Corporate ideals – developing country realities: meeting child labour standards

Appendix 4 looks in detail at verification and inspection procedures and thus supplements the information on codes, guidelines and standards in Appendix 2.

Verification and inspection procedures can provide evidence that a business is taking steps to turn a commitment to addressing child labour into a reality.

This appendix analyses four different aspects of verification and inspection:

• The difficulties in detecting child labour and techniques for doing so
• Social auditing options
• Corrective action when child labour is found and options for child workers
• Transparency of reporting

Detection

Unlike other areas of worker’s rights child labour is a difficult issue to detect because child workers may not want to be discovered. As a result working children may conceal themselves during workplace inspections or give inaccurate information about their age, which is difficult to verify when they do not hold identification documents, or these have been falsified.

Social auditing

Owing to the complexity of supply chains, existing monitoring and verification processes face various shortcomings. Points to consider are that workplace inspections are more likely to be useful if they are unannounced and verification may be more reliable if it is carried out by independent auditors. In addition to checking a company’s records, monitoring and verification should also include visual inspections and interviews with workers and workers’ rights activists.

Remedial action

If child labour is found, it is essential that corrective action does not inflict harm upon children. The appendix suggests options for children in different situations:

• Children involved in “the worst forms of child labour”
• Older working children
• Younger children

In all of these situations, remedial action should consider the impact of loss of earnings on children and take their views into account in all actions concerning them. To this end, it may be appropriate for companies to collaborate with NGOs or individuals that are experienced in helping children voice their own views.

Transparency

Companies should be as open as possible and report regularly on:

• What standards in relation to child labour they are committed to;
• What action is being taken to monitor and verify that these standards are being met;
• Whether corrective action has been taken as a result and, if so, what.