REBELS-THE-LEADERS-OF-THE-FUTURE

child labour

2008-10-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

Although there are may Acts which prohibit the employment of children below 14 years and 15 years in certain specified employments or processes, but there is no procedure laid down in any law for deciding in which employments or processes the employment of children should be banned. There is no law to regulate the working conditions of children in most of the employments where they are not prohibited to work and consequently are working under exploitative conditions.Therefore, the Child Labour (Prohibition And Regulation) Act, 1986 intends to ban the employment of children i.e. those who have-not completed there fourteenth year of age in specified occupations and processes, regulate the conditions of work of children in employments where they are not prohibited from working, lay down enhanced penalties for employment of children in violation of the provisions of this Act and other Acts which forbid the employment of children etc. In our country, Sivaski was once taken as the worst offender in the matter of violating prohibition of employing child labour. As the situation there had become intolerable a public- spirited lawyer, Shri M.C.Mehta thought it necessary to invoke this court power under Article 32 as after all the fundamental right of the children guaranteed by Article 24 was being grossly violated and hence he filed a petition in the court. The court then noted that the manufacturing process of matches and fireworks (for the manufacturing of which also Sivaski is a traditional centre.) is hazardous giving rise to accidents including fatal cases. Subsequently suo moto cognizance was taken in the present case itself when news about an unfortunate accident in one of the Sivaski cracker factories was published.
At the direction of the Tamil Nadu government filed a detailed counter stating, inter alia that number of persons who died was 39. The court gave certain directions regarding the payment of compensation and thought that an advocates committee should visit the area and make a comprehensive report relating to the various aspects of the matter, as mentioned in the order passed by the court on 14-8-1991.Keeping in view the provisions contained in article 39(f) and 45 of the constitution, it gave certain directions as to how the quality of life of children employed in the factories could be improved. The court also felt the need of constituting a committee to oversee the directions given. The committee has submitted its report on 11-11-1991, and the Supreme Court appreciated the commendable work of the committee and gave certain directions to be followed by the states to preserve the interest of children in India.
These directions include that a survey would be made by the states on the type of child labour, which would be completed within 6 months from the date of passing of the order. The court further stated that work could be taken up regarding those employments which have been mentioned in Article 24, which may be regarded as core sector, to determine which hazardous aspect of the employment would be taken as criterion. The hazardous employment may rank first in priority to be followed by comparatively less hazardous and so on. The welfare scheme envisaged by the Supreme Court enshrined in the judgment is really the need of the time. It can be concluded by saying that The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act is an Act, which has been passed to adopt all the international principles as regards child labour, which have been approved by the United Nations. Further, the elucidation and analysis given by the Supreme Court as well as other courts have made the Act an important legislation, which has helped in restricting the evil of child labour to its minimal.

Chinese manufacturer of Olympic goods admits using child labour

2008-09-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

A Chinese company which has a licence to manufacture goods bearing the Beijing Olympic Games logo, Lekit Stationery, has admitted that one of its subcontractors was using child labour, BBC radio reported.

Michael Lee, director of Lekit, said one of his subcontractors, Leter Stationery, had employed children aged 12 and 13 years during the school vacations, and that they were paid 2.5 usd per day, the BBC said.

But according to Lee, his factory had not been aware of this, and had since then ceased its cooperation with Leter Stationery, which produces packaging and labels for Lekit's products.

However, the BBC reported that Leter Stationery's factory is located directly opposite Lekit's factory in Dongguan, southern China.

Lee said his company was no longer using child labour, and that children had only been hired for 'light work', such as packaging.

The organisers of the Beijing Olympics had promised on Monday to shed light on the accusations by the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) that four factories in southern China had committed abuses including using child labour and paying half the legal minimum wage.

ABOUT CHILD LABOUR

2008-08-31T02:53:00.000-07:00

What is child labour?

Some types of work make useful, positive contributions to a child's development. Work can help children learn about responsibility and develop particular skills that will benefit them and the rest of society. Often, work is a vital source of income that helps to sustain children and their families.

