Guatemala and IPEC launch project on fireworks industry, August 13 2001, ILO,
Introduction
"During 1999, the Government of Guatemala's Ministry of Labour, IPEC and six national organizations, including non-governmental and community-based organizations and employers' and workers' organizations, implemented a project aimed at preventing approximately 2,500 children from entering work in the fireworks industry while withdrawing some 2,200 child workers in the same sector in two municipalities in the vicinity of the capital, Guatemala City."

12 June 2001,  Mr. Nieto Menéndez, Minister for Labour and Social Welfare, El Salvador
89th Session, 5 - 21 June 2001
International Labour Conference, Special High-level Session on the Launch of the Time Bound Programme on the Worst Forms of Child Labour in the Republic of El Salvador, the Kingdom of Nepal and the United Republic of Tanzania
"The President of the Republic of El Salvador, Mr. Francisco Flores, regrets very much that he is unable to be present here today at the invitation of the Director-General of the International Labour Organisation, but the disasters resulting from the earthquakes of 13 January and 13 February meant that he could not leave the country."


Slave trade is alive and well in India's fireworks industry, November 5 2000,
This article appeared in the Sunday Herald .  We have contacted Mr Paul Baskar, and he confirms that child slavery in the Indian Manufacture of fireworks still goes on, and that some of these fireworks find there way into our High Street Shops.

"Thousands of British families will today enjoy Guy Fawkes' Night unaware that the fireworks they are seeing could have been made by child slaves in India. Every year dozens of Indian children are killed and horribly injured in accidents when unstable chemical compounds explode, often because exhausted children get the mixtures wrong. "

September 7 1999, New Convention and Campaign to Eliminate Worst Forms of Child Labour
BANGKOK (ILO News) - Children ensnared by slavery, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, dangerous work and forcible recruitment for armed conflict are the targets of a global ILO campaign that begins in Asia this week for ratification of its new Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182).


Children in the production of Matches and fireworks, May 1999,
ILO - Targeting the Intolerable

A study undertaken in India found very young children under ten years of age working in the match industry. Their main tasks included making boxes, sticking labels, counting matches and dipping sticks into a hot solution of gum and chemicals.