Child Labour guide
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Zambian child labour in the stone quarry © Manoocher Deghati |
Consumers in affluent countries are appalled to think that their clothes or household goods might be the products of child labour. Strong international treaties 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 comprehensive development strategies, child labour shows little sign of becoming history.
Labour rights is a very broad issue; however, it can be boiled down to the protection and respect of human life in the workplace and the right to work itself. Some components of labour rights are the rights to job safety, collective bargaining, and equal pay for equal work.
Labour rights vary by country, however the International Labour Organization (ILO) provides universal standards and guidelines. The ILO, a part of the UN, aims to provide guidance and standards for labour practices around the world.
One labour issue that the ILO is making progress on is child labour. According to UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_childlabour.html) an estimated 246 million children are working, and nearly three quarters of those children are working in hazardous places like mines, or working with dangerous tools like machinery and pesticides. A large number of child labourers are girls and are susceptible to sexual exploitation. While most everyone agrees that child labour cannot be condoned, the issue is complex. Impoverished families or parents who are unable to work depend on their children’s income source for survival. The cycle of poverty and its gendered implications must be adequately addressed so families can find other means to survive.
When it comes to labour rights for the general population, in many places around the world people have to work in sweatshops that have questionable labour policies in order to make a living. Defenders of sweatshops argue that without the factories, the workers wouldn’t have a job. Labour activists note that a major problem of sweatshops is the awful treatment of workers and the lack of opportunity. Workers deserve respect and safety from harm.
There are other labour rights issues that need global attention like bonded labour – people forced to work to pay off debts of ancestors. And human trafficking…Other issues include, but aren’t limited to, maternity rights, living wages, working time, gender equality, decent work, and of course, unionization. Freedom of association is essential because it allows people to discuss matters: whether they are political or social- and act on them as well. This issue is so important that it is "at the core of the ILO’s values."
Poverty is the main cause of child labour. Poor parents send their children to work, not out of choice, but for reasons of economic expediency. The hunting grounds for child traffickers are invariably areas of the most extreme poverty where families have exhausted all other strategies for survival.
Poverty is also a symptom of child labour. Denial of education blocks the escape route from poverty for the next generation of the household.
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| Charikar High School, Afghanistan © Beth Bolitho |
Other factors may provoke this cycle; for example, schools in poor countries are often inaccessible or prohibitively expensive, with inadequate teaching and classroom resources.
Many agricultural economies involve seasonal migration for whole families, to the detriment of schooling and inevitable employment of children. Cultural pressures too can undermine perception of the long term value of education, especially for girl children.
Economic setbacks arising from recession, climate disaster, conflict or family bereavement will therefore regenerate the supply side of the child labour equation. This has been one consequence of HIV and AIDS in Africa - household resources have been depleted by prolonged absence from work and by medical expenses.
This supply of child labour is matched by the demand of unscrupulous employers for a cheap and flexible workforce. This attribute appeals especially to small-scale enterprises, including those whose owners exploit their own family members.
There is perceived value 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.
Almost 250 million children (almost 1 in 6) are involved in child labour. About 111 million children under 15 are in hazardous work. Most child labour can be found in rural areas, particularly in agriculture, but children work in almost every sector of the economy, even in sectors considered as extremely hazardous like mining, construction and fishing. What makes child labour hazardous is the presence of hazards and risks at the workplace (such as the presence of chemicals, noise, ergonomic risks like lifting heavy loads etc) and working conditions (long hours, nightwork, harassment).
It depends completely on the circumstances, tasks and activities carried out if this work is hazardous for the child or not. We can assume that what is hazardous for adults will also be hazardous for children. However, children are more vulnerable since they are in physical and mental development. Children are often “achievers”, they want to perform well and are inexperienced and untrained in dealing with hazards. Tools and machines are not made for them, and thus pose more hazards. They are also not organized and powerless. All those factors contribute to the fact that the same task carried out by children can be more hazardous for children than for adults. The effects of hazardous child labour vary from skin disease to asthma to (in the worst case) fatal injuries. Not only physical, but also mental and behavioural problems can be the result of hazardous child labour.
Pakistan, 7thousand cases of violence against minors in 2008by Qaiser Felix
Today is the World Day against Child Labour. Despite government proclamations conditions for minors in the country remain difficult. The wound of child soldiers is added to a low level of education, violence and a lack of health care.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) – In 2008 in Pakistan 6,780 cases of violence committed on minors took place: sexual abuse, targeted murders, abductions, forced labour and suicides are only some example of this, to which the exploitation of “child soldiers” in the war between Islamic fundamentalism and the army, must be added. The 2008 report on the “Condition of Children in Pakistan” –released by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) – underlines the governments failure to apply national and international law in protection of the rights of minors.
Today marks World Day against Child Labour. The Pakistani rights group report lists corporal punishment, the wound of street children, child brides and acid attacks, that mark the young lives forever. It urges a clamping down on child pornography and demands that the minimum age to marry is raised from 16 to 18.
The document reports that almost 30% of children under the age of five are malnourished. There are approximately 70 physicians for every 0.1 million people and a mere 1,000 government-run hospitals to cater to the entire population (circa 173 million). It claims that 30-40 percent of children of school going age across the country, are not attending schools; that 4,million babies are born in Pakistan every year but 40,000 die before reaching five.
The report cites a study by the Initiator Human Development Foundation in 2008, saying children from the lower strata of society studying at the madrasse religious schools also fall victim to sexual violence. The study claims seminary teachers sexually abused 21 % of sample students. The report says about 40% schools in the public sector are without boundary walls, 33 % without drinking water, over half without electricity or lavatories and 7 % without buildings. The tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan, the theatre of violence between the army and the fundamentalists, have the least infrastructure for education; the few remaining resources are targeted by the Taleban, who have destroyed hundreds of schools above all female institutes.
The SPARC report says the government, despite its claims, has not favour polices to protect minors. In 1988 funding for education was equal to 2.4% of the Gross National Product (GDP). In the two year period of 2007-8 it grew little, arriving at a miserable 2.9% of the GDP. Pakistan is still far from reaching the Millenium Development Goals (MDG): among which is the guarantee of education for all by 2015.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (Hrcp) also warns of abuse and mistreatment of minors. The 2008 document on human rights reports that that at least 114 children were killed for various reasons, including for honour killings, and at least 221 girls and several hundred boys were reported to have been raped, gang-raped, subjected to sodomy or stripped in public. In the nations cities an estimated 700,000 children live and work on the streets; while in rural areas across Pakistan children are being recruited by armed militias and trained for terrorist attacks.