However, across the world, millions of children do extremely hazardous work in harmful conditions, putting their health, education, personal and social development, and even their lives at risk. These are some of the circumstances they face:

Full-time work at a very early age
Dangerous workplaces
Excessive working hours
Subjection to psychological, verbal, physical and sexual abuse
Obliged to work by circumstances or individuals
Limited or no pay
Work and life on the streets in bad conditions
Inability to escape from the poverty cycle -- no access to education

How big is the problem?

The International Labour Organization estimates there are
218 million working children aged between five and 17 (2006)

126 million are estimated to work in the worst forms of child labour -- one in every 12 of the world's five to 17 years olds (2006)

74 million children under 15 are in hazardous work and should be "immediately withdrawn from this work" (2006)

8.4 million children are in slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labour, forced recruitment for armed conflict, prostitution, pornography and other illicit activities (2002)

Girls are particularly in demand for domestic work

Around 70 per cent of child workers carry out unpaid work for their families

Child trafficking:

Trafficking involves transporting people away from the communities in which they live, by the threat or use of violence, deception, or coercion so they can be exploited as forced or enslaved workers for sex or labour. When children are trafficked, no violence, deception or coercion needs to be involved, it is merely the act of transporting them into exploitative work which constitutes trafficking.

Increasingly, children are also bought and sold within and across national borders. They are trafficked for sexual exploitation, for begging, and for work on construction sites, plantations and into domestic work. The vulnerability of these children is even greater when they arrive in another country. Often they do not have contact with their families and are at the mercy of their employers.

The Cocoa Industry in West Africa: A history of exploitation Anti-Slavery International's 2004 report available as a PDF download
More information on trafficking

Why do children work?

Most children work because their families are poor and their labour is necessary for their survival. Discrimination on grounds including gender, race or religion also plays its part in why some children work.

Children are often employed and exploited because, compared to adults, they are more vulnerable, cheaper to hire and are less likely to demand higher wages or better working conditions. Some employers falsely argue that children are particularly suited to certain types of work because of their small size and "nimble fingers".

For many children, school is not an option. Education can be expensive and some parents feel that what their children will learn is irrelevant to the realities of their everyday lives and futures. In many cases, school is also physically inaccessible or lessons are not taught in the child's mother tongue, or both.

As well as being a result of poverty, child labour also perpetuates poverty. Many working children do not have the opportunity to go to school and often grow up to be unskilled adults trapped in poorly paid jobs, and in turn will look to their own children to supplement the family's income.

Where do children work?

On the land
In households -- as domestic workers
In factories -- making products such as matches, fireworks and glassware
On the street -- as beggars
Outdoor industry: brick kilns, mines, construction
In bars, restaurants and tourist establishments
In sexual exploitation
As soldiers

The majority of working children are in agriculture -- an estimated 70 per cent. Child domestic work in the houses of others is thought to be the single largest employer of girls worldwide.

Export industries account for only an estimated five per cent of child labour. To see what you can do to help see our Fair Trade, Slave Trade leaflet.

Case Studies from around the world:

Dieusibon -- Haiti
"When I first moved to Port-au-Prince I cleaned dishes, the house, everything. My 'aunt' would beat me whenever I didn't get water. I worked so hard that my body ached and I couldn't move, but she would beat me if I didn't do more work. Her three children went to school...One day my aunt sent me to fetch water. I refused, so she took a pot of boiling water and threw it at me and burned my face and slammed the hot cooking pot on my hand."

Dieusibon*, 14, ran away and found help from a shelter in Haiti.

Mohen and Nihal -- Pakistan
In Pakistan, brothers Mohen and Nihal* began working on carpet looms when they were four and five years old in order to help their family meet their basic needs.

"The health hazards caused to us are that our fingers are trimmed and we have to work all day long. Often for a couple of days in a week, we have to work for the whole day and night.

Mohen often gets miserable and fatigued with the long hours or work and he tries to escape. Then the master weaver keeps a strict watch on him and never lets him move for three or four days.”

Ahmed -- United Arab Emirates
When Ahmed* was five years old he was trafficked from Bangladesh to the United Arab Emirates to be a camel jockey. He was forced to train and race camels in Dubai for three years.

