Fond salute to a friend who fights against child slavery 
The Universe
(February 19, 2006)
The drums were pounding as thousands of us marched
through the streets of Geneva. I was with Cecilia Flores-Oebabda, the
leader of the Philippine delegation who was campaigning to bring about a
better world for millions of children enslaved as workers. It 1998 and the end of the Great Global March against
child labour that had begun in the Philippines and continued through
dozens of nations around the globe led by Kailash Satyarthi, the
world-famous campaigner for the abolition of child labour. In the Philippines, the movement was led by Cecilia,
the founder and leader of Visayan Forum, a charity that is famous for
rescuing children from slave like conditions in all sectors of
Philippine society, and winner of the Anti-Slavery Award 2005. We came together in Geneva to focus the glare of
world media and public opinion on the delegates gathered at the
international Labour Organisation (ILO) held in the UN building. The ILO
passed comprehensive legislation on the worst forms of child labour soon
after. The Philippines has ratified that legislation but
much needs to be done to implement it and the work of Visayan Forum
under the guidance of Cecilia has saved thousands of children from
abusive working conditions and got them back to their families and to
school. Domestic child labour, the main focus of Cecilia’s
work, is for thousands of children the hardest and most damaging life
imaginable. But all that is well understood by Cecilia. At 14,
she was an active Church organiser helping exploited workers. When she
was 17, she joined the freedom fighters resisting the cruel regime of
president Marcos. There she learned how to mobilise people to work
together and help each other survive poverty and military oppression.
She was captured and imprisoned for four years. in captivity, she
married and give birth to her children . After the overthrown of Marcos
in 1986, she was released and in 1991 set up the Visayan Forum named
after the region where she was born. There are at lest 10 million children in domestic
work around the world and 1.2 million in he Philippines. But there are
many more than that in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh who are enslaved
in bonded labour. That means a lifetime of work without pay. The
parents receive a onetime payment to save them from starvation and must
work for free with their children to pay it back. They never can and so
are enslaved. I saw with my own eyes, small children carrying
baskets of bricks on their tiny heads on an Indian building site years
ago and I never forgot it. The enslavement of children in dens of prostitution
is perhaps the worst form of child labour which must be eliminated. The
children rescued from brothels and put up in our Preda charity home
suffer trauma and nightmares for years. That evil too has to be
eliminated. This struggle for freedom from child labour has to
continue and with people like Cecilia Flores-Oebabda winning the
Anti-Slavery award one more round has been won for the children that she
so courageously serves.[End]
