Child Labour guide
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| Children working in Pakistan © Manos Unidas |
Consumers in affluent countries are appalled at the thought that soccer balls for their kids or carpets in their homes might be the products of child labour. Strong international human rights conventions are in place to outlaw the practice. But deep-set cultural traditions and impoverished economies do not respond readily to moral lectures from afar. Resistant to all but the most holistic development strategies, child labour shows no sign of becoming history.
updated June 2008
Child Labour in Profile
There were 218 million children working illegally in the eyes of international treaties, as at the most recent formal assessment in 2004. Child labour is defined as all economic activity for children under 12 years, any work for those aged 12-14 of sufficient hours per week to undermine their health or education, and all "hazardous work" which could threaten the health of children under 18.
Almost all child labour occurs in developing countries, largely in agriculture but also including domestic service, factory production and backstreet workshops. Despite a fall of over 10% in the figure since the last assessment in 2000, over 25% of children in sub-Saharan Africa and 18% in Asia remain trapped within the cycle of poverty of which child labour is part.
126 million of these children are engaged in hazardous work, such as mining or handling chemicals, which is otherwise described as the "worst forms of child labour". A further class within this latter description is known as the "unconditional" worst forms of child labour which refers to prostitution, military enrolment, slavery such as bonded labour for brick kilns in Pakistan, or trafficking - as reported in the movement of children across Indian state borders to satisfy the boom in farming of genetically modified Bt cotton in Gujarat. No statistics are available for this “unconditional” category but the numbers are likely to be close to 10 million.
There is an additional category of "working children" not included in these statistics because the profile of age, nature of work and hours is not regarded as harmful. For example, light work of a few hours per week could be regarded as beneficial; "child labour" by contrast should be eliminated.
Child Labour Supply and Demand
Poverty is the seed-bed of child labour. Poor parents send their children to work for reasons of economic expediency, the consequent denial of education setting in motion a mutually reinforcing cycle liable to pass down the generations. It is nevertheless naive to attribute the problem solely to poverty; schools are often prohibitively expensive, of poor quality or inaccessible. Cultural pressures can undermine perception of the long term value of education, especially for girl children.
Economic setbacks will therefore regenerate the supply side of the child labour equation. The most pervasive example lies in the evidence that the global fall in child labour is being reversed in African countries most affected by HIV/AIDS. Households where adult members suffer prolonged periods of illness suffer dramatic cuts in income and forced sales of assets which are compensated by withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. An estimated 10% of all children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Africa are heads of households, compelled to provide for siblings.
This supply of child labour is accommodated by the demand of employers for a cheap and flexible workforce, including small-scale enterprises whose owners exploit their own family members. There is value to be exploited in the particular skills that children’s dexterity can offer; for example in weaving or in tasks involving crop seeds. Girl children are in demand for domestic service, the invisible nature of which adds to their vulnerability to abuse. Absence from official statistics is also the fate of those girls kept away from school in order to work for their own families in the home or on the land.
Children's Rights and Child Labour
In 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) within which Article 32 asserts the right that children should not be engaged in work deemed to be "hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health". Global political initiatives to respect these rights, together with the production of internationally recognised statistics, are coordinated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which has allied its mission with the cause. For example, the ILO aims to achieve by 2016 the objective of its 1999 Convention 182 for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, encouraging countries to have timebound plans in place by 2008.
Countries ratifying these conventions are committed to providing laws which enforce the provisions. Similar rights to children's education backed by laws serve to reinforce child labour legislation. Every full-time student is one less full-time child worker. Unfortunately, more than 10 countries have still not ratified the ILO convention, notably India where child labour remains stubbornly widespread. India government estimates concede the existence of over 12 million child labourers but civil society organisations put the figure at over 100 million. A major review published by the ILO in 2007 says of the 2016 global objective that “it is clear that this ambitious target will not be achieved by business as usual”, urging the worldwide movement to “re-energize” itself.
Although almost every country has laws prohibiting the employment of children below a certain age, legislation too often fails to close the door on child labour. For example, it may exempt certain sectors - often the very sectors where the highest numbers of working children are found - or its penalties for violating child labour laws are inadequate. And probably the most common obstacle to adequate legal protection for children is the fact that legislation is not enforced. For example, in 2006 India strengthened its laws by extending the definition of hazardous work to include domestic labour and catering establishments but there is virtually no evidence of enforcement.
Convention 182 is particularly weak on the special vulnerability of girl children. The worst form of exploitation of girls is being fought in part by extra-territorial laws that permit prosecution of citizens who sexually abuse children in another country. For example nationals from many European countries and the US can now be charged at home for engaging a child prostitute in Thailand.
