4500 Filipino Child Laborers Harvest Sugar for U.S. Markets

by Amanda Kloer

categories: Domestic Human Trafficking, Human Trafficking in Asia and the Pacific, Labor Trafficking and Trade, Trafficking in Children

Published September 07, 2009 @ 08:06AM PT

This week, over 6800 child laborers were rescued in the Philippines.  They were exploited in a number of industries, from domestic service to commercial sex to selling drugs.  But the vast majority -- over 4500 -- were being exploited on sugarcane plantations.  Filipino authorities say these kids are only a tiny fraction of the over 4 million estimated to be enslaved or exploited in labor in the Philippines, in part to sell cheaper sugar to the U.S.

Sugarcane plantations can be extremely dangerous for children, and many work brutally long days with no breaks and little to eat.  They cannot go to school, thus ensuring the plantation owners whole generations of workers who have no options other than the plantation and feel increasingly trapped in their situation.  They are often take away from their families and forced to live on the plantations.  Some of the children are slaves -- trapped by debt or the threat of violence and unable to leave.  Others have the freedom to leave, but nowhere to go and no other viable ways to feed themselves and their families.  Either way, it's exploitation of children that allows plantations to churn out cheaper sugar.

So where is all this sugar harvested by these Filipino kids going?  Well, at least 500,000 metric tons of it are going to the U.S. every year.   In fact, earlier this year the U.S. agree to import more sugar from the Philippines than ever before.  This was good news for Filipino Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) head Rafael Coscolluela, who said in December 2008 that the Philippines is "in for hard times in the next two years and it’s time for belt tightening for the sugar sector.”  He also said the Philippine sugar industry must “become more efficient to lower production cost.”  I have to wonder if there is a connection between the "belt-tightening" measures the Filipino sugar industry put into place last year in order to sell more to the U.S. and the 4500 kids who were rescued from plantations several months later.  How many plantation owners and operators cut costs by cutting the pay or food of children?  How many cut costs by firing paid adult workers and enslaving children to take their places?

Filipino sugar is grown by exploited child laborers, and sold to U.S. markets.  This isn't abuse taking place overseas and far away, it's abuse being packaged into a bag of sugar and sold in U.S. supermarkets.  Maybe it's being sold in your supermarket.  This is exactly why it's important to know where your products come from and ask pointed questions of companies and governments.  You have a right to demand sugar produced without exploitation of children.  And when you exercise that right? Well now that's sweet.

Photo credit: Raw sugar bowl by Ayelie