allegations “due to the high complexity of supply chains.” Four years later, trademarks like Apple and Samsung show notable strides, but, alarmingly, Microsoft, Tesla, Sony, and a host of others lag miles behind tangible progress. 

“Some of the richest and most powerful companies in the world are still making excuses for not investigating their supply chains. Even those who are investigating are failing to disclose the human rights risks and abuses they find,” said Seema Joshi, Head of Business and Human Rights at Amnesty International.

Herein lies an egregious hypocrisy. Corporations turn a blind eye, adopting a willful ignorance to the circumstances at the bottom rung of the pyramid. They point to far-flung suppliers and the fragmented network of sub-tiers as the purveyors of injustice, a tangled web of invisibility too complicated for them to trace and unravel. As long as their products efficiently reach the market, the details are better left unsaid.

Compounding the problem, years of unregulated practices foster a corporate culture that sidesteps ethics and codes of conduct. Most recently, human rights lawyers press for traction as they battle deep-pocketed industries in the U.S. courts, yet powerful defendants still manage to keep their damages to a minimum. With regulatory gaps in producing countries, inadequate enforcement, and exemptions in national laws, a contaminated system often triumphs.

All angles lead to a frustrating conclusion: progress remains slow in our labyrinthine supply chain. Our child labor-dependent market is beholden to the political, legal, and moral uncertainties of our times. And with the growing trend to stretch the bounds of technology, society’s latest innovations unveil the dark side of green energy that could threaten improvement—or worse, steepen the incline of forced labor. To accommodate the electronic vehicle boom, the demand for cobalt in batteries will increase fourfold, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance. In addition, BloombergNEF forecasts that passenger vehicle sales will hit 10% of the global total in 2025, 28% in 2030, and soar to 58% in 2040. Inevitably fueling this rise are the children cloistered in dark tunnels inhaling toxic fumes. 

But the energy solutions paving our tomorrow should not—cannot— be built on the horrific plight of child laborers. With a global responsibility to hear the chorus of voices crying to end the vicious cycle, we must stand in harmony to demand better: transparency and accountability from the private sector with legal protections and political enforcement from the public sector. 

While the end of child labor is a jumbled knot of complex variables void of clear-cut answers, revolutionary digital tools can lead the charge. Blockchain technology, with its untapped potential, provides a level of transparency that was unthinkable years ago. Visibly cracking open all layers of operations, blockchain carefully tracks each set of hands that touch a product every step of the way. Utilizing cutting-edge precision, it collects an immutable chain of records, preventing crooked stakeholders from tampering with the ledger or gaming the system. Better yet, blockchain remains secure and decentralized, circulating a shared record across multiple computers without a single owner controlling the data. Large-scale integration across the economic ecosystem offers a promising solution: by incentivizing accountability, a blockchain platform can stifle bad actors who fail to demonstrate proof of ethical origins. 

Eradicating child slavery by 2025 was one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals unanimously signed five years ago. As the 38% decline in overall child labor from 2000 to 2016 came to a screeching halt, accomplishing this goal remains elusive without dramatically altering course. To trigger a rippling wave of change, our collective duty calls us to cleanse the supply chains and rid them of impurity—or reckon with a reality that contradicts our core values of liberty and justice. As Nelson Mandela wisely stated, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children.”  Truly, it is the children hidden behind the numbers where our hearts must reside.

Lea Despotis ’24 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at d.lea@wustl.edu .