In the southern Africa country of Malawi, it isn’t uncommon for young children to quit school and go to work on family tobacco farms.

Richmond Times-Dispatch, 3 May 2004

Malawi has laws prohibiting children younger than 13 from working full time, but the government lacks the resources to enforce those laws, said Marc Hofstetter, a former employee of the international Red Cross who is now devoting himself full time to fighting the problem of child labor in tobacco farming.

Hofstetter is director of the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco-Growing Foundation, or ECLT. Based in Geneva, the foundation is funding projects in several Third World countries to get young children out of the tobacco fields and into schools.

” We are not against children working on the farm,” Hofstetter said. “This happens in all societies. What we are fighting is when children are denied education or exposed to hazardous work conditions.”

The tobacco industry has often been criticized for its role in encouraging tobacco production in developing nations. In Africa alone, Zimbabwe and Malawi are major producers of the tobacco leaf that goes into the global cigarette production machine. Uganda and Malawi are growing more tobacco as political unrest in Zimbabwe hurts production there.

In South America, Brazil eclipsed the United States a few years ago as the world’s largest producer of tobacco leaf.

A 2001 report by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington-based tobacco-control group, charged international cigarette manufacturers and leaf merchants with encouraging the production of leaf in developing countries to push down global tobacco prices.

The report said the tobacco industry downplays and ignores “the many serious economic and environmental costs associated with tobacco cultivation, including chronic indebtedness among tobacco farmers . . . serious environmental destruction caused by tobacco farming and pesticide-related health problems for farmers and their families.”

Hofstetter said the ECLT is working to improve conditions for tobacco-farming families. But it isn’t fighting the tobacco industry. In fact, it is funded by the tobacco industry. Seven cigarette companies and four tobacco-processing companies are contributors.

The foundation was established in 2000 by several groups with interests in tobacco farming, including the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Associations and the International Tobacco Growers Association.

The ECLT foundation’s members also include several international cigarette companies, such as Philip Morris International. Richmond-based Philip Morris USA and two Virginia-based leaf merchants that purchase a large amount of tobacco overseas, Richmond-based Universal Leaf Tobacco Co. Inc. and Danville-based Dimon Inc., are also members.

The foundation has put about $3 million into field projects during the past two years. Hofstetter, who came to Virginia recently to provide a report on the foundation’s progress to Universal and Dimon, said the work is having a positive effect.

Hofstetter, whose work with the Red Cross took him to Iraq and Russia, said people tend to think that most child labor occurs in industry. In fact, about 70 percent of child laborers work in agriculture.

” The root causes have to do with poverty,” he said. “That’s the main reason, but it is also cultural habits.”

The foundation, which has a small staff and thus works with other aid organizations, has funded programs in tobacco-producing countries that emphasize more efficient and effective farming methods, which are aimed at reducing the need for farmers to pull their children out of school to work in the fields.

Projects are ongoing in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and the Philippines. In Malawi, for example, the foundation has partnered with local development agencies on a four-year, $2.1 million project in 60 villages that involves diversifying crops, improving access to clean water and sanitation, teaching bookkeeping skills to farmers, rehabilitating school buildings, and training teachers.

The main objective of the crop diversification, Hofstetter said, is “so the farmer is not dependent alone on the income from tobacco.” The water and sanitation projects are aimed at helping to prevent diseases that keep children out of school.

Hofstetter said that in the villages where the work is ongoing, the foundation has seen a 32 percent increase in the number of children attending school regularly and a 64 percent decrease in school dropouts.

However, the ECLT faces a credibility problem. Because it is funded by the tobacco industry, many government-sponsored aid groups are prohibited from working with it. The World Bank is one example.

The ECLT has been backed by the International Labor Organization, however.

Hofstetter said the foundation can’t put an end to the problem of child labor. “Our role is to show that we can make a difference with pilot projects. We hope to be in a position to get other organizations on board.”

Column by JOHN REID BLACKWELL

http://www.timesdispatch.com/