Every year, on World Children’s Day, governments, NGOs and corporations publish colorful messages celebrating “the future of humanity”. They post smiling photos of children while congratulating themselves for their supposed progress. But millions of children around the world have nothing to celebrate today — because the very institutions that claim to defend them continue to profit from their exploitation.

The truth is brutally simple: nearly 400 million children are working right now, and more than 140 million of them are in the supply chains of the richest corporations on Earth. Close to 300 million children do not attend school. The global economy — especially agriculture, mining, and manufacturing — remains structurally dependent on child labour. And incredibly, even the governments of wealthy nations benefit financially from this exploitation through their sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, taxation, and public procurement.

World Children’s Day, therefore, is not a celebration. It is a reminder of our moral bankruptcy.

For more than a decade, I have documented how powerful countries and companies have built wealth on the backs of the poorest children. Coffee, cocoa, tea, palm oil, cotton, sugar, tobacco, fruits, vegetables, copper, gold, cobalt — industries worth trillions — rely on underpaid or unpaid child labour. Global corporations tell consumers they have “ethical supply chains,” but the evidence is irrefutable: their profits come from systemic injustice.

International organizations and NGOs that should be defending children often underestimate the magnitude of child labour by tens of millions. These convenient underestimations protect industry, not children. Meanwhile, governments sign declarations about “zero tolerance” while allowing companies to continue underpaying farmers and workers, ensuring that poverty — and with it child labour — remains unavoidable.

How can anyone speak of “celebrating children” when one of the most profitable investment funds on the planet — Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, now exceeding $2.1 trillion — invests in hundreds of corporations that benefit directly or indirectly from child labour and forced labour? Or when members of the G20, representing nearly 80% of global GDP, do almost nothing to prosecute corporations or enforce fair wages that would allow families to keep children in school?

There is no mystery here. Child labour thrives for one reason: the most powerful adults — and the media — allow it.

Ending this tragedy does not require miracles or charity. It requires justice. It requires paying farmers and workers a fair price for their products and labour. It requires binding laws that prohibit companies from profiting from exploitation. And it requires transparency — real transparency — not corporate or NGO reports designed by PR teams.

World Children’s Day should not be a day of speeches. It should be a day of accountability — a day when we confront the painful truth that we live in a world where the wealthiest celebrate children while doing nothing to stop their suffering.

I dream of the day when World Children’s Day will truly be a celebration — when every child is in school, not in a mine or plantation; when parents earn enough to protect and educate their children; when no investor gains from exploitation; when no government, and no journalist, looks the other way.

Until that day comes, I will continue to speak, denounce, document, and fight. Because children do not need our hashtags.They need our courage.

If you want to help me defend the poorest children on Earth, please feel free to contact me.

* Fernando Morales-de la Cruz is a journalist, activist and campaigner for an end to child labour and slavery worldwide.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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