Word: banning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...objective was for ?justice to be seen to be done? -- but apparently not to be seen too widely or recorded: Rwanda staged public executions today of 22 Hutu militants convicted of taking part in the 1994 genocide of the country's Tutsi minority. But police enforced a strict ban on cameras and recording devices. In the capital, Kigali, 30,000 people flocked to the soccer stadium to see three men and one woman shot one by one as they were tied to stakes with black hoods over their heads. Some of the 18 other executions in provincial towns were attended...
Ahsan asserts that a "blanket ban" on the use of child labor by the companies that make Harvard apparel will cause us to falsely clear our consciences because it will do harm rather than good. The ban would deprive poor kids of much-needed sources of income, forcing them to either "rummage through rubbish heaps" or seek a job with "some other probably more exploitative local manufacturer (over whom Western public opinion holds little sway)." Almost all garment factories, globally, manufacture clothes primarily for "Western" firms--the kind that are Harvard's licensees--whether those factories are owned directly...
...imposing a blanket ban on child labor, we're effectively giving up any leverage that we might have to influence these kids in positive ways. If children are working anyway, it is preferable that they be hired by companies answerable to people in the West instead of the myriad domestic slave factories that currently thrive. With multinational companies, some method of responsibility could be worked out by which working conditions for children could be strictly monitored, their wages raised, and, most important of all, arrangements made for providing them with some form of education...
...argument can be made that we could ban child labor by simultaneously implementing a living wage requirement for adults. Such a living wage would then allow parents to provide for their families without having the children go out and work. While attractive, this proposal ignores the fact that there would still be no incentive for children to get an education under a living wage scenario, even assuming that such a wage is sufficient to allow two adults to enroll their 4.5 kids in schools. The poorest classes in developing countries might not fully realize the long-run value...
...course, advocating child labor is a radical step in the Western world. Perhaps it would be easier just to ban our companies from indulging in it, and sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that the sweatshirt that we're wearing wasn't ever touched by underage hands--no matter that the underage hands which never touched this sweatshirt are probably at that very moment rummaging through a garbage heap somewhere since their employer threw them out due to our forceful campaigning. But then, our conscience is clear...