Development Solutions to Child Labour
A rights-based approach which relies on laws and their enforcement is insufficient in isolation because child labour is a dynamic feature of complex social and economic conditions. For example, authorities in India occasionally engineer police raids on suspect factories creating headlines that children have been “rescued”. But such actions will be ineffective in the absence of institutional capacity to rehabilitate the children. Laws need to be complemented with development programmes which tackle the underlying causes of child labour and which recognise the practical difficulties in reintegration of children into formal education. Development agencies are also now more likely to acknowledge that children themselves should be consulted on the issues – for example many children are anxious to find ways of combining education with the economic expediency of helping their families.
The integration of child labour concerns into national development strategies, backed by effective legislation, is therefore the preferred route to a lasting solution. Reduction of chronic poverty through broad-based economic and social development, will create the platform for fundamental change in cultural attitudes towards children.
Millennium Development Goals and Child Labour
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) missed the opportunity to drive forward this strategy of mainstreaming child labour within development plans. Targets and indicators within the MDG framework make no reference to the subject of child labour which is therefore less likely to feature in national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers that shape governments' policies. Critics argue that the persistence of child labour could undermine progress towards Goals for education, HIVAIDS and gender equality. Compounding the faultlines, MDG indicators for school enrolment aim for a total of 5 years of education, far less than implied by child labour conventions.
Nevertheless, achievement of the MDG to provide universal primary education by 2015 is a key benchmark for child labour campaigners. Whilst overall prospects for this Goal are often assessed in relatively positive terms, there is correlation between those countries lagging behind and those in which child labour thrives, such as Pakistan and Nepal. The daunting call by global education campaigners for 18 million new teachers does not augur well for the elimination of child labour.
Some caution is needed in the presumption of a perfect inverse relationship between child labour and education. The availability of education alone may not be sufficient to break down the demand for child labour. Schools which levy unaffordable fees or which have insufficient teaching and classroom resources will fail to secure universal enrolment. And programmes should recognise the need for incentives for parents who will lose income from transferring their children into school.
In an implied admonition of the MDG approach, an international joint-agency group established in 2005, The Global Task Force in Child Labour and Education, explicitly aims to achieve education for all through the elimination of child labour. The approach is underpinned by a cost/benefit analysis carried out by the UN in 2003 which convincingly demonstrates the value of eliminating child labour through investment in education by reference to the long term economic benefit of a more skilled and healthy workforce.
Consumer Campaigns against Child Labour
Failure to deal with child labour is an emotive issue in rich countries where consumers are sensitive to the track record of globalisation in driving labour costs and standards to the bottom. Disclosure of the use of child labour in sweatshops represents a major public relations disaster for multinational companies, as experienced by the global fashion giant, Gap, in October 2007.
There are however doubts over the effectiveness of western-inspired boycotts which often result in sudden closure of production lines and devastating loss of household incomes, contributing little to address the root causes of child labour. Likewise, attempts to certify goods as “child labour free” have encountered difficulty in establishing the necessary credibility – although large-scale manufacturing industries may not directly rely on child labour, backward linkages created through subcontracting labour-intensive segments of the product may be less compliant and very difficult to audit. For example, the chocolate industry in West Africa has so far failed to meet deadlines in a longstanding attempt to certify its product. Critics say this is due to reluctance to make the necessary investment to relieve poverty. Almost 300,000 children are believed to work on the cocoa farms. Commitment to rehabilitation and education is a feature of the long established Rugmark label for carpets, one of very few successful certification schemes.
Governments too are becoming anxious to respond to public opinion by introducing conditions relating to child labour in free trade agreements. Both the US and EU seek to include clauses imposing labour standards or requirements to ratify child rights treaties. The European Commission has been asked to investigate the feasibility of trade embargoes against countries where the worst forms of child labour remain unchecked. Many campaigners are uncomfortable with these linkages, preferring that child labour be addressed by explicit domestic laws rather than the small print of commercial agreements.
Child Soldiers
The grotesque abuse of children for military purposes survives seemingly beyond the powers of development strategies or human rights law. Children are vulnerable to this most extreme form of labour typically in countries suffering longstanding civil conflict, in regions of extreme poverty and a complete breakdown of central authority. The proliferation of lightweight but deadly small arms of sophisticated modern design - a child of 10 can be trained to strip down a Kalashnikov - enables a cheap, unquestioning and expendable army to be conscripted from children. Warlords abduct or purchase child soldiers from their families with impunity.
