Archive for category: International Initiatives (Page 3)

Nations from around the world and child welfare advocates from many countries are supporting international treaties and initiatives designed to increase protections for child workers.

UN Passes Resolution Against Recruitment of Child Soldiers

July 13, 2011/0 Comments/in International Initiatives /by Reid Maki

Agence France-Presse

UNITED NATIONS – The UN Security Council unanimously adopted on Tuesday a resolution against recruitment of child soldiers, pressing nations to halt the abuse of children including rape and attacks on schools.

In its report on child soldiers last year, the United Nations for the first time named military forces and rebel groups that persistently used children in armed conflict.

The groups included Myanmar’s national army and two rebel militant groups in the country; three insurgent groups in the Philippines; the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia; armies and militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and pro-government militias in Sudan as well as the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

The signatories “call upon member states concerned to take decisive and immediate action against persistent perpetrators of violations and abuses committed against children in situations of armed conflict, and further call upon them to bring to justice those responsible for such violations.”

The resolution highlighted actions prohibited under international law, including “recruitment and use of children, killing and maiming, rape and other sexual violence, attacks on schools and/or hospitals.”

It also cited “the primary role of governments in providing protection and relief to all children affected by armed conflicts,” and said it was “the responsibility of states to end impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other egregious crimes perpetrated against children.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the resolution — an initiative by current Security Council president Germany — is the eighth since 1998 to condemn nations and militaries which use children to wage war and subject them to brutal violence like rape and maimings.… Read the rest

ILO implements project on elimination of child labour in Birim South (Ghana)

July 6, 2011/0 Comments/in Chocolate, International Initiatives, Ghana, US Campaigns /by Reid Maki

Source: GNA [from Ghana Web]

Akyem Swedru, July 6, GNA – The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is implementing a programme dubbed: 93Cocoa Community Project” (CCP) to eliminate the worst forms of Child Labour in Cocoa growing communities across the country.

The project is titled: 93Towards Child Labour Free Cocoa Growing Communities in Cote D’lvoire and Ghana through an integrated area base approach.”

Mrs Stella Ofori, Principal Labour Officer, Child Labour Unit of the Labour Department of the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare, speaking at the end of a two-day district level consultative workshop for cocoa growing communities at Akyem Swedru in the Birim South of the Eastern Region, said the project was to identify communities for interventions and control groups for impact evaluation.

The event brought together 45 participants from various heads of departments, cocoa farmers, District Assembly and unit committee members and cooperative institutions.

She said it was to establish an inventory of available social interventions and other complementary services to which interventions might be linked.

In addition, it was to document the status of child labour interventions in the district plan, budgets, monitor and evaluate frameworks and other mechanism for sustainability.

Mrs Ofori said the CCP would contribute to the National Plan of Action (NPA) through the awareness raising and development of action plan for implementation by the communities and to institutional and technical capacity building to fill the gap of NPA implementation.

“The CPP would also support child labour monitoring systems to track the elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour through integrated approach,” she added.… Read the rest

India bans child labour in circuses

April 19, 2011/0 Comments/in International Initiatives, India /by Reid Maki

AFP [from Dawn.com April 2011]:

NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court on Monday banned travelling circuses from employing children and ordered the government to conduct raids on all performing companies to rescue minors.

The court edict followed a petition lodged by a children’s rights group that has lobbied for full implementation of Indian child labour laws, which are regularly flouted by circuses.

Children are often trained to perform high-wire acrobatic acts, juggling stunts and other attractions for audiences in India, where circus companies move from town to town throughout the year.

USDOL’s Polaski Lauds Liberian Union for Work on Child Labor

February 28, 2011/0 Comments/in Recent News, International Initiatives, Liberia, Rubber /by Reid Maki

Liberian Union Receives Child Labor Award

by SANDRA POLASKI on FEBRUARY 23, 2011 · 0 COMMENTS

The Liberian countryside

I want to tell you about the remote town of Harbel, Liberia and the Firestone Agricultural Workers Union of Liberia (FAWUL), which has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of workers and their children. The union just won the Department of Labor’s 2010 Iqbal Masih Award, an award that Congress established to recognize extraordinary efforts to end the worst forms of child labor. This award is given in remembrance of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani child carpet weaver who was sold into slavery at the age of four. He escaped his servitude to become an outspoken advocate against child labor before losing his life at the age of 13.

