Tobacco giant faces landmark legal case over child labour

Human rights lawyers are set to bring a landmark case against British American Tobacco on behalf of hundreds of child labourers and their parents in Malawi.

Leigh Day’s lawyers are seeking compensation for more than 350 people in the high court in London, arguing that the British tobacco giant is guilty of “unjust enrichment”. The legal team says it anticipates the number of child labourer claimants could rise as high as 15,000.

The Guardian says the case is “potentially one of the biggest that human rights lawyers have ever brought” and could have wider implications, “transforming the lives of children in poor countries who are forced to work to survive not only in tobacco but also in other industries such as the garment trade”.

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Although BAT insists it has told farmers not to use their children as unpaid labour, the lawsuit says the families cannot afford to work their fields otherwise, because they receive so little money for their crop.

Many of the families are from the poverty-stricken region of Phalombe, in the south of Malawi. The Guardian says they are recruited to tobacco farms in the north of the country “with the promise of food, accommodation and a lump sum in cash for their crop”.

There, it explains, “accommodation is a straw hut they must build themselves; the food is a monthly sack of maize, which is insufficient to feed the family and which is stopped before their tenancy ends”.

The lump sum they are paid at the end of the season is often reduced by more than half after deductions for tools and loans that the families have to take out to pay for essentials.

BAT insists it “strongly agrees that children must never be exploited, exposed to danger or denied an education”.

The issue of child labour has had closer attention this year. In August, it was revealed that schoolchildren have been drafted in to make Amazon’s Alexa devices in China as part of a controversial and often illegal attempt to meet production targets.

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