Brazil concerned over U.S. probe into forced labor - Yahoo! News

Brazil concerned over U.S. probe into forced labor - Yahoo! News: "Brazilian steel has been at the center of trade disputes with the United States for years. The United States ended safeguards on imports of certain steel products in December 2003 after a
World Trade Organization panel ruled against them.

The government statement said Brazilian steel companies signed an agreement in 2005 not to buy charcoal using forced labor. Over the past two years, 945 charcoal suppliers had been inspected and violators shut down, it said.

Most forced labor occurs along the agricultural frontier encroaching on the
Amazon rain forest. Poor migrants looking for jobs fall into debt peonage. Often, they are stripped of their documents and stopped from leaving by armed guards.

The International Labor Organization, a
United Nations agency, in a September report gave the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva credit for freeing thousands of poor Brazilians from forced labor. But it said Brazil needed harsher fines, longer prison sentences and judicial enforcement of penalties to combat the forced labor."