Opinion: In Brazil since 2007, 261 Children Have Died While Working; Governments Ignore Problem

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – 2020 will mark three years of hiding data on child labor for the Brazilian government. The most recent figures are for 2016, released in 2017. Since then, successive delays in disclosure have seriously compromised the formulation of new public policies.

The release of data for 2017 and 2018 had been scheduled for June 2019. It was then pushed back to November. Then it was moved to March 2020. Now it has moved to June, one year late, assuming there are no further postponements.

Withholding information about child labor protects rapists. In many cases, it is large companies that benefit from child labor at the base of their production chains.

Black children

When it comes to human rights there is nothing more important than transparency and open, honest discussion. But few have the courage for this. There are many interests at stake. Children provide cheap labor in several important sectors of the Brazilian economy.

Black children working in some isolated corner of the country are not something that 99 percent of Brazilian CEOs lose sleep over. They are too concerned with chasing the carrot that runs before them, and trying to reach their unattainable goals for the quarter.

Almost one in every seven underage workers in Brazil is black. CEOs are guilty of turning a blind eye to such awful crimes. They are white, alpha males sitting at the top of the pyramid, while Brazilian children are worked to death.

In the business world, most offenders are large food, clothing, tobacco and construction companies. In the name of profit, they ignore what happens in their own production chains.

The clothes you wear, the chocolate you eat, and the buildings you live in were all produced using child labor. How would you feel if you knew that the plaster that covers your building was manufactured by the blood, sweat and tears of children and teenagers?

You probably wouldn’t feel anything. We all have bills to pay.

Deaths and accidents

The National Forum for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labour (FNPETI) has compiled some data. The results are damning.

Information available at the Aggravated Reporting Information System (Sinan) shows that 261 children and adolescents died as a result of work-related injuries between 2007 and 2018. In the same period, 43,777 accidents at work were registered with children and teenagers between 5 and 17 years of age.

These are not just trivial accidents. In many cases, they involve limb amputations or irreversible trauma.

It is also important to consider that a large percentage of these accidents go unreported, as they are not recorded as work-related accidents or deaths. For these companies, a problem ignored is a problem avoided.

Behind closed doors, the government helps to deflect guilt by hiding data.

Companies are complicit by burying their heads in the sand, and announcing that everything they do is in the name of sustainability.

We play our part, that is, we consume insatiably.

We are no longer citizens. We are consumers. Predators.