Fighting child labor
According to the International Labor Organization, there are more than 215 million working children around the world. These children are often engaged as domestic workers, street vendors, beggars, or washers, in both the semi-formal and informal sectors of the economy. In cities across the developing world, children's labor serves as an important source of income not only for the children themselves, but also for their families. However, children who work have limited time to go to school, a constraint that ends up depriving them of their childhoods and their future. On the occasion of World Day Against Child Labor, read on to learn about initiatives in Dhaka, Mumbai, Lagos, São Paulo, and Mexico City that are making progress in the fight against child labor.
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Child labor and social policy in Bangladesh
Saima Sultana Jaba, Dhaka Community Manager
Shubbo, an eleven-year-old boy from Dhaka, welds car parts for a living. Too young and skinny to carry parts, Shubbo carries out one of the most risky and demanding tasks while his boss sips tea. He works from morning until late at night, and earns less than a dollar a day.
According to the International Labor Organization, there are 3.2 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 working in Bangladesh. Child labor has already received considerable attention in Bangladesh because of working children's lack of access to education, leisure, and play, and increased risk of trafficking, abuse, violence, and exploitation.
To eliminate the incidence of child labor, the government of Bangladesh has accorded a prominent place to children's rights in its national development agenda, and has undertaken a number of initiatives and policy measures. The Compulsory Primary Education Act of 1990 made the enrollment and attendance of primary education free and mandatory for all children. The government also targets vulnerable children, especially urban, working children, and attempts to cater to their educational needs free of cost. Although primary education is free, indirect costs such as transport, uniforms, and school supplies are not, which is why many children must work to be able to afford the additional expenses of school.
In 2006, the government enacted the Labor Act, which includes a chapter on child labor. This new law prohibits the employment of children under 14 years of age, and prohibits hazardous forms of child labor for persons under the age of 18. Although the current policy attempts to promote human rights, often it fails to establish social justice and to emphasize education, especially to urban slum communities, and it does not provide a strong enforcement mechanism for the child labor provisions. Limited access to government primary schools in the poorest urban slum areas is a large part of this issue. UNICEF Bangladesh recently released a report that urban slum areas have the worst performance regarding children's well-being and access to basic services compared to rural and non-slum urban areas. In poor urban areas, school attendance is 20 percent lower than in rural areas.
The remarkable "Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban Children Project" has helped 200,000 working children aged between 8-14 years old with access to education. This project, funded by UNICEF, SISA, DFID, and the government of Bangladesh, provides two hours of non-formal basic education a day to child laborers. Because it would have been impossible to abolish child labor completely from the start, the project adopted a "learn and earn" approach, where parents and employers were persuaded to let the child go to school for just two hours a day, and continue their work responsibilities the rest of the day. Not only does this project provide access to education and recreation for working children, it also provokes greater awareness of the rights of children in Dhaka.
The government's laws and the "Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban Children Project" are a good start to fighting child labor, but much remains to be done. The government should provide stipends or subsidies so that children can afford the indirect cost of schooling, and should also enforce laws, monitor actions, and create awareness about the adverse effect of child labor through media campaigns.
Photo credit: Child Labor of Bangladesh
Freeing Mumbai's child laborers
Child laborers are everywhere. According to Pratham, an educational NGO based in Mumbai, nearly 35,000 children are working in the city. Laws prohibit children under the age of 14 from working, but they can be found not only in small workshops in Dharavi but on the streets peddling wares and in middle-class homes as domestic help. "Employment of children is not confined to just a few sectors but has invaded most areas of work," says a report by Pratham that outlines the organization's approach to tackling child labor. And for this NGO, education is the answer.
Lagos' street child workers
The Lagos state government enforces the Labour Act and the Child Rights Acts in order to limit the sacrifices underage children make to help support their impecunious families, such as skipping school, health hazards, and exposure to sexual abuse and harassment. These laws prohibit any form of labour during school hours, set a minimum age for work outside home, and ascribe certain basic rights to children, such as education and balanced development. Any child found working on the street hawking or in shops during schools hours is picked up, and their parents are punished for disregarding the law. While this does not address all the aspects of child labour, it tackles the most prominent one, which is access to education.
