LOST CHILDHOODS.

In many countries, children work long hours at backbreaking labor for pennies a day.

At the Bekasi Landfill outside Jakarta, Indonesia, 11-year-old Tariah rummages through heaping piles of trash, hunting for scraps of plastic, glass, and metal. As she tries to ignore the foul stench that chokes the air, she dodges the giant claw of a bulldozer digging through the garbage.

"I collect garbage every day," she says, as flies swarm around her head.

"It's very hot at the dump. Smoke from the burning garbage stings my eyes and makes it very hard to breathe. Sometimes, my hands get injured from the sharp goods I pick up."

Tariah is one of 80 million children worldwide who work in extremely dangerous conditions. Day in and day out, these young workers perform backbreaking labor that cripples their small bodies and suffocates their young spirits.

Low-Cost Labor

Deeply impoverished, millions of children around the world sacrifice their health, safety, and sometimes their lives, for just pennies a day.

"Child labor is cheap labor," says Darlene Adkins of the Child Labor Coalition. "Employers can pay children less than adults for the same work."

In many cases, young workers labor for months, even years, without receiving a single cent.

"Some kids are bonded laborers," says Robin Romano, a filmmaker who is shooting a movie about child labor around the world. "Their families need to borrow money, so they sell their children into slavery to pay off the loan. A debt as small as $50 may put a family in bondage for a generation or more."

Most countries have laws that forbid businesses from hiring children to perform dangerous work. However, employers are rarely punished for breaking the law.

"The biggest problem in child labor is enforcement," says Romano. "You can write laws until you are blue in the face, but until countries have the political will and conviction to enforce them, the laws are meaningless."

Indonesia: Striving to Survive

Tariah is among 600 children who scour the Bekasi Landfill, searching for junk to sell. The half-broken light bulbs, metal sticks, and tattered plastic bags she finds usually bring less than $1 a day from recycling agents.

Children as young as 8 years of age work 12 hours a day combing through rotting garbage. Because they don't wear protective clothing, young scavengers often fall ill with diarrhea, worms, and skin infections.

To the north, off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, young boys work 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, on rickety fishing piers built far out into the ocean.

Those who are lucky will pocket $7 for a month's labor.

As they sort through their catch, the children try to avoid the painful sting of jellyfish and the poisonous sea snakes tangled in the net. Worse are the beatings by angry foremen. Some children try to escape, but many drown while struggling to swim to freedom.

One of the workers, Yuliagi, 15, is too frightened to leave. His father deserted their family, making Yuliagi the sole support of his mother and younger brothers and sister.

Working in Mexico's Fields

Child labor is a problem throughout the world. Nearly two thirds of Mexico's estimated 3 million child laborers work in agriculture. When fathers go to the U.S. for better-paying jobs, many Mexican children stay behind, working alongside their mothers on farms.

In the fields, children plant and harvest crops as the blazing sun beats down on their backs. Some collapse, the victims of heat exhaustion. Others, like 10-year-old Miguel and 8-year-old Ramon, nurse wounds from tools that they use to cut crops.

"We've gotten cut a few times with knives," says Miguel, who works up to 12 hours a day on his uncle's farm in central Mexico. "My back hurts. My hands ache."

Even more dangerous, however, are the toxic chemicals that hang in the air and cling to the fruits and vegetables the children pick.

"Children in Mexico work around pesticides that have been banned in the U.S. for decades," says Diane Mull, coordinator of The Education to Combat Abusive Child Labor.

"These pesticides cause skin irritations, breathing difficulties, and long-term health problems, including cancer."

Tough Toil in India

Nearly half of the world's child laborers--more than 100 million of them--work in India. Desperately poor, they toil long hours each day, performing crippling labor.

In loom sheds across central northern India, children work up to 16 hours a day tying tiny knots into handmade carpets. The tedious stitchwork often leaves their hands gnarled and their bodies deformed.

"Children's hands can become grossly distorted," says Robert SanGeorge of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

"Squatting for long periods of time leads to back and leg problems."

On a train traveling along the eastern coast of India, 13-year-old Ram Chandra Gouda crawls on his hands and knees, sweeping trash from the filthy floor. Ram is among hundreds of hungry children who work on trains shining shoes, collecting garbage, and hawking newspapers.

"I work more than 15 hours a day," he says. "I am verbally abused by passengers. Many times, the police lock me up for no reason. I get beaten and punished for theft, even though I am not a thief."

Lending a Helping Hand

What can be done to stop abusive child labor? Several organizations are trying to help, but the job is overwhelming. The IPEC supports more than 1,000 projects in 68 countries, providing education and health care for hundreds of thousands of former child laborers.

IPEC also sponsors local programs to educate young people still trapped in the web of unending labor. One of these programs operates 12 schools on railway platforms along the eastern coast of India, where more than 300 children study history, geography, math, science, and language.

At the Bekasi dump site, the Dinamika Indonesia Foundation runs two schools in the scavengers' village, where Tariah attends class each morning before heading out for another day of grueling labor. In school, she learns to read, count, and work on the computer. Tariah dreams of the day when she will no longer be forced to rifle through rubbish.

"I go to school now," she says. "I am learning to read and write to become clever in the future. Someday, I want to become a teacher."

Your Turn

Think About It

1. What can consumers do to reduce the problem of abusive child labor?

2. If child labor were banned, what would desperately poor families do to put food on the table? Can you think of a solution?