Personal Story: Child Labour

by Craig Kielburger, Thornhill, Ontario.

It is only when we put a human face on the suffering of children that we really understand how important is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I was able to better understand how children all over the world must work together for their rights when I visited South Asia this year. While I was there Kailash Satyarthi, a social activist working to help free children enslaved in bonded labour, led a raid on a carpet factory in which 21 children were rescued. These children had been tricked into thinking that they were going to a training school to learn how to make carpets. They were even told that they would be paid while learning this trade. Instead, they were taken to another state far away from their homes and forced to work 14 hours a day for 25 cents a day. They had to give the twenty five cents back to the carpet owner in exchange for one bowl of rice and dal, which is all that they were fed for the day. One nine year old boy, who had been working at the factory for three years, showed me a deep scar across the top of his head where he had been hit with an iron bar by the loom master for making a mistake. Another nine year old boy, Munilal, told me how he would go to bed crying at night because he missed his mother so much. He couldn’t cry during the day because the loom master would beat him for not doing his work. So he would speak to his mother in his dreams when he went to bed.

One of the highlights of my trip was when I was able to accompany these boys back to their homes after their rescue from the carpet factory. Munilal was with us. On the way home the boys began to chant and to clap their hands. I asked what the words of their song meant and I was told that they were singing “We are free. We are going home.”

Finally we reached Munilal’s village. I’ll never forget the feeling I had inside of me when I saw Munilal and his mother embrace. They looked at one another for a long time as she held him in her arms. She was so happy to see her boy again. Munilal was delighted because he knew that he would no longer have to wait until his dreams to speak to his mother.

Craig Kielburger and his friends began an organization dedicated to the elimination of the bonded labour of young people. More information on Free the Children and its campaign is available at the excellent Free the Children web site.