PETI: O Programa de Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil
Segundo um informe de Reporter Brasil de Maio de 2013, 3,4 milhões de crianças e adolescentes de 10 a 17 anos estava trabalhando até 2010 no país. Desde 2000, a redução foi de 13 por cento. Os resultados podem ser atribuídos a vários esforços, mais o Programa de Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil (PETI) merece um destaque.
Trabajo infantil doméstico en el DF
Una de las modalidades en la Ciudad de México es el trabajo urbano-marginal que consiste de actividades productivas y de servicios que se realizan por la población infantil en la calle o en espacios públicos, por las cuales reciben un ingreso. Este tipo de trabajo es la forma más visible del trabajo infantil, por lo que ha atraído la mayor atención de actores y políticas gubernamentales. En contraste, otra de las aristas en el Distrito Federal, es el trabajo infantil y adolescente doméstico en hogares de terceros, que son actividades domésticas compensadas en hogares ajenos particulares. Este trabajo impide el acceso, rendimiento y permanencia en la escuela y se lleva a cabo en condiciones que afectan el desarrollo psicológico, físico, moral o social de las niñas, niños y adolescentes. Dado el contexto, el 99 por ciento de las trabajadoras domésticas son niñas y adolescentes en situación de vulnerabilidad que las hace particularmente presas de abuso sexual. Por lo tanto esta actividad es invisible tanto en las estadísticas nacionales y estatales como en los programas sociales y también para la opinión pública en general. Además, este tipo de trabajo es el menos regulado y el peor remunerado. Es por esto que es de mayor importancia avanzar el estudio y la visibilización de trabajos en hogares de terceros.
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Comments
Movements against child labour need to include parents
I feel an important element in the fight against child labour is parental responsibility. I feel parent's need to be held accountable in the fight against child labour, the more parents are enlightened about the issue, what constitutes as child labour, constitutions and policy violations regarding this and basically educated about the issues and impact of child labour for the development of their children the more likely parents are going to start looking beyond the economic gains and allow children more time for education and keep them from activities that violate child rights acts and labour laws where enforced.
Also tackling child labour from its sources as is being done in Mumbai is an inspired way of not only controlling and eradicating incident of child labour in the cities, but it ensures that the work done in the city is not undermined by new influx of children to earn a living in the city as labourers while at the same time impacting the rural areas. Its just genius really. For effective impact though, its obvious we should not only rely on civil society and NGOs but there needs to be constant partnership and cooperation between them and the government as seen by all the cities covered.
A closer look at the gender dimension in child labor
Wura, I couldn’t agree more with your comments. I also think that parents play a crucial role in stopping child labor and in ensuring education and an adequate development of their children.
Another relevant aspect of child labor is its gender dimension; not that boys aren’t affected, but in many cases girls end up performing domestic activities and other types of work that aren’t so visible, making them very difficult to tackle. In performing less visible work, girls might also end up as victims of violence and abuse, contributing to even more complex problems. In the future, more programs and policies might consider this gender aspect, as it is drastically affecting girls and young women worldwide.
Gender dimension of child labor
Victoria, what you comment about the gender dimension of this problem is exactly what happens in Mexico City with domestic labor. In this sense, the organization THAIS is pushing to reform the laws in order that the normative frame may clasify and recognize this type of labor and make it visible. With a new legislation, programs and policies could consider this type of work prohibited in order to regulate it.
Wura, I agree that Mumbai´s strategy is an inspiring model to replicate in other cities, definetely it tends to tackle child labor from its main cause which is having an income for their families. In this sense helping the families and parents go have extra activities and facilitating access to education is a great combination for a strategy in order to encourage parents to allow children to study. In Mexico a similar strategy is implemented by the Federal Government through the programa Oportunidades, a cash transfer program conditionated through different activities related to education, health and nutrition; one of the conditions for the family to get the money is the record of attendance of children at school.
