Child Labor

Rana Jawad Asghar’s commentary (Jan. 20) calls child labor in Pakistan an inevitable byproduct of poverty and argues that efforts to reduce child labor hurt the very people they seek to help. I disagree. The Clinton administration, along with other governments and organizations around the world, believes that abusive child labor can--and must--be eliminated.

Last June, 174 nations adopted an International Labor Organization convention that calls for action to remove children from abusive child labor and put them in school. Already, our government--with bipartisan support in Congress--is funding projects to provide tens of thousands of children with education and thousands of families with income-generating alternatives to the scourge of abusive child labor.

One ILO project addresses the soccer ball industry in Sialkot, Pakistan. When the project began in 1997, the ILO estimated that there were 7,000 children stitching soccer balls in Sialkot, most of whom had never gone to school. Today, more than 6,000 of them attend one of 185 education centers begun under the project. Others go to schools set up by UNICEF.

We have a long way to go. But we cannot assume that child labor is inevitable.

ALEXIS M. HERMAN

Secretary of Labor, Washington