Child Labour grows at Afghan Kilns as girls replace women

Aljazeera report of Sept 2022 with many photos, describing sharply increasing child labour in Afghanistan’s brick kilns since the Taliban took over and most international aid stopped flowing. Children are working so that their families will not die of starvation.

As you know the Taliban regime has broken its word and banned women from most work outside the home. To compensate for this more children are working, and especially girls are doing the heavy work at the kilns that their mothers used to do.

In case anyone should think that Afghanistan is an especially backward and benighted place, take note that in the World’s largest parliamentary democracy India (which sends rockets to Mars and exports IT technicians to the West by the thousand) probably a million child labourers work at the brick kilns every year and do not attend any school. This child labour continues within 10 or 20 kilometres of the residences of chief ministers in the full light of day.

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2022/9/26/photos-poverty-pushes-afghan-children-to-work-at-brick-kilns

Public Utilities are using Child Labour Bricks

brickkilnnewssasia
May 1, 2014
1 min read

Bricks made by children, observed at the Nilratan Sirkar Hospital, Kolkata in December 2018. This is one of the largest public hospitals in West Bengal.

Nearly all public and private institutions in South Asia are using bricks which contain an element of child labour. No bricks are normally available which have a GUARANTEE that no child labour was used to make them. This needs to change.

In Kolkata bricks from the UNITED brick kiln are now free of child labour. When other brick kilns are able to give the same GUARANTEE it will be possible for companies and institutions to buy bricks which are free of child labour, in accordance with their policies and the laws of all the countries concerned.