"I was scared .... If I made a mistake I was beaten with a stick. When I said I wanted to go home I was told I never would. I didn't enjoy camel racing, I was really afraid. I fell off many times. When I won prizes several times, such as money and a car, the camel owner took everything. I never got anything, no money, nothing; my family also got nothing."

Ahmed was only returned home after a Bangladesh official identified him during a visit to Dubai in November 2002. Our local partner Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association provided him with the specialist support and help he needed to resume his life with his family.

*Names changed

Child labour in Yemen
A 2 minute film. At least 15,000 children, many under the age of 12, work in dangerous or abusive conditions in Yemen, an IRIN report.

What do children want -- child domestic workers speak out

From May to October 2004, Anti-Slavery International and its local partners undertook consultations with more than 450 current and former child domestic workers in nine countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Consultations took place in Benin, Costa Rica, India, Nepal, Peru, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Togo reflecting the reality of child domestic labour in many countries. The majority of those who participated were female -- but more than 100 boys also took part.

Cutting across cultural and language divides, the child domestic workers who were consulted had some clear messages about the best kinds of assistance to protect them from the daily abuse and exploitation that many of them endure. Their common appeal for those who seek to help them are:

To provide opportunities for education and training which allow them to move on from domestic work;
To assist them in seeking redress from abusive and/or exploitative employers;
Not to alienate employers, but to make them part of the solution to their problems;
To provide more services which cater specifically to the needs of child domestic workers (since their needs are often quite different from those of other child workers);
To develop longer-term interventions, i.e. not to develop services for them and then pull-out after just one or two years;
To develop interventions which take into consideration some of the issues which most affect child domestic workers, for example, early pregnancy and the effect of HIV/AIDS;
More awareness raising about their situation, and to ensure that this awareness raising goes hand-in-hand with concrete services for child domestic workers;
Assistance in accessing government and state infrastructure that can help them; for example, in obtaining birth certificates, enrolling in school, in accessing health care, in locating families and returning home.

Perhaps the strongest message to emerge from the consultations was the importance of those providing assistance to talk to the children themselves about what they need. The work of Anti-Slavery International's partners in this area has shown that the most effective interventions are those which systematically involve child domestic workers themselves in the planning and implementation of their projects and programmes.

Child soldiers

There are about 300,000 child soldiers involved in over 30 areas of conflict worldwide, some even younger than 10 years old. Child soldiers fight on the front line, and also work in support roles; girls are often obliged to be sex slaves or "soldiers' wives". Children involved in conflict are severely affected by their experiences and can suffer from long-term trauma. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict entered into force on 12 February 2002, which encourages governments to raise the age of voluntary recruitment into the armed forces and explicitly states that no person under the age of 18 should be sent into battle.

The United Kingdom, which has the lowest minimum recruitment age in Europe at 16, ratified the Optional Protocol on 24 June 2003. The Government, however, added a declaration to reserve the right to send under-18s into hostilities "if there is a genuine military need" or "due to the nature or urgency of the situation". This clause is in direct conflict with the spirit of the Protocol, which urges that states "take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years old do not take a direct part in hostilities".

Action against child labour

International law:

International law forms the basis of our work against the worst forms of child labour. The Conventions of the International Labour Organization, the 1926 and 1956 Slavery Conventions and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are the major tools we use.

Article 32 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989):
"State Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

Convention 182 of the International Labour Organization (1999):
The main aim of Convention 182 is to eliminate the worst forms of child labour. It stresses that immediate action is needed to tackle the worst exploitation of children, and that measures taken by the authorities should start as soon as the government is able following ratification. The main provisions of the convention are to clarify which situations should be classified as the worst forms of child labour, and to specify what governments must do to prohibit and eliminate them. A copy of the full text of Convention 182 can be found on the
ILO website

Anti-Slavery International's work on child labour

Anti-Slavery International is not a funding body, but works with organisations around the world which work specifically in the field of child labour.
Anti-Slavery International has worked on child labour since the early 1900s. We have been systematically working on child labour issues since the 1970s, mainly in research and international advocacy. Relevant ILO and UN standards underpin all Anti-Slavery International's work on child labour. We work collaboratively with other NGOs, inter-governmental bodies and trade unions, and focus on the worst forms of child labour and slavery-like practices.

