Economic Report: Addressing Child Labour in Global Supply Chains

This report examines the pervasive issue of child labour within global supply chains, highlighting its detrimental effects on children's physical and mental well-being, as well as their overall development. It delves into the economic factors that contribute to child labour, such as poverty and cost-saving measures in industries like fashion and textiles. The report analyses whether child labour can ever be beneficial, particularly in extreme poverty situations, and explores its long-term impacts, including health problems and deprivation of education. It also addresses the challenges of monitoring child labour in increasingly complex global supply chains and discusses who should be held responsible for this issue. Furthermore, the report outlines the social, economic, legal, and organizational challenges of enforcing a ban on child labour and offers recommendations for addressing the problem, such as implementing strong labour laws and ensuring safety management systems. The report concludes that concerted actions, including stricter laws and improved standards, are essential to combat child labour effectively.

Academic Performance
Assignments Part B

Table of Contents
Introduction .....................................................................................................................................1
Main Body ......................................................................................................................................1
Recommendations ...........................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References ......................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
Child labour is one of the growing concern around the world which leads to depriving
children's from getting good eduction, fulfilling their potential. It is the process where are
children's are involved in the kind of work which mentally and physically harmful for them. This
report highlights growing number of child labour in the supply chain, also detailed discussion on
banning all kinds of child labour in the supply chain around the globe.
Main Body
More than 260 million children around the globe are involved in the labour of any kind
which is directly impacting their mental and physical health. Child labour is mainly described as
the work done by the children for which either they are too young or kind of work considered to
be not right for the children, involving children's in this form of work leads to directly
influencing their mental and physical health (Global supply chains major user of child labour,
2019). According to international labour organisation around 170 million children's are involved
in the child labour in supply chain making textiles and garments in order to make a living. Large
number of children's are seen working in the fashion industries, the fashion industries in
employing large number of children's in order to save their labour cost as children can be paid
less. The main reason that justifies the child labour is that huge poverty and poor financial
position of the families lead the children to work, as family thinks that a child's income can
provide them some resources to survive.
What circumstances child labour be beneficial to children
Allowing children to work is never a great option, but family are forced to send their
children's to work in order to survive in the extreme poverty. Large number of fashion industries
are employing children in order to work in the textile and garments production as children can be
cheap source of labour for them. Child labour is never beneficial for the children's in any
circumstances as lead to directly impacting their mental and physical health, but in case of server
poverty, situation has to work in order to survive the getting food/shelter aid, educational aid
through the government or businesses while they are working can helps them in their future
development (Dani, 2019). In addition to this offering supervision or social control mechanism
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also having unions who will support them in getting better working condition and will lead to
creating a better circumstances for them to work at least (Hasle and Vang, 2021).
Does child labour helps in escaping poverty
It is analysed that large number of child labour are employed in the supply chain are paid
relativity low prices, for example in case of fashion industry's supply chain needs low skilled
labour also in cotton picking industries prefer children's as hiring them helps companies to save
labour cost, children's are pain very small amount of wages in comparison to adults become of
their lack of knowledge and support from unions. This small amount of wages will not help them
and their families to escape from poverty but it will help them get some resources for food and
survive effectively.
Can child labour keeps children's and their family in poverty and also what are long term effect
of child labour on children's
The child labour is never an option to keep the children and their family in the poverty
nor it is an option to remove them out of poverty, with the amount of wages that children's get
can help them and their family to get some resources to survive. It is child labour creates long
term impact on physical and mental health of the children's. Child labour lead to excess amount
of body and mental harm sometimes it also leads to the death also. Involving in the dangerous
work also lead them towards slavery or economic exploitation also (Kumar and Ramesh, 2020).
The another long term impact of the child labour is that it deprives children's from schooling and
various health problems such as malnutritions which can lead to other dangerous health and
mental problems.
How increasing trade openness makes it difficult to monitor the use of child labour in complex
