According to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. And yet around the world, many people are denied basic human rights, or find their rights under threat. Pulitzer Center stories tagged with “Human Rights” feature reporting that covers the fight for equality under the law, civil rights and the basic dignity afforded every person. Use the Pulitzer Center Lesson Builder to find and create lesson plans on human rights.
U.S. companies say they’re not to be blamed for importing from Chinese factories with sub-par work conditions; it's up to China to figure out how to protect their own workers.
For years, Chinese workers making nickel-cadmium batteries for U.S. distributors such as Eveready and Energizer complain of sickness, not realizing that cadmium can lead to kidney failure and death.
Exposure to chemicals in paint and varnish has claimed lives of Chinese workers who produce furniture for major U.S. companies like Restoration Hardware, Ethan Allen Furniture and Haverty Furniture.
Throughout China, workers making goods for export use outdated—sometimes jerry-rigged—machines that lack safety features standard in the U.S., causing workers to lose legs, arms, hands or fingers.
Workers producing Char-Broil stoves in China were given only thin gauze masks that do nothing to prevent metal dust from entering their lungs. Many end up contracting lung diseases like silicosis.
Most American businesses that import from China are small and medium-sized. Many have never visited the factories, and are unaware of any dangerous working conditions surrounding their products.
Over a 12-month period, Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani visited more than 25 factories in China to document the risks Chinese workers go through to supply American consumers with cheap goods.
While consumers in the U.S. are enjoying cheap products made in China, factory workers in the world's most populous country are exposed to hazardous working conditions. Loretta Tofani reports.
Pulitzer Center grantee Loretta Tofani offers a glimpse into the life of Chinese factory workers dying from occupational diseases that have been maimed as a result of making products for America.
As part of its special coverage on the earthquake tragedy in Haiti, ABC's 20/20 aired footage from Carmen Russell and Dane Liu's documentary, "Restaveks: Child Slaves of Haiti" 1/15/2010 at 10pm.
When the trumpet sounded,
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah divided the world
among Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations:
The United Fruit Company Inc.
reserved for itself the juiciest piece,
the central coast of my own land,
the sweet waist of America.
—Pablo Neruda, "The United Fruit Co."
Ethiopia wages war with suspected Islamic extremists in Somalia and within its volatile east. And it has secretly cracked down on other groups it deems terrorist, including one in western Ethiopia. The situation is raising serious human rights concerns, and tough questions for its ally, the United States.
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