As long as these "exploited children" have no BETTER options, the cycle will continue.
They get paid $0.25 for a job that an adult would have demanded $1.00 for. Had we banned child labor, the adult would've had the job, the child wouldn't have needed the work as badly (as their parent now has a better job), and we would be paying slightly more over hear.
Let us not pretend that we are doing them some service by exploiting them. (If you really want to say we are helping them by exploiting them, then how about we consider ways these children can make more money with less risk of dismemberment and only needing a weak internet connection and a cheap phone with a camera...)
There is no reason such laws cannot be implemented where they currently aren't.
We also have the ability to stop US based companies from selling products produced by foreign child labor, but we don't.
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The additional costs would easily be absorbed by the consumers of rare earths – these make up only a tiny fraction of the cost of the products they are used in.
The adults would have better-paying jobs. It's not a 1:1 relationship but considering the positive effects on the local economy this would have, we can simply it as such: these are the parents of those children. They have more money and can feed them
And then there's the fact that food is dirt cheap and we could easily feed (cloth, educate, vaccinate) every child on earth given enough political will.
I'm usually of the view that the political problems in those countries have to be solved locally and that the "global North" has only limited influence. But verifying that resources are created without child labor, especially if they originate from a limited number of large operations, seems both doable and extremely worthwhile.
This same argument can be used to justify slave labor and it is, right here. At least they aren't starving.
Yet, we've eradicated slavery in much of the world and on paper.
No, we haven't.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1440-5-things-i-...
And we haven't for the same reason that children are sold into slavery, there's money to be made.
EDIT: And in case you don't like the first hand account https://www.stopthetraffik.org/the-scale-of-human-traffiking
"600,000-800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year."
"At least 20.9 million people are victims of forced labour worldwide"
Eradicated indeed.
Laws only works when the society can enforce them and it doesn't mean police, social workers and the likes those are supposed to catch outliers not to enact reality. When society can't enforce laws/norms case and point children in low social economic environments laws break down and mean nothing.
Child labor laws might look like they prevent mass scale exploitation of children but in reality they don't, we stopped using child labor for the same reason we stopped using slave labor and it wasn't our morality but rather the simply practical truth that not only we afford to do so but they also in many cases are a liability.
The US industry has no child labor because it has not place for child labor, children can't be professionals most manufacturing is high end the physical labor is mostly automated and cheap "illegal" labor is available for the few tasks that children might still be able to fill (and if you really look into US textile sweatshops and the agriculture industry you'll still find child labor).
If the US had the same industrial landscape as the Congo or any other underdeveloped nation no matter what the so called moral compass of its population would point at, no matter if it would have democracy and all that it would have child labor that's just the reality we live in. We exploit every resource we have in the most efficient way possible, the locomotive and industrial revolutions made slave labor obsolete and the technological revolution made child labor obsolete both of those are fairly closely tied as when you need educated people not only to steer your economy but to drive it on every level they simply aren't compatible.
Better off spending your money on education programs than on pointless processes which will be circumvented.
In countries like Congo there are probably quite a few.
> We also have the ability to stop US based companies from selling products produced by foreign child labor