"I've been going to the fields since I was little. My parents grow tobacco. I usually help them and sometimes my neighbours." The soft-spoken voice belongs to Ayu, a 13-year-old girl from a village near Garut, in the Indonesian province of West Java. Ayu has four siblings, two older and two younger. They all work on tobacco plantations. Every year, at harvest time, Ayu falls ill: "I always vomit and I'm exhausted when I cut the leaves and carry them."

This is just one of the 227 testimonies gathered in Indonesia by Human Rights Watch (HRW) for the report The harvest is in my blood, on the health hazards faced by child tobacco workers. Thousands of children and adolescents, aged 8 to 17, are employed in the supply chain that serves Indonesian companies and multinationals. Of 132 children interviewed, half — including Ayu — suffer from nausea, vomiting, headaches or dizziness. In other words, they display the symptoms of acute nicotine poisoning absorbed through the skin.

Poisoned children

"Tobacco companies are making profits on the backs of Indonesian children and at the expense of their health," says Margaret Wurth, co-author of the HRW report. Minors are also exposed to other dangers: the use of toxic chemicals and sharp tools, heavy loads, and extreme heat. Even though the long-term effects of this type of child labour have not yet been studied, the US organisation's document states that — according to available research — exposure to nicotine before the age of 18 can impair brain development. Pesticides and fertilisers, moreover, can cause respiratory and reproductive problems, cancer, depression and neurological deficits.

"When we were planting, I didn't wear a mask and the smell was so strong that I started vomiting," a fifteen-year-old from East Java recounts to HRW. Indonesia is the world's fifth largest tobacco producer, after China, Brazil, India and the United States. Production is concentrated mainly in the provinces of Central Java, East Java and West Nusa Tenggara. Among the largest manufacturing companies, three are Indonesian and two others are owned — respectively — by British American Tobacco and Philip Morris International. Many others, however, both local and multinational, buy Indonesian tobacco. Under international law, minors under 18 must not carry out hazardous work, yet the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that in Indonesia more than one and a half million children, aged between 10 and 17, work in agriculture.

Child pickers in the United States too

In what is known as the Global North, it is the United States that employs children in tobacco fields. These are predominantly children averaging between 11 and 12 years old, the children of Hispanic immigrants. They live near the plantations and help their families during the summer season. It was again HRW that exposed this form of child labour in the US in a previous 2014 report and in an update the following year.

The hypocrisy of the institutions is brazen: "Although US law prohibits the sale of cigarettes to children, they can still legally work on tobacco farms," reads the HRW website. Some companies have set the minimum working age on tobacco farms at 16, but that is not enough. The exploitation of minors up to the age of 18 should be prohibited by federal law. Dario, 16, told the humanitarian organisation: "Tobacco is the hardest crop we've ever worked. It wears you out, drains your energy, makes you sick, but the next day you still have to go back to work."

Government indifference

Jakarta, too, bans the sale of tobacco products to minors, yet it records 4 million new young smokers between the ages of 10 and 14 every year. In the Asian archipelago, another 239,000 children reportedly start smoking before the age of 10, as documented in the photo-reportage Marlboro Boys by the award-winning Michelle Siu, a Canadian of Chinese immigrant descent. Indonesian children — like their American counterparts — are hidden victims. While local companies and multinationals decline almost all responsibility, governments stand by and watch. According to HRW, in addition to adhering to and enforcing international law and introducing new national and regional legislation, wide-reaching education campaigns are needed to make parents aware of the risks their children face. Indonesian farmers are not aware of the consequences of the combination of nicotine and chemicals on children's health, and they receive no safety training. As in other poor areas, they themselves ask their children to leave school to help support the family.

But in the United States too, Hispanic immigrants driven by necessity work without any protections. In North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia — the major tobacco-producing states — children speak of inadequate pay, many hours of work without breaks, constant exposure to the sun and sweltering heat, and makeshift protective equipment such as plastic bags.