global supply chain.
Increasing number of child labour in the global supply chain remain the biggest
challenges. The goods and services brought by the consumers are combination of the inputs from
number of countries around the globe, also the packaged, assembled, transported across various
markets around the world. These all result of effective supply chain of the business organisation
which is complex process to understand similarly understanding to what extent child labour is
involved or forced into is also a complex process. Increasing number of mixed methods in the
supply chain offers a insight into the child labour or the forced labour also the human trafficking
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in the large amount of operation setting that is connected to the global supply chain (Muthu,
2020).
Who should be responsible for child labour in the supply chain
The child labour is result of the server poverty faced by the children and families which
force children's to work. It is analysed that not one individual can be considered as to
responsible for the child labour each person involved is responsible for the child labour from the
families who sell their children's to farmers or miners, government or business who does not
implement any child labour law or standards banning use of child labours in supply chain to the
consumers who freely buys the goods at low cost from the countries where the child labour is
used (Nolan and Bott, 2018).
What are some of the social, economic legal and organisational challenges of enforcing a ban on
child labour
There are number of challenges that can be faced while implementing or enforcing a ban
on the child labour, some of challenges includes the social, economic, legal and organisational
challenges. In case of social challenges, in some part of the counties there is social belief that
work has major impact on the character building and enhance skills in the children which leads
the children to follow the their parents footstep and start working form early age,these kind of
social belief lead to creating challenges in the ban of child labour. Server poverty or the
community facing huge level of poverty has also lead to creating huge challenges in the ban in
child labour. Living in the poor economy has forced the children to work in order to survive. In
addition to this not forming right legal laws or organisation not implementing any kind of child
labour law so that they can save their labour cost has also created huge challenge in enforcing
ban on the child labour (Truong Quang and Hara, 2018).
Recommendations
some of the recommendations that can be taken into consideration in order to resolve the
issue of the child labour can be implementing strong standards of labour laws in each and every
organisation. Also implementing restrictions on hiring children's below the a certain minimum
age, not allowing children's to work in any kind of hazardous work so as to protect them form
any kind of mental and physical harm also there should be limited number of working hours for
the children's. Each organisation needs to ensures that there is safety and health management
system in order to protect children's in the supply chain. Due to the server poverty if the
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children's are forced to work them there is should be union to support them and to provide them
better working conditions. Also avoiding any kind of involvement of the children's in the
dangerous and hazardous work (Anilkumar and Sridharan, 2019).
Conclusion
From the above discussion it has been concluded that growing number of child labour in the
supply chain is directly influencing the physical and mental health of the children's and also has
direct impact on their growth and development. This report helps in analysing that there are large
number of children's working in the supply chain around the globe in order to survive, also helps
in analysing that taking certain actions such as implementing laws, creating proper standards will
help in overcoming child labour.
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References
Books and Journals
Anilkumar, E.N. and Sridharan, R., 2019. Sustainable Supply Chain Management: A Literature
Review and Implications for Future Research. International Journal of System
Dynamics Applications (IJSDA), 8(3), pp.15-52.
Dani, S., 2019. Strategic supply chain management: creating competitive advantage and value
through effective leadership. Kogan Page Publishers.
Hasle, P. and Vang, J., 2021. Designing better interventions: insights from research on decent
work. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 57(2), pp.58-70.
Kaplinsky, R. and Morris, M., 2018. Standards, regulation and sustainable development in a
global value chain driven world. International Journal of Technological Learning,
Innovation and Development, 10(3-4), pp.322-346.
Kumar, A. and Ramesh, A., 2020. An MCDM framework for assessment of social sustainability
indicators of the freight transport industry under uncertainty. A multi-company
perspective. Journal of Enterprise Information Management.
Muthu, S.S., 2020. Assessing the environmental impact of textiles and the clothing supply chain.
Woodhead publishing.
Nolan, J. and Bott, G., 2018. Global supply chains and human rights: spotlight on forced labour
and modern slavery practices. Australian Journal of Human Rights, 24(1), pp.44-69.
Truong Quang, H. and Hara, Y., 2018. Risks and performance in supply chain: the push
effect. International Journal of Production Research, 56(4), pp.1369-1388.
Online
Global supply chains major user of child labour, 2019 [Online] Available through
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/economy/global-supply-chains-major-user-of-child-
labour-un-report-67734
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