Today, a large ad caught my eye in the morning paper: A Store with a Story is Open — CLF Store in Amstelveen. It turns out to be the first ‘Child Labour Free Zone’ initiative in the Netherlands.

The idea is as simple as it is strong: make sure that your company, store, school, nieghbourhood — however you define your ‘zone’- does not sell or use products that have come about through exploitation of child labour.

Of course child labour is something that noone openly — or perhaps even consciously — would like to defend. Or promote. But the statistics speak for themselves: there are a staggering 218 million child laborers in the world, right now, in 2009: meaning that as many as 1 in 7 children aged 5 — 17 worldwide work instead of going to school! Let’s not be naive: we probably all of us have more clothing, shoes and other things in our house that  some of these kids made. Stuff we have smilingly picked up for a euro at a mega-sale, thinking that we have made a bargain.

Turns out this is part of a major international project sponsored by the ILO, EU, Alliance 2015 and  international NGOs such as Hives, Oxfam, Amnesty and Unicef, as well as NGOs in Inida. This initiative is already around for years, to push for action, to make sure that companies and consumers act in accordance with all these international conventions that world leaders have signed in the last decades, proclaiming the intention to ban child labour. And allow kids to spend their youth where they belon: in school.

Six EU Member states are listed on the site as having active projects. He! Six? This is where I start getting confused. Why not 27?? Why not some non-EU countries also? I’m for instance completely astonished to see that Sweden is not on there. Or the UK. Why?? Can somebody enlighten me, please?

In the meantime, I want to make a statement and a commitment here and now: the MummyMug will only ever be manufactured by adults, who get a fair pay for their work. And we’ll do our utmost to control anyone who delivers input in our manufacturing and distribution chain that they also have a clean record.

If this is enough to officially qualify as a CLF company, I still have to find out. But I do hope that it means that also we may proudly carry this statement logo, and hopefully also inspire other companies up there to also rise to the challenge.