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New Law in Chile Targets Street Beggars

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WRITTEN BY STEVE SHEA [The Santiago Times, Monday, Nov. 7, 2011]

Parents who exploit children could face up to three years in jail.

Sen. Carlos Bianchi recently proposed a new law that would seek to discourage adults from using children to beg for money on the street. The law would carry a prison term of between 541 days and three years.

Photo by fanz/Flickr.

“Begging can be considered the worst form of child labor,” Angélica Marín, the head of the Department of Protection of Rights told La Tercera. “Children forced into begging can have poor psychological, physical and moral development.”

She went onto say that this is a practice ingrained in Chilean culture and, “it requires the rehabilitation of adults who, perhaps for generations, have used their children to ask for money.”

This latest legislation will target those adults who use children to beg, both directly and indirectly, meaning directly if the child is begging and indirectly if the parent is begging with a child present. Both instances would be subject to the same jail time.

The Ministry of Social Development released a report in early October that counted 785 children in Santiago who could be considered to be living in extreme poverty.

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Cambodia

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In Cambodia,  52 per cent of children aged between seven and 14 work—over 1.4 million children.

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CARE Act Reintroduced–Would Equalize Protections for Children Who Work in U.S. Agriculture

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Child Labor Coalition Press Release

More progress needed to reduce child labor; Urgent action required on Uzbekistan, Domestic Workers Convention, and U.S. farmworker children

For release: June 10, 2011

Contact: NCL Communications, (202) 835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC—As World Day Against Child Labor on June 12 approaches, the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) is alerting the public that more than 200 million children still toil around the world, often in dangerous jobs that threaten their health, safety, and education.

Here in the United States, the CLC is applauding the anticipated re-introduction of the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), which Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) plans to sponsor once again next week. The legislation [H.R. 2234] would close loopholes that permit the children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers to work for wages when they are only 12 and 13 years old, often in harsh conditions—10- to 12-hour days of bending over and performing repetitive tasks in 90- to 100-degree heat.

“It’s time to level the playing field by closing these loopholes, which go all the way back to 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was introduced,” said CLC Co-Chair Sally Greenberg, the Executive Director of the National Consumers League, a consumer advocacy organization that has worked to eliminate abusive child labor since its founding in 1899. “We must offer these children the same protections that all other American kids enjoy.”

“Working migrant children pay a heavy price educationally for their labor,” said Antonia Cortese, a Co-Chair of the CLC  and the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.5 million public service employees. “Many farmworker children leave school before the school year ends and return after it begins. The constant travel and work wears many children out. They struggle to catch up academically, but for many it’s a losing battle—and more than half never graduate high school.”

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Rampant Child Labor in Cambodia

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by Bridget Di Certo and Chhay Channyda [from The Phnom Penh Post, Wednesday, 02 November 2011 12:04]
Labour legislation in Cambodia is so weak and so often ignored that half the Kingdom’s children between the ages of seven and 14 participate in the workforce, the world’s largest federation of unions has told the World Trade Organisation General Council in Geneva.

Children, women and ethnic and indigenous minorities suffer the most under the Kingdom’s “corrupt” enforcement of labour law, according to the International Trade Union Confederation, which has 150 million members.

Yesterday it presented its report detailing how Cambodia falls short of international labour standards, along with a list of recommendations to the WTO, which is conducting a trade policy review of Cambodia concluding tomorrow.
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