Justice Minister’s Award
CHILD LABOUR
Noa Kuriki,Ninth Grade (third year of three grades),
Kurume City Tanushimaru Junior High School, Fukuoka Prefecture
One day during summer vacation, I came home from club activities and, as always,
headed straight to the refrigerator. On my way, I saw a plastic file folder lying on the
table in the kitchen, and I stopped. The folder bore an illustration by Dick Bruna, an
author of children’s books, and I’m a fan of his. The picture was of a boy, instead of the
rabbit named Miffy I’ve been familiar with since I was a little girl. "Wow he’s cute," I
thought. As I picked up the folder, I noticed a large droplet below one of the eyes of the
boy illustrated in the center of the folder. It was a teardrop. "What? Why is it he crying?"
I wondered and took a closer look at the picture. The crying boy held a few yellow
rectangles that looked like boards. "What?" I didn’t instantly understand what the picture
represented. Then I read the English words written right above him in red block letters:
"STOP! CHILD LABOUR." I had learned the word "child" in my English class at
school, so I knew what it means. But I had no idea what the next word "labour" is. I
thought I had to find out right away why this boy was crying, so I rushed to the next
room to get an English-Japanese dictionary on the bookshelf. Back in the kitchen, I
looked up the word. The dictionary defined "labour" as: 1. Work 2. Workers 3. To work.
It also gave the more detailed definition, "backbreaking work." The images of the cute
boy in the picture and of the shocking word "labour" collided in my head. An extremely
uncomfortable feeling and indefinable sense of pathos filled my heart.
I brought a glass of cold juice to my room, turned on my tablet, and typed the
address on the back of the folder into the address bar of the browser. The website
overflowed with news and articles about many different problems related to human rights
around the world. I was stunned. "Oh my, there are so many human rights problems!" On
the website, these issues were sorted by country or subject, and I could pick articles from
those lists. I, of course, tapped on "Child Labour" for starters. The page opened to show a
photo of an innocent-looking boy staring at the camera while trying to lift something. I
continued to scroll down to find a photo of children in torn sandals or bare feet crouching
on rubble while doing something. They didn’t look like children of the same age doing
something fun together. None of them were smiling. With their lips pursed together, they
looked bored or even angry. I read the caption beside the photo, and was stunned again:
these children were sorting rare metals needed to produce electronics such as
tablets—like the one I was using to visit the website—as well as cell phones, smart
phones, and home video game consoles. What looked like "rubble" to me was in fact ore
that contains a rare metal called cobalt.
Whenever I want to find out about something, my tablet allows me to search the web
for information and images. It was a Christmas present from my parents and I love it. But
somewhere deep in it, this tablet might contain the rare metal that these innocent children
dug out with their small hands—in a harsh work environment where they are covered
with dust in blistering heat, risking their lives. "This tablet must have been made at a
clean, dust-free, and organized precision equipment factory in a faraway place, and
polished and displayed at a neat store where music is played before it came to me"—this
was what I had vaguely imagined until I learned about these children, and I felt really
ashamed of myself.
I finally understood the reasons for the bored and angry looks on the faces of these
children with pursed lips, and for the boy’s large teardrop on the file folder.
According to the online article, the mine in the photo is in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, located in Central Africa, and the country is one of the world’s largest
exporters of raw minerals. The country’s rare metals can generate great wealth, and
conflicts over the raw minerals have triggered civil wars that have continued for decades.
Today, the Congo is one of the world’s poorest nations.
This saddened and angered me at the same time. These are children with futures who
have been made victims of poverty caused by conflicts between adults—children just likeus.