The UN says that, despite the release of tens of thousands of child soldiers in the period since 2004, there remain 24 countries in which recruitment takes place involving a total of 57 armed groups. Residents of camps for refugees and internally displaced persons such as those in Darfur and Chad are particularly vulnerable. The result is an estimated total of 250,000 children in military service, including girls whose interests tend to be neglected in action plans. There may be as many as 70,000 child soldiers engaged by government and rebel armies in Burma, the country named as the worst offender. Other countries regularly criticised by human rights groups include Sri Lanka, Uganda, Nepal, and Philippines. These countries and others are now under pressure to sign the “Optional Protocol” to the CRC which would compel new laws and reintegration of child solders into normal life. In 2007 58 countries signed up to the Paris Commitments and Principles, a set of practical steps to protect children from involvement in armed conflict.
A crucial step forward in international measures to end the use of child soldiers was registered in 2007 with the conviction of 3 warlords by the war crimes court for Sierra Leone. The International Criminal Court already considers the recruitment of children under age 15 for military purposes to be a war crime and in 2006 issued charges against a militia leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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There were 218 million children working illegally in the eyes of international treaties, as at the most recent formal assessment in 2004. Child labour is defined as all economic activity for children under 12 years, any work for those aged 12-14 of sufficient hours per week to undermine their health or education, and all "hazardous work" which could threaten the health of children under 18.
Almost all child labour occurs in developing countries, largely in agriculture but also including domestic service, factory production and backstreet workshops. Despite a fall of over 10% in the figure since the last assessment in 2000, over 25% of children in sub-Saharan Africa and 18% in Asia remain trapped within the cycle of poverty of which child labour is part.
126 million of these children are engaged in hazardous work, such as mining or handling chemicals, which is otherwise described as the "worst forms of child labour". A further class within this latter description is known as the "unconditional" worst forms of child labour which refers to prostitution, military enrolment, slavery such as bonded labour for brick kilns in Pakistan, or trafficking - as reported in the movement of children across Indian state borders to satisfy the boom in farming of genetically modified Bt cotton in Gujarat. No statistics are available for this “unconditional” category but the numbers are likely to be close to 10 million.
There is an additional category of "working children" not included in these statistics because the profile of age, nature of work and hours is not regarded as harmful. For example, light work of a few hours per week could be regarded as beneficial; "child labour" by contrast should be eliminated.
Child Labour Supply and Demand
Poverty is the seed-bed of child labour. Poor parents send their children to work for reasons of economic expediency, the consequent denial of education setting in motion a mutually reinforcing cycle liable to pass down the generations. It is nevertheless naive to attribute the problem solely to poverty; schools are often prohibitively expensive, of poor quality or inaccessible. Cultural pressures can undermine perception of the long term value of education, especially for girl children.
Economic setbacks will therefore regenerate the supply side of the child labour equation. The most pervasive example lies in the evidence that the global fall in child labour is being reversed in African countries most affected by HIV/AIDS. Households where adult members suffer prolonged periods of illness suffer dramatic cuts in income and forced sales of assets which are compensated by withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. An estimated 10% of all children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Africa are heads of households, compelled to provide for siblings.
This supply of child labour is accommodated by the demand of employers for a cheap and flexible workforce, including small-scale enterprises whose owners exploit their own family members. There is value to be exploited in the particular skills that children’s dexterity can offer; for example in weaving or in tasks involving crop seeds. Girl children are in demand for domestic service, the invisible nature of which adds to their vulnerability to abuse. Absence from official statistics is also the fate of those girls kept away from school in order to work for their own families in the home or on the land.
Children's Rights and Child Labour
In 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) within which Article 32 asserts the right that children should not be engaged in work deemed to be "hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health". Global political initiatives to respect these rights, together with the production of internationally recognised statistics, are coordinated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which has allied its mission with the cause. For example, the ILO aims to achieve by 2016 the objective of its 1999 Convention 182 for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, encouraging countries to have timebound plans in place by 2008.
Countries ratifying these conventions are committed to providing laws which enforce the provisions. Similar rights to children's education backed by laws serve to reinforce child labour legislation. Every full-time student is one less full-time child worker. Unfortunately, more than 10 countries have still not ratified the ILO convention, notably India where child labour remains stubbornly widespread. India government estimates concede the existence of over 12 million child labourers but civil society organisations put the figure at over 100 million. A major review published by the ILO in 2007 says of the 2016 global objective that “it is clear that this ambitious target will not be achieved by business as usual”, urging the worldwide movement to “re-energize” itself.
Although almost every country has laws prohibiting the employment of children below a certain age, legislation too often fails to close the door on child labour. For example, it may exempt certain sectors - often the very sectors where the highest numbers of working children are found - or its penalties for violating child labour laws are inadequate. And probably the most common obstacle to adequate legal protection for children is the fact that legislation is not enforced. For example, in 2006 India strengthened its laws by extending the definition of hazardous work to include domestic labour and catering establishments but there is virtually no evidence of enforcement.
