Children are at work as we speak in dark and dusty, hot factories across Asia, Pakistan, India and Latin American performing all kinds of tasks for no pay. This kind of slave labor, while officialy illegal in most parts of the world, is commonplace. It is difficult to know whether a product is child labor free. Carpet making factories are among the biggest utilizers of child labor. Weaving hand woven carpets day after day usually renders a woman's hands useless and ridden with arthritis within about ten years according to the World Health Organization. A child that begins weaving at the age of seven may have the hands of a seventy year old by the time he or she is even an adult.

The Rugmark Label was started in India through a cooperative agreement between the following organizations: the Carpet Manufacturers Association Without Child Labor, the Indo-German Export Promotion Council, UNICEF India and our partners in the international anti-slavery movement and the South Asian Coalition on Children in Servitude.

Look for rugs that feature the Rugmark tag and you can be reasonably sure that they were not produced with child labor. Another label to look for is the "Fair Trade" label that gives some assurance against the use of child labor.