World Bulletin
Children as Laborers, Circa 2009
By Sue Gloor
Sept. 23 -- Some consumers may pay exorbitant prices for an intricately imported hand-woven rug, but what they might not know is that the rug could have been made by child laborers at the loom, according to the RugMark Foundation.
 | | A RugMark official inspects a loom in Nepal to confirm that no child labor is being used. Through these surprise inspections, RugMark has found and liberated 3,600 child workers and given them an education. U. Roberto Romano. |
RugMark, a nonprofit organization that operates in Europe and North America to eliminate child bondage in the South Asian carpet industry, is sponsoring the traveling photo exhibition “Faces of Freedom” with the US Fund for Unicef to highlight child slavery in the rug-making market.
The exhibition opens today at the Unicef House in New York, 3 UN Plaza, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. It runs through Oct. 31 and then moves to Washington, DC, as part of the environmental expo Green Festival, and onto Miami International Airport later this year.
The 50 photographs, taken by U. Roberto Romano, illustrate the harsh working conditions of child weavers in India, Pakistan and Nepal as well as RugMark’s methods for eliminating the practice in these regions.
“ ‘Faces of Freedom,’ ” Romano said, “represents over a decade’s worth of my covering child labor” in those countries, from 1996 to 2007.
The images depict some of the 3,600 child laborers that RugMark has directly removed from illegal working conditions at the looms in the 15 years since it began operating. The program allows rug makers to place a RugMark label on their carpets after agreeing to guidelines forbidding the use of child labor and allowing random factory checks by RugMark officials.
If any child laborers are found during RugMark’s periodic inspections, the carpet maker who owns the loom loses the ability to use the label. The children are then reunited with their families, if possible, and are given the option of enrolling in one of RugMark’s 13 boarding schools and academic organizations in South Asia or attending a public or private school near the child’s home. This education is paid for partly by sales of RugMark rugs.
RugMark says that its program has resulted in a 60 percent reduction in the number of child weavers working in South Asia over the past 15 years, to 250,000 from 1 million. The US market for child-labor-free rugs has increased to $7.5 million from virtually nothing in less than a decade, so manufacturers have a financial incentive as well as a social responsibility to take part in the program. Currently, more than 60 RugMark rug importers operate in the US.
RugMark’s efforts to help end child exploitation also coincide with US Fund for Unicef’s mission to cut the number of daily childhood deaths from preventable causes to zero. The fund, a nonprofit group, was created in 1947 to raise support in the US for Unicef’s work; and both the US Fund and Unicef have long supported RugMark.
“The US Fund has been a financial sponsor of RugMark’s work since its beginning, and the two organizations continually work together to raise awareness for child protection in South Asia,” said April Thompson, director of marketing and communications at RugMark.
RugMark was founded in 1994 by Kailash Satyarthi, a longtime child-labor activist who is also an advocate for education as a fundamental human right. In 2006, Satyarthi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work toward this end.
Romano, the exhibition’s photographer, has been involved in covering child labor in other ways, too. In 1995 he filmed a television special, “Death of a Slave Boy,” about the assassination that year of a 13-year-old child labor activist and former child slave, Iqbal Masih, in Pakistan. In 2004 Romano co-directed the documentary “Stolen Childhoods” with Len Morris about the 246 million child laborers worldwide. Some photos from these projects also appear in the exhibition.
For more information about RugMark and the show, go to www.FacesofFreedom.GoodWeave.org.
Sue Gloor is an intern with UNA’s publications department and a student in the Bard College Globalization and International Affairs program.
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