Convention 182 is particularly weak on the special vulnerability of girl children. The worst form of exploitation of girls is being fought in part by extra-territorial laws that permit prosecution of citizens who sexually abuse children in another country. For example nationals from many European countries and the US can now be charged at home for engaging a child prostitute in Thailand.
Development Solutions to Child Labour
A rights-based approach which relies on laws and their enforcement is insufficient in isolation because child labour is a dynamic feature of complex social and economic conditions. For example, authorities in India occasionally engineer police raids on suspect factories creating headlines that children have been “rescued”. But such actions will be ineffective in the absence of institutional capacity to rehabilitate the children. Laws need to be complemented with development programmes which tackle the underlying causes of child labour and which recognise the practical difficulties in reintegration of children into formal education. Development agencies are also now more likely to acknowledge that children themselves should be consulted on the issues – for example many children are anxious to find ways of combining education with the economic expediency of helping their families.
The integration of child labour concerns into national development strategies, backed by effective legislation, is therefore the preferred route to a lasting solution. Reduction of chronic poverty through broad-based economic and social development, will create the platform for fundamental change in cultural attitudes towards children.
Millennium Development Goals and Child Labour
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) missed the opportunity to drive forward this strategy of mainstreaming child labour within development plans. Targets and indicators within the MDG framework make no reference to the subject of child labour which is therefore less likely to feature in national Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers that shape governments' policies. Critics argue that the persistence of child labour could undermine progress towards Goals for education, HIVAIDS and gender equality. Compounding the faultlines, MDG indicators for school enrolment aim for a total of 5 years of education, far less than implied by child labour conventions.
Nevertheless, achievement of the MDG to provide universal primary education by 2015 is a key benchmark for child labour campaigners. Whilst overall prospects for this Goal are often assessed in relatively positive terms, there is correlation between those countries lagging behind and those in which child labour thrives, such as Pakistan and Nepal. The daunting call by global education campaigners for 18 million new teachers does not augur well for the elimination of child labour.
Some caution is needed in the presumption of a perfect inverse relationship between child labour and education. The availability of education alone may not be sufficient to break down the demand for child labour. Schools which levy unaffordable fees or which have insufficient teaching and classroom resources will fail to secure universal enrolment. And programmes should recognise the need for incentives for parents who will lose income from transferring their children into school.
In an implied admonition of the MDG approach, an international joint-agency group established in 2005, The Global Task Force in Child Labour and Education, explicitly aims to achieve education for all through the elimination of child labour. The approach is underpinned by a cost/benefit analysis carried out by the UN in 2003 which convincingly demonstrates the value of eliminating child labour through investment in education by reference to the long term economic benefit of a more skilled and healthy workforce.
Consumer Campaigns against Child Labour
Failure to deal with child labour is an emotive issue in rich countries where consumers are sensitive to the track record of globalisation in driving labour costs and standards to the bottom. Disclosure of the use of child labour in sweatshops represents a major public relations disaster for multinational companies, as experienced by the global fashion giant, Gap, in October 2007.
|
| Brick kiln labour in Pakistan © Kamila Hyat / IRIN News |
Governments too are becoming anxious to respond to public opinion by introducing conditions relating to child labour in free trade agreements. Both the US and EU seek to include clauses imposing labour standards or requirements to ratify child rights treaties. The European Commission has been asked to investigate the feasibility of trade embargoes against countries where the worst forms of child labour remain unchecked. Many campaigners are uncomfortable with these linkages, preferring that child labour be addressed by explicit domestic laws rather than the small print of commercial agreements.
Child Soldiers
|
| Children at war in DRC © Amnesty International |
The UN says that, despite the release of tens of thousands of child soldiers in the period since 2004, there remain 24 countries in which recruitment takes place involving a total of 57 armed groups. Residents of camps for refugees and internally displaced persons such as those in Darfur and Chad are particularly vulnerable. The result is an estimated total of 250,000 children in military service, including girls whose interests tend to be neglected in action plans. There may be as many as 70,000 child soldiers engaged by government and rebel armies in Burma, the country named as the worst offender. Other countries regularly criticised by human rights groups include Sri Lanka, Uganda, Nepal, and Philippines. These countries and others are now under pressure to sign the “Optional Protocol” to the CRC which would compel new laws and reintegration of child solders into normal life. In 2007 58 countries signed up to the Paris Commitments and Principles, a set of practical steps to protect children from involvement in armed conflict.
A crucial step forward in international measures to end the use of child soldiers was registered in 2007 with the conviction of 3 warlords by the war crimes court for Sierra Leone. The International Criminal Court already considers the recruitment of children under age 15 for military purposes to be a war crime and in 2006 issued charges against a militia leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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