HUMAN RIPE FOR ABUSE RIGHTS Palestinian Child Labor in Israeli Agricultural Settlements WATCH in the West Bank Ripe for Abuse Palestinian Child Labor in Israeli Agricultural Settlements in the West Bank Copyright © 2015 Human Rights Watch All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-6231-32392 Cover design by Rafael Jimenez Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people worldwide. We scrupulously investigate abuses, expose the facts widely, and pressure those with power to respect rights and secure justice. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organization that works as part of a vibrant movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all. 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For more information, please visit our website: http://www.hrw.org Ripe for Abuse Palestinian Child Labor in Israeli Agricultural Settlements in the West Bank Summary ......................................................................................................................... 1 International Law Violations .....................................................................................................4 Expanding Settlement Agriculture, Restrictive Anti-Palestinian Policies .................................... 6 Palestinian Child Workers in Settlement Agriculture .................................................................. 7 Flouting Labor Laws ................................................................................................................. 9 Recommendations ......................................................................................................... 12 To Israel ................................................................................................................................. 12 To the European Union and EU Member States ........................................................................ 12 To the United States ............................................................................................................... 12 To Palestine .............................................................................................................................. 13 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 14 I. Background: Israel’s Control of Land in the Jordan Valley ............................................ 16 Area C .................................................................................................................................... 18 Land-Use Restrictions ............................................................................................................. 19 Restrictions on Palestinian Agriculture .................................................................................... 21 Settlement Agriculture in the Jordan Valley ............................................................................ 26 Subsidies ............................................................................................................................... 27 II. Palestinian Children Working in Israeli Settlements ................................................... 30 Palestinian Middlemen ........................................................................................................... 32 Exploitative and Dangerous Work Conditions .......................................................................... 34 Ages and Hours of Work ................................................................................................... 34 Low Wages ....................................................................................................................... 37 Health and Safety ................................................................................................................... 41 Exposure to Chemicals ..................................................................................................... 42 High Temperatures ........................................................................................................... 47 Handling Heavy Loads ...................................................................................................... 47 Work Injuries and Lack of Compensation ......................................................................... 49 Lack of Access to Medical Care and Lack of Compensation ............................................... 51 Impact on Education ............................................................................................................... 52 III. Israel’s Failure to Protect Palestinian Children from Child Labor ................................ 60 Israeli Labor Laws .................................................................................................................. 62 Palestinian Labor Law Protections for Children ........................................................................ 67 IV. International Law Obligations of Businesses and Third Countries ............................. 70 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................... 74 Summary Hundreds of Palestinian children work on Israeli settlement farms in the occupied West Bank, the majority located in the Jordan Valley. This report documents rights abuses against Palestinian children as young as 11 years old, who earn around US $19 for a full day working in the settlement agricultural industry. Many drop out of school and work in conditions that can be hazardous due to pesticides, dangerous equipment, and extreme heat. Children working on Israeli settlements pick, clean, and pack asparagus, tomatoes, eggplants, sweet peppers, onions, and dates, among other crops. Children whom Human Rights Watch interviewed said they begin work as early as 5:30 or 6 a.m. and usually work around 8 hours a day, six or seven days a week. During peak harvest periods, some children reported working up to 12 hours a day, over 60 hours a week. Some children described pressure from supervisors to keep working, and not to take breaks. Although international law, as well as Israeli and Palestinian law, sets 15 as the minimum age of employment, many children told Human Rights Watch that they began working at age 13 or 14. Even younger children work part-time, and one boy interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that he worked together with a boy who was only 10 years old. The work that children perform can be both grueling and hazardous. Some children who work on settlement farms described vomiting, dizziness, and skin rashes after spraying pesticides with little protection, and experienced body pain or numbness from carrying heavy pesticide containers on their back. Many suffered cuts from using sharp blades to cut onions, sweet peppers, and other crops. Heavy machinery also causes injuries. One child said he saw another child who was pinned under a tractor that rolled over. Another boy said he caught his finger in a date-sorting machine. Children risk falls from climbing ladders to prune and pick dates. Two children had been stung by scorpions while working in settlers’ fields. Temperatures in the fields often exceed 40 degrees Celsius in summer (over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) and can be as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in greenhouses. Some children described nausea and other symptoms indicating they were 1 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | APRIL 2015 susceptible to heat stroke from working in such extreme temperatures. One boy told Human Rights Watch that he had repeatedly fainted while working in a hot greenhouse. None of the children interviewed received medical insurance or social insurance benefits, and the majority of those who needed medical treatment due to work injuries or illness said they had to pay their own medical bills and transportation costs to Palestinian hospitals. Three Palestinian children who got sick or were injured while working and had to go home or to the hospital said they were not even paid for the hours they had worked that day, much less for the time they had to take off work. To research this report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 38 children and 12 adults in Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley who said they were employed to work on settlement farms in the area, as well as teachers and principals in those communities, Israeli and Palestinian labor lawyers, development-agency staff and labor rights advocates. Children are a minority of Palestinians employed on settlement farms, but most Palestinian children who work in settlements do so in the agricultural sector. All of the children and adults Human Rights Watch interviewed said they took the work due to a lack of alternative jobs and because of the dire economic conditions faced by their families – conditions for which Israel’s policies throughout the occupied West Bank including the Jordan Valley, which severely restrict Palestinians’ access to land, water, agricultural inputs like fertilizers, and their ability to transport goods, are largely responsible. One 18- year-old said that he quit school in Grade 10 because, as he explained, “so what if you get an education, you’ll wind up working for the settlements.” The vast majority of the children