HEADLINE – Child Labour: Tackling the “attitude” problem
By George Kayange
Opinion/CLNS/18 July 2003:
Somebody once observed, “some things are not easy to understand, especially
when you can’t understand why they cannot be understood.” Generally, I have
since found the observation of some interest because it draws so many
references to our daily life experiences today.
Probably one of such allusions is in relation to resolving obscure problems.
When we want to solve any complex problem, the most effective way is to
identify its source. In other words, when we understand the source, then we
can rest assured that we may find a lasting solution. But if we do not
understand the source, realistic solutions will always remain illusive,
finding ourselves tackling symptoms of a problem, and not the problem itself
– for the source is what the problem is.
One such complicated problem, in my view, is the child labour issue. It is
complicated because it has for a long time been pegged on what is usually
seen as an abstract definition – for instance, shouldn’t children really get
involved in some kind of work at home? When does work involving a child
become “child labour?” How do we define such work?
These are just some of the questions that have remained ambiguous
particularly in the developing regions – such as Africa, South America and
Asia – where the high levels of poverty, illiteracy and certain cultural
values have compounded the abstractness.
While child labour is defined as any work, which by its nature or employment
conditions is detrimental to a child’s physical, mental, moral, social or
emotional development, the “Worst Forms of Child Labour” refers to the types
of work for children described in Article 3 of the ILO Convention 182. The
Article among other things emphasises any work that is “likely” to harm a
child’s health, safety or morals, such as child slavery and bonded labour,
child prostitution and use for pornography, child soldiering and use in
crimes, and selective hazardous work.
The other very significant aspect that makes child labour even far more
complicated is its invisibility. According to ILO International Programme on the
Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) Statistics on Working Children
and Hazardous Child Labour Report as revised in April 1998, it is
difficult to collect true and reliable data on child labour.
“It is common knowledge that data on child labour are extremely scarce. The
reason for this is the absence of an appropriate survey methodology for
probing into the work of children, which for the most part, is a "hidden"
phenomenon,” reads the introductory part of the report.
Thus, experience has shown that it is usually difficult to come up with
meaningful interventions to deal with a problem whose data is not
sufficiently or reliably available.
However, the report estimates that there are some 250 million children, 5-14
years old, who are toiling in economic activity in developing countries. For
close to one-half of them (or 120 million), this work is carried out on a
full time basis, while for the remaining one-half it is combined with
schooling or other non-economic activities.
It further states that the overall estimates of 250 million working children
are exclusive of children who are engaged in regular non-economic
activities, including those who provide services of domestic nature on a
full-time basis in their own parents' or guardians' households. The number
of such children is relatively large (about 15%-20% of the total child
population of the same age-cohort).
If the revelation above is anything to pass, then anyone would be forgiven
if they were to suggest that the number of child labourers globally is
perhaps twice more than what we are officially given since a huge number of
children working in the household sectors is excluded from the given total
of 250 million (even though that is no excuse to providing unsubstantiated
estimates).
For example in India alone, which has an estimated total of 400 million
children, different child labour estimates have been quoted, like the
controversial 20 million put forward by the government
("Laws alone cannot tackle child
labour", Indian Express, 5
February 2000);
the 60 million estimates endorsed by
South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS)
supported by some NGOs in 2000: and the outrageous 100 million-plus estimated
by a number of other studies.
At this point, the picture this kind of situation creates for anti-child
labour organisations, movements and other stakeholders worldwide, is that it
proves enormously challenging in determining how much resources they need to
mobilise in order to successfully combat this "hidden" phenomenon.
But having identified poverty and lack of access to education opportunities
as some of the possible (and disputable) sources to the either increase or
stability in child labour figures, Global March Against Child Labour, with
support from other international organisations such as Education
International, Plan International and Oxfam is involved in the Global
Campaign for Education (GCE), a worldwide network of teachers' organisations
and NGOs. The campaign would ideally be instrumental in breaking the poverty
cycle and thus wiping out child labour altogether.
This is in realisation that education can be the most viable solution to any
type of social problem regardless of how much we are unable to measure the
magnitude of the problem.
