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| When international trade occurs, if one country has a comparative advantage that is due to a production process considered harmful, offensive, or immoral, the other country can legitimately limit trade. Americans find forced labor, and particularly forced child labor, abhorrent. The U.S. government would like to prohibit the importation of products produced under these conditions. Part I. Title 19 of the United States Code, Section 1307 (the Tariff Act of 1930) states: All goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labor under penal sanctions shall not be entitled to entry at any of the ports of the United States, and the importation thereof is hereby prohibited, and the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to prescribe such regulations as may be necessary for the enforcement of this provision.Since 1998, merchandise manufactured with "forced or indentured child labor" is included now under this statute. Visit the Web site of Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) in the U.S. Department of Labor, http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/regs/eo13126/main.htm, to learn about Executive Order No. 13126. What does this regulation prohibit? The Web site of Bureau of International Labor Affairs also lists products that are currently prohibited from entering the United States because of these regulations. What are these products? Part II. The United States is not alone in rejecting goods produced through the abuse of children. In June 1999, delegates from 174 countries unanimously adopted Convention 182 at a conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO). (The ILO was established in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles, and was associated with the League of Nations. It is now a specialized agency of the United Nations.) When Convention 182 was being considered for adoption, President Clinton traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, to address this conference of the ILO. He stated: "Today, the time has come to build on the growing world consensus to ban the most abusive forms of child labor…." The United States was one of the first countries to ratify Convention 182.
The Children's World Association, a Swedish non-profit organization, posthumously awarded the first World's Children's Prize to Iqbal in 2000. Now, this prize is also known as the Iqbal Masih Award for the Rights of the Child. Learn more about Iqbal's life and family by visiting their Web site, http://www.childrensworld.org/engiqbal/index.asp. |