Chloe Cross

Dr. Auchter
Global Humanitarianism
7 April 2016
Stolen Childhoods
As I am becoming more aware of the issues with humanitarian aid and humanitarian
documentaries through this course, I am finding it easier to see ways that the films are lacking.
Even though this sounds negative, I feel it is important for all documentary film makers to give
you the full picture of what is happening in their area of expertise. I also am able to see the good
parts of the film and see places where it has done particularly well at giving a different
perspective or getting across the extent of the problem. I used all of these tools to see the good
and the bad in the documentary Stolen Childhoods.
I am going to start off with the things that I believe Stolen Childhoods excelled in. The
first thing that I was impressed with was that it focused a lot on the child labor in fields and
industries which is often overshadowed by the sex industry. We discussed in class that we often
dont think of this form of human trafficking when the topic comes up and tend to believe that
human trafficking is something that only women deal with. This documentary does a good job of
showing that human trafficking is something that happened to both boys and girls.
The documentary even goes beyond showing that it happens to both genders; it goes on
throughout its course of an hour and a half to show that it happens all over the globe- even in the
United States. While going around the globe, there are commentaries from respected individuals
in this field of all nationalities. I believe this helps it not to perpetuate stereotypes. As it is
jumping around the globe, it also shows good that is happening in the country. For example, it
tells of how Kenya is overcoming obstacles and getting children back in school and how locals in

a community are working together to get their children an education or even taking the law into
their own hands to bust industries using child labor. It gives the people on the ground a voice
rather than speaking for them.
Stolen Childhoods also does a good job of demonstrating the dangers of child labor.
Especially in the case of Nayarit. It showed the need for more regulations and awareness of the
poisons that not only adults, but also children are using in the field. It demonstrated the problem
of how the poisons are labeled with a skull- a holy symbol in their culture- resulting in the
misconception that the poisons are holy water. Similar to this, the documentary shows that even
though the countries have laws against this form of labor, they do not enforce these laws. On the
fishing platforms in Indonesia, even when there were raids, the laborers were the ones arrested
never the owners, much like the child sex trafficking we discussed taking place in Cambodia.
The documentary points out that governments need to step up and prosecute perpetrators of this
crime to the fullest extent of the law rather than turning a blind eye.
I also thought that the film showed how poverty and child labor are a never-ending cycle.
I originally thought during class that poverty causes child labor, and in order to end it, we needed
to alleviate poverty. Now I see that it is a much bigger issue. Poverty leads to child labor which
then leads to another generation of uneducated adults that are doomed to a life of poverty. It is a
cycle that is going to continue until some drastic measures are taken. Stolen Childhoods showed
me that child labor is a deep-rooted problem and gave me a new perspective of just how deeply it
is engrained in some countries.
On the other hand, there were also some things that the documentary could have done
better. One example being that it makes it seem as though human trafficking is something that
only happens to kids. U.S. Senator Tim Harkin even said that child labor was the last form of

slavery. As we have seen in class, this is definitely not true. Human trafficking is something that
happens to boys, girls, women, and men, and it is slavery no matter the age of the victim. I also
feel that the documentary could have done a better job of portraying the devastating effects of the
child sex industry. I believe that this is a huge problem and should have been allotted more time
in the documentary and been visited in more countries. Cambodia, as we saw in class, has a
thriving sex industry, and I feel that it should have been visited in the documentary to really get
across how many childrens lives are affected by it and how many people are funding it.
Moreover, I found it interesting that Tim Harkin proposed one of the reasons that
Americans should care about child labor and poverty in other countries is to prevent them from
becoming terrorists. This is just another example of American leaders wanting to engage in
humanitarian aid because of the ways it could help America rather than engaging in humanitarian
work because it is the right thing to do. It seemed that all of the other countries that were
represented by a powerful voice in this documentary were truly concerned about the situation on
the ground and were looking for solutions to the problem while the U.S. representative is worried
about the children becoming terrorists, not dying from the improperly labeled poisons sent by
U.S. tobacco companies.
Stolen Childhoods made it clear that part of the responsibility to end child labor was on
the consumers shoulders. Two marks were introduced to help guide the consumer on where they
should spend their money to avoid supporting child labor. Although this is a great first step, I feel
there is much more information about industries that use child labor that needs to be shown in a
documentary such as this. For example, we just read the article on the chocolate industry and the
amount of child labor used in it. How is the consumer supposed to know what candy bar to buy?
I feel that the documentary could have a larger impact if it exposed all of the industries that are

currently using child labor and introduced more marks such as the Rugmark and the Fairtrade
mark.
In conclusion, Stolen Childhoods is a documentary that I feel did very well portraying
some of the problems in the child trafficking industry but also could have done better in some
other areas. I think what is most important, however, is that it is a documentary that will get the
general public to start thinking about the problem and to start thinking about how the goods they
are buying were made. This film, overall, is a good introduction into the child trafficking
situation in many different countries around the globe and gives the viewer a sense of
responsibility to do something about it.