"On May 25, I got home around 9 pm. I found several men inside my home and on the rooftop. They blindfolded me and took me away in a police van while ruthlessly torturing me, telling me how they\'ll \'teach\' me what it means to be a trade union leader,\" says Niaz Khan, General Secretary Carpet Workers Trade Union, Lahore. Khan\'s crime, according to him, was facilitating the workers of a furniture manufacturer establish a trade union last month. After being kidnapped from home, Khan says, he was taken to the CIA centre in Model Town, Lahore.

GENEVA (ILO News) – The global financial crisis could push an increasing number of children, particularly girls, into child labour, according to a new report issued by the International Labour Office (ILO) for the World Day Against Child Labour on June 12.

The ILO report, entitled Give Girls a Chance: Tackling child labour, a key to the future (Note 1), notes that while recent global estimates indicate the number of children involved in child labour has been falling, the financial crisis threatens to erode this progress.

A human rights group is reporting that children’s rights are again being abused in Uzbekistan, where thousands of youths are being forced to work in cotton fields.

In Karakalpakstan, an autonomous northwestern region, schoolchildren and students have been sighted at work in cotton fields, one rights group, Veritas claims.

The financial crisis threatens to push more children, especially girls, into child labor, the UN International Labor Organization (ILO) said in a recent report.

Despite falling numbers of children involved in child labor worldwide, the current economic turmoil could roll back those gains, according to the new study, entitled "Girls a Chance: Tackling child labor, a key to the future," to be issued on the World Day Against Child Labor.