In August 2017, the Indian Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) reported that granite mines in south India were exploiting children and using slave labour. [1] In response to that, the government-controlled National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) along with UNICEF India has begun a media campaign to dispute the Dutch CSO’s findings.

This campaign relies heavily on distortions and outright lies. The NCPCR and UNICEF claim to have carried out their own research that clearly refutes the claims of the Dutch CSO. No such report is available on their websites, and requests for a copy have been denied. This has not stopped the mainstream Indian media from reporting that the NCPCR and UNICEF have “organised a joint survey to verify the report and has come out saying that the ICN’s report is false and they have found no evidence of any child labour at all.” [2]

The Dutch CSO actually reported that only a few children, mainly teenagers, are working in granite mines but some were working in processing waste stone. There was however a much wider problem of bonded adult labour (modern slavery). [3] The NCPCR and UNICEF have however used quotes from earlier ICN reports to create the impression that foreign CSOs are making false and exagerated claims about the current situation.

The NCPR has a few false and exagerated claims of its own. It claims for example that the research for ICN was done in the monsoon period when there are hardly any workers. In fact the research took that into account, and visited each quarry at least twice during differnent seasons. [4]

At no time has the NCPR or UNICEF contacted the researchers contracted by ICN to discuss their methodology and findings.

Sources close to the NCPCR say that India’s Ministry of External Affairs has instructed the NCPCR to deny the findings of the report, and put pressure on Unicef to do the same.

The India Committee of the Netherlands had released an earlier report in 2015 claiming that one in ten workers in the mines of Raichur was a child. [5] This was widely reported in the Indian media. [6]

In response to ICN’s work, multiple European retailers have stopped sourcing granite from the mines named and shamed in the Dutch CSO’s reports. Such campaigns have significant economic potential. Stone is a major export with India controlling 49% of the world’s raw stone export in 2015.

As the Wire.IN Labour Bulletin comments, “with two different reports, each saying opposite things, the situation is looking extremely peculiar.” [7]

In India, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPR) has lost credibility in recent years. It is dominated by political appointees, and those who really want to protect children do not last long in the organisation. [8] The United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF) has also increasingly alligned with the right wing Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Modi. Country representative Yasmin Ali Haque regularly dismisses CSO research as ’unprofessional’ and, perhaps more revealingly, ’unhelpful’. Many child-focused CSOs in India suspect that UNICEF is desperate to maintain its role as key advisor to the government’s ambitious flagship programmes for children. The Indian government has also become a net donor to UNICEF and other UN agencies, and their contribution is expected to continue rising. This iwill gradually give the Indian government the same possibilities as Western governments to manipulate the UN agenda.

If UNICEF is now in the fake news business, that is bad news indeed. Particularly for the working children of India.