May 21, 2024

 

US seeks to update determination concerning child labour in Thailand's shrimp industry

 

 

 

The US Department of Labor (DOL) is pushing for a revision to a 15-year-old determination that child labor is prevalent in Thailand's shrimp sector.

 

Thai shrimp were added to the DOL's annual "List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor" since 2009, which requires importers to go through a series of additional checks to ensure forced or indentured child labor was not employed to produce any shrimp they buy from Thailand.

 

However, a May 10 DOL notice published in the Federal Register proposes shrimp from Thailand be removed from the list after the agency, along with the US State Department and US Department of Homeland Security, determined the use of forced child labor in the Thai shrimp sector "appears to have been significantly reduced."

 

"Based on available information from various sources, the three departments have preliminarily concluded that there is no longer a reasonable basis to believe that there is use of forced or indentured child labor in the production of [Thai shrimp]," the notice said. "The DOL has received recent, credible and corroborated information from various sources on the use of forced or indentured child labor in shrimp production in Thailand."

 

The DOL has opened public comment on the proposed change, to be handled through its Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking, until June 10, 2024.

 

In its notice, the DOL said it had received information between 2006 and 2015 indicating children were peeling shrimp in small and unregulated "shrimp sheds" in Thailand.

 

"In more than isolated incidents, these migrant children were engaged in forced child labor," it said. "Following international attention and action on labor exploitation in Thailand's seafood industry, the Royal Thai Government and other stakeholders made a series of concerted significant efforts to address child labor and forced child labor throughout the seafood industry, including in the shrimp-peeling sector."

 

Among the moves made by the Thai government was its ratification of the International Labor Organization's Maritime Labor Convention and its Work in Fishing Convention. It also passed numerous fisheries sector reforms, including its Ministerial Regulation Prohibiting Children in Seafood Processing and its Royal Ordinance on Fisheries, which enhanced traceability systems of aquatic resources in Thailand. It also strengthened migrant worker recruitment regulations through revisions to its Labor Protection Act of 1998 and the Royal Ordinance on Foreign Worker Management (No. 2), according to US Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs Thea Mei Lee. 

 

"Private-sector entities also acted against forced child labor by formalising their supply chains, eliminating nearly all unregulated ‘shrimp sheds' in which child labor and forced child labor were previously documented," Lee said in the DOL notice.

 

Furthermore, the DOL said it had seen enough evidence of a curtailment of forced labor and child labor to make its recommendation that its rating of Thailand's shrimp sector be upgraded.

 

- SeafoodSource

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