Handmade horrors
Next time you’re admiring that handmade carpet in a local store, you might want to think about more than just the color and texture. A recent Harvard study indicates there’s a good chance it was made by children working as virtual slaves. The report, released this month by a researcher at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, estimated that roughly half of the workers in India’s carpet industry work under conditions that qualify as forced labor under Indian law, and that roughly 20 percent are child laborers working under soul-crushing conditions from which they may not recover. “The brutal, corrosive, dangerous, and exploitative conditions suffered by countless child laborers in the handmade carpet sector cannot be overstated,” the report said. “True recovery and re-empowerment of children after enduring extreme levels of physical and psychological trauma is a rarity.” The report, “Tainted Carpets: Slavery and Child Labor in India’s Hand-Made Carpet...