Catherwood LibraryILR School

Wilmar, Asia’s leading agribusiness group and the world’s largest palm oil producer, has announced new measures management will be taking to address international concerns with ongoing child labor practices on the company’s plantations among other labor rights violations. Following investigations by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and Amnesty International, it was revealed that countless children were laboring in dangerous conditions on Wilmar’s plantations, usually because harvesting quotas were so high that the children’s older relatives alone could not handle the workload. Wilmar is seeking to better the conditions under which children work and live on plantations, pledging to seek better education and health access for child laborers. While Wilmar views these steps as improvements, representatives from labor watchdog groups and international labor rights activists have expressed disappointment that Wilmar’s plan exclusively addresses the effects of child labor as opposed to seeking to abolish it by focusing on its roots and causes.