“Education can be seen as a programme, a project, a social welfare measure,
a charity, or a public service. This is a centuries-old popular perception,
which is interpreted and reflected in various forms,” proclaimed Global
March Against Child Labour Chairperson, Kailash Satyarthi, at
the High-Level Group Meeting on Education for All in
Paris, France, in October
2001.
“But for the children I work with and live with, the children who have been
victims of slavery and prostitution, bought and sold like animals, many of
them even born in slavery as their parents were slaves, education is the key
for their liberation,” he added.
The world has also witnessed other campaigns such as the World Cup Campaign
2002 which demanded FIFA to make the World Cup and the sport of football
fair in its labour practice and free of child labour; the ILO Convention 182
Campaign whose objective is to accelerate actions by every nation to
eliminate the worst forms of child labour through monitoring, facilitating,
and lobbying for the ratification and full implementation; the Rugmark Label
initiative which has so far unshackled more than 2000 child labourers and
probably prevented thousands more of potential ones from the Asian carpet
making industry; and the Fair Trade Chocolate Campaign.
The Fair Trade Chocolate Campaign, for instance, seeks to stabilise the
international price fluctuations of chocolate (hence help stabilise the
economic shocks), and thereby creating employment, reducing poverty and
eventually deterring the use of cheap labour – in this case child labour –
in the cocoa industry. The industry includes the world’s six largest cocoa
producing countries of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, and
Cameroon where the crop is said to have a significant impact on their
respective economies.
However, there are also other schools of thought that believe that poverty
or lack of education are not necessarily the main source of the child labour
problem but, rather, they are just factors affecting it. They contend that
the attitude towards the child labour issue among the politicians, civil
society leaders, governments, policy planners, the general public, and key
funding international agencies could be the major source of the problem.
The International Development Journal of November 2001 quotes Satyarthi,
while addressing an ILO Symposium on the worst forms of child labour,
challenging:
“We often hear that child labour is inevitable due to poverty. Is that true?
I do not think that poverty is creating child labour, but we are creating an
environment where child labourers are stuck in the cycle of poverty. Poverty
is just an excuse for child labour.”
He argued that it
would take an extra US$10-15 billion per year to achieve universal primary
education by 2015,
based on the
World Bank estimates,
an amount equalling to just three days worth of the world's military spending,
or one-fifth of how much Europeans spend on ice cream each year, or same as
how much the American parents spend on Barbie dolls for their daughters
every year. And
US$5.6 billion of this amount will have to come from donors, including an
additional US$500 million from the UK.
“Can we [therefore] still say that the world is poor?” he wondered, adding,
“the world lacks political will. In the era of progressing globalisation,
the key to ending child labour is not globalisation of economy but
globalisation of people's networks [against such issues].”
Speaking to correspondents at the UN Headquarters in New York earlier this
month, Olara Otunnu, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative
for Children and Armed Conflict,
called on warring West African parties to cease activities affecting
children,
noting that the attitude among governments towards the welfare of children
was responsible for the death and recruitment of tens of thousands of
children into the on-going war (one of the Worst Forms of Child Labour) in
the region.
The
UN News Centre quoted the envoy warning the situation in Liberia could
easily undo the newfound peace in Sierra Leone and could affect Cote
d'Ivoire and Guinea as well. He believed, “the attitude and conduct of
neighbouring countries also had a significant impact on what was happening
in Ituri, DRC.”
In this regard, even in the absence of concrete available statistics to base
their resources, strategies and policies on, it is believed that if the
politicians, government officials, policy makers and civil society groups
had a strong spiritual will, a vision, or a genuine positive attitude
towards the issue, the war against child labour would still be won someday.
“When we started the movement (Global March), we hardly had any support and
resources. But we believe that when you have a vision, and spirituality the
power of our soul, everything progresses favourably. Professionalism should
not remain superficial; it should be driven by mission; and mission by the
assenting attitude,” Satyarthi, who is
a veteran child rights activist and recipient of more than six international
awards, testified
before the Child Labour News Service in a separate interview
recently.
END/…
19/07/03/…
WORD COUNT: 1717/…
Note:
George Kayange is Editor, Child Labour News Service On-line, New Delhi,
India. He could be contacted through this e-mail:
childlabournews@vsnl.info
URL:
http://www.childlabournews.info