Sex trafficking - what we haven't said
Thank you all for emphasizing the gender dimension to child labor, though we haven't yet brought up the most disturbing of all--the trafficking of girls to red light districts. In South Asia, this is a major issue, and children are often forced into these positions at a young age. There has been a growing preference for "untouched" girls, causing traffickers to bring in younger and younger victims. I'm reading Siddharth Kara's devastating accounts of these young women and girls all over the world in his book "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery." http://www.amazon.com/dp/0231139608
Often, parents in rural villages, particularly in Nepal, will send their daughters with middlemen who have promised work as domestic laborers. The girls are then covertly stowed across borders to awake in brothels all over India. As we've discussed above, the true cause in this all is abject poverty, where parents are so desperate they risk sending their child off for whatever promised amounts per month. The girls end up in cities like Mumbai as bonded slaves, essentially, with little hope of ever returning home. These are tragic stories, and it seems like working in source areas is really one of the only solutions.
Child Labor and Social Policy in Bangladesh
I agree with Catalina Gomez. Moreover, I think not only parental education plays a large role in determining child schooling and employment but also inadequate legal enforcement in Bangladesh. The new law prohibits all forms of forced labor and hazardous work, however a vast majority of children (93 per cent) work in the informal sector such as garment and ternary industries in Bangladesh. It seems that the new policy does not provide a strong enforcement mechanism for the child labor provisions.
Often children are prompted to work by their parents. Due to the lack of consciousness, parents may find no use in sending their children to school when the male children of the household are expected to help the father in the field and the female children the mother with the household work. Moreover, it is seen that most often neither government nor parents raise a concern about the immediate adverse health consequences of many forms of child labor. For instance, household chores can pose risks to children’s health, and can affect children’s ability to attend and benefit from schooling in the same ways as economic activity. Children working with dangerous materials such as asbestos or molten glass, in unhealthy environments, and long hours in sweatshop conditions obviously face serious jeopardy to their health. Exposure to child labor has both immediate health and safety implications as well as longer term consequences for adult health. Above all, lack of enforcement of labor restrictions and parent disinterest often perpetuate child labor.
Therefore, government should enforce laws, monitor actions regularly, and create awareness through media and campaign about the adverse effect of child labor so that parents send their children to school instead of working.
Achieving the right balance
Comparing the different programs cited in the articles above it is interesting to note how all the countries have implemented laws to prevent child labour - especially under 14 years of age, but how conceptually the approaches tend to differ. The Dhaka and Sao Paolo programs are the ones that appear to recognise a fundamentally important fact: that although child labour is unpleasant and that the absence of education will almost certainly curtail a child's opportunities in later life, sometimes children have no choice but to work because they and their families must eat. As a result in the Dhaka case, the "learn to earn" initiative attempts to adopt a realistic approach that still provides time for children to be able to earn something. In Sao Paolo instead, the PETI program goes straight to the core of the issue (money) and offers a stipend to children (provided they keep their attendance rates high). If a program like PETI could be replicated in other countries this would provide an ideal model to successfully eradicate child labour once and for all. The problem is that as long as urban poverty remains prevalent and governments in developing countries remain cash-strapped, it will be hard to prevent children from searching for some form of income and so it is unrealistic to talk about completely eradicating it until urban poverty is no longer as prevalent an issue as it is today.
The gender issue of young domestic girls that was mentioned above, is especially prevalent in Kenya. An article on the Standard Newspaper published today (http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000085879&story_title=eu-keny...) underlines how in Kenya 82% of domestic workers in urban areas are young girls coming from out of the city. This is a very common practice: rural families send one of their girls to their extended family in the city (nationwide fertility rates stand at around 4 children born/woman but these numbers are greater in rural areas), so they have one less mouth to feed and in the hope the girls will get an education and send some money back. An issue like this is extremely difficult to tackle through legal means because, as Maria Fernanda mentions in the Mexico City case, these girls have low visibility and there is no common agreement - or I might add social stigma, related to the practice. In some cases the families in question may really are providing education, clothing and shelter to these girls so it is very hard to differentiate from the outside (especially for a social worker or someone who is not familiar with the household context). As a result I would argue that it is only through community involvement (i.e. the neighbour/community takes issue with the fact that a girl is being exploited and not sent to school and intervene to prevent it) that it will be possible to really tackle the issue and that as such, an important aspect of the fight against underage domestic exploitation of young girls should be community awareness campaigns.
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