In Brazil, an estimated 3 million children work on plantations that produce sugar cane, tea, tobacco, sisal, and other agricultural products. In the brick kiln industry in Pakistan, which is said to operate almost exclusively on the basis of debt bondage, over half the workers are children. Work for these children often is harsh and dangerous. Repeated injuries to children who cut sugar cane usually incapacitate them at an early age and limit them to an average working life of 12 years. Children in glass factories in India work in unventilated factories where furnace temperatures reach 1,400 to 1,600 degrees celsius.
Child slavery is hidden because it is illegal.
It exists because those who practice it are either able to evade the law, or because governments are either unwilling or unable to enforce the law. Child slaves mine gold in the jungle of Peru, knit carpets by hand in southern Asia, and work as prostitutes in Thai brothels. The girls often work extended hours, suffer harsh physical and psychological treatment, and are sometimes sexually abused. The situations reviewed are not necessarily the only such cases. In certain regions facts about child labor have been documented for years, and thus more information is available to report.