Anti-Slavery International currently works in partnership with local partners on:

Developing specific expertise on the subject of children in domestic service. This has involved: publishing hard evidence about the situation of child domestic workers in several countries; developing good practice tools on research and advocacy for use by NGOs and others at national and local levels; consolidating and building an international network of NGOs sharing information and expertise about child domestic work issues; and identifying and promoting good practice in programme interventions, particularly those which best protect child domestic workers from abuse and exploitation.
Campaigning for the adoption and implementation of legislation in Gulf States prohibiting under 18s being trafficked and used as camel jockeys, and the prosecution of those involved.
Increasing understanding and raising awareness of other issues, including children in the cocoa industry, forced child begging, and the health and psychosocial effects of the worst forms of child labour, particularly children in domestic service.

Anti-Slavery International also founded a Sub-Group on Child Labour of the Geneva-based NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and remains an active member.

Child Slavery Now -- an international conference is to be held on all aspects of child slavery at the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), University of Hull, UK in association with Anti-Slavery International, Gilda Lehrman Center, Yale University and Free the Slaves on November 27-28 2008.

Recent Anti-Slavery International publications on child labour

Child Labour

2008-08-09T23:26:00.000-07:00

An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labour - one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations.

In Sub-Saharan Africa around one in three children are engaged in child labour, representing 69 million children.
In South Asia, another 44 million are engaged in child labour.
The latest national estimates for this indicator are reported in Table 9 (Child Protection) of UNICEF's annual publication The State of the World's Children.

Children living in the poorest households and in rural areas are most likely to be engaged in child labour. Those burdened with household chores are overwhelmingly girls. Millions of girls who work as domestic servants are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Labour often interferes with children’s education. Ensuring that all children go to school and that their education is of good quality are keys to
preventing child labour.

