Worst Forms of Child Labour in the Bangladesh Leather Industry: A Synthesis of Five Years of Research by Children, Small Business Owners, NGOs, and Academics

By Jody Aked, Danny Burns and A.K.M. Maksud  

CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South‑Eastern Asia), a research programme on worst forms of child labour (WFCL), aims to identify, evidence, and promote effective multi-stakeholder action to tackle the drivers of WFCL in selected supply chains in Bangladesh and Nepal. Spanning five years, the programme’s focus in Bangladesh was on identifying the system dynamics of WFCL in Dhaka’s leather industry, and particularly the informal economy, where WFCL is prevalent. In addition to extensive participatory and qualitative research inquiry, 13 participatory action research groups of children and business owners spent 12–18 months learning about actions to reduce WFCL and its impact. The Action Research component makes the CLARISSA programme unique in the child labour space because it has learned about the dynamics of WFCL from action as well as inquiry. The CLARISSA programme has produced multiple research reports, and the Hard Labour website, which reproduces some of the stories about children’s lives, their days, the businesses they work in, and the neighbourhoods they live in. This paper synthesises this detailed evidence landscape to draw analytical conclusions about why WFCL happens in Dhaka’s leather industry and what can be done about it. This paper synthesises what the CLARISSA programme learned about child labour in the leather industry in and around Dhaka, Bangladesh. It looks at children’s pathways into child labour and their lived experience of it, alongside the small leather businesses they work in. The aim was to understand why children have to work and why the businesses employ children, looking at both the supply and demand dynamics of child labour. The CLARISSA programme has produced multiple research reports and the Hard Labour website,2 which reproduces some of the stories about children’s lives, their days, the businesses they work in, and the neighbourhoods they live in. This paper looks across this rich and detailed evidence landscape to draw analytical conclusions about why WFCL happens and what can be done about it.   

CLARISSA Research and Evidence Paper 11, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2024. 70p.