Child Labour By: Dr. Rakhshinda Perveen

2008-07-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

Like many other global trends, the child labour, which is, certainly at the top of the global agenda, once again has been adopted as a trendy agenda in Pakistan by the mushrooming CSO sector and CSO-trained public sector. Child labour is a multi-dimensional issue and the organizations involved in condemning it have their own perspectives, objectives and interests. With no intentions of demystifying this complex, one would focus on the difference between child labor and child work, and possible consequences of deliberate or unapprised exercise of the two terms interchangeably.
Child labor reflects the violation of child rights leading to exploitation and deprivations of all kinds. Child work reflects social inequity and insecurity, dearth of social safety networks, magnitude of poverty, paucity of opportunities for health and education, and financial independence. Is it right to confuse the two states or situations? Is it cogent to advocate the eradication of child labor while equating it with child work? Have the Development Pundits ever thought of the catastrophe or tragedies bound to materialize due to this horrendous perplexity of a misnomer? One does not need to wait for a foreign donor funding to undertake any complex research to answer these questions. One only needs to look deeper while seeing around and listen carefully while hearing the sound in one's environs to seek answers to such questions.
The maid servant of the kids of a number of well to do families is a child girl. The boy looking after many household chores in our huge villas is often a child. The workshops for our cars are reliant on a mechanic who is the well-known"Chhota." These "Chhotas" are also serving tea and snacks in tuck shops either by the roadside or inside any
College or office canteen. Who are these children? Are they child labourers or child workers? All of them hail from poor families with more mouths to feed than hands to earn? Are not these children, who are putting so much sweat for a large family to survive, personified violation of human rights and a big slap in the face of our socio-political system? Should their efforts be interpreted as the widely hated child labour or much respected dignity of labour championed by the West?
"Say no to child labour" is a catchy slogan echoing these days. Has someone thought beyond raising the slogan? What would happen to the already terrible plight of the teeming millions who get " too much to die and too little to live" through their children?
All the efforts geared to eradicate child labor are doomed to generate new social ills and add to the existing ones if they lack well-integrated solid commitment, foresightedness and vision. Just imagine what would happen if a "ban" is imposed on their legitimate labour? Where would they go? Would they be able to go the school, which could turn them into potential civil servants, doctors, etc? And where they can relish full rights framed by the UNO? Or should they go in search of any job anywhere on this not so gentle earth to feed their families? They will not get either. As a result they may become sex workers; they may become criminals; they may start catering to the drug dealers and abusers….the list is never ending. Their vulnerable family members may meet the same fate. Who is going to be blamed for this? We could curse only our shortsightedness or our gullibility in the face of foreign pressure.
One by no means, is in favor of bonded work done by children. One is also fully aware of the occupational hazards and psychosomatic disorders associated with such situations. My expectation from those who stroll in the corridors of power, politics and policy-making is to adopt a humanistic and holistic approach towards a problem. Treat the patient, not the disease only. They should take into consideration all possible determinants of a particular problem while suggesting solutions. Raising a lot of hue and cry against child work alias child labor and threatening poor parents/guardians of possible punishment if they do not send their children to schools, do sound progressive but not problem- solving. We have to develop the skill of analyzing our own situation and then coming up with our own solutions.
"Rampant" child labour is one of the stigmas bestowed upon Pakistan. I do not wish to impress or depress anyone with low positions registered by our country on a variety of development indicators in various situation analyses. However, I do want to bring on record that our country has been treated like a guinea pig by everybody including ourselves. We have been depending on the outsiders to discover our problems and their solutions. We have never been able to identify and prioritize the main issues and problems. Every now and then, some big donor agencies and some influential luminaries from abroad have to descend on our home -land to convince us that hence forth, our problem is environment degradation; now it is the increase in population growth rate; now, the human rights violations, etc etc. But we have never been able to gather a critical mass to admit openly that we are a society of hypocrites. We believe in class system. We have different modes of action and sets of rules for the masses and the classes in all spheres of social development; be it education or health or economic and political participation in governance. Worsening the matter is the fact that we are able to use (abuse) religion as a justification to many of our misdeeds and irrational behaviors. Islam enjoins equality of opportunities. Where is that in our policy or practice? In reality, ours is a society where some people are more equal than the others. The vast majority of less equals belong to low socio-economic strata and include women and children. The need of the time is to offer enabling environment for education and economic opportunities for the disadvantaged communities. We as a nation have to develop the art and science of looking into the issues through our own lens rather than accepting the visions created elsewhere. It is more applicable to a complex problem like child labour than anything else.

complex issue of child labour

2008-07-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

The complex issue of child labour is a developmental issue worth investigating. The notion that children are being exploited and forced into labour, while not receiving education crucial to development, concerns many people. India is the largest example of a nation plagued by the problem of child labour. Estimates cite figures of between 60 and 115 million working children in India -- the highest number in the world (Human Rights Watch 1996, 1).
What are the causes of child labour in India? How do governmental policies affect it? What role does education play in regard to child labour in India? A critical analysis of the answers to these questions may lead in the direction of a possible solution. These questions will be answered through an analysis of the problem of child labour as it is now, investigating how prevalent it is and what types of child labour exist. The necessity of child labour to poor families, and the role of poverty as a determinant will be examined. Governmental policies concerning child labour will be investigated. The current state of education in India will be examined and compared with other developing countries. Compulsory education policies and their relationship to child labour will be investigated using Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Kerala as examples of where these policies have worked. Finally, India’s policies concerning compulsory education will be assessed.

Child Workers of Shaanxi's Qishan

2008-07-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

A small quilt factory in Shaanxi's Qishan county was caught using underage workers who were forced to work 12 hours a day only for food, this despite government threats to prosecute those who use child labour. Too often factory owners and managers feel protected by local authorities.

"Child Labour in INDIA"

2008-07-11T04:34:00.000-07:00

Humanity minus Love and Kindness, Watching a Child in Labour is hard, But, Hard is the Labour for a Child, A Child may bend its head for Labour, But, We bend our heads because of Child Labour, We have to mend this subject With the object --- Humanity.