FAWUL won the award for their efforts on behalf of children on the Firestone rubber plantation in Harbel. For years, children had labored on the plantation alongside their parents to meet the quotas for tapping rubber trees. FAWUL was established in 2007, and by 2008 it had negotiated a landmark collective bargaining agreement that reduced the quotas by 25% and banned child labor on the plantation. In 2010, FAWUL negotiated a second contract with Firestone that went further. Under it, the company agreed to provide children living on the plantation with better schools. I imagine the children of Harbel no longer laboring in hot fields, but instead eagerly going to school with the same bright hopes for the future as our children have.

FAWUL’s success shows how unions can transform the lives not only of workers but of children and how dedication and perseverance can make a real difference in the fight against child labor. … Read the rest

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Child Soldiers

The countries identified by the US government in 2018 as using child soldiers: Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Hazardous Labor

In 2012, more than half of child laborers—85 million—are in hazardous work (down from 171 million in 2000). Source:ILO

Latin America and the Middle East

There are 13 million (8.8%) of children in child labor in Latin America and the Caribbean ...and in the Middle East and North Africa there are 9.2 million (8.4%). Source: ILO

Child labor among girls is falling...

Child labor among girls fell by 40% between 2000 and 2012, compared to 25% for boys. Source: ILO

The Philippines

The Philippines has 2.9 million child laborers but in its 2013 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, USDOL said the country was making "significant" progress in dealing with the problem. [source: http://tinyurl.com/llxpt2o]

Child Domestic Servants

According to an ILO report in 2013, 10.5 million children work as domestic servants around the world.

Philippines

In the Philippines, an estimated 246,000 children experience abuse, violence and child labor living on the streets.

Child Mining

An estimated 1 million children perform hazardous work in mines around the world.

Child Trafficking

According to UNICEF, 1.2 million children are trafficked each year--many for purposes of sexual exploitation.

Ivory Coast

According to a Tulane University study, 40 per cent of the 820,000 children working in cocoa in Ivory Coast are not enrolled in school, and only about 5 per cent of the Ivorian children are paid for their work.

Schooling and Conflict

In underdeveloped countries, every additional year of schooling reduces an adolescent boy’s risk of becoming involved in conflict by 20 percent. According to one study, a country that enrolls more than 87 percent of its children in school decreases its risk of conflict by nearly 75 percent.

The Philippines

According to the Philippine government, one in five Filipino children is involved in child labor--5.5 million in all.

Forced Labor

In June 2012, the ILO estimated that 21 million people had experienced forced labor over a 10-year period--5.5 million had been children.

Trafficking

The State Department estimates that 27 million people worldwide, most of them women and children, are victims of human trafficking, forced into labor or prostitution.

Child Labor & Brick Making

According to U.S. DOL/ILAB, bricks are produced by child labor in 15 countries: Afghanistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, China, Ecuador, India, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Peru, Uganda, and Colombia.

Gold

18 countries produce gold with child labor and many children are exposed to toxic substances like mercury during the process.

Cambodia

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

A 2005 survey by NCL found that 96% of those Americans surveyed would not let their own children work in the fields as hired farmworkers under 13--something allowed by current U.S. Child Labor law.

Remediation

Between 1995 and 2010, the U.S. Congress appropriated approximately $780 million to the U.S. Department of Labor to support global efforts to combat exploitive child labor.

India

India is home to one-fifth of the world's child population.

Progress in Two Areas

The ILO reports that in the four-year period ending in 2008, the number of child laborers among 5- to 14-year-olds fell 10 percent and the number children in hazardous work fell 31 percent.

Uncovered

The proportion of children who live in countries that have not yet ratified ILO Convention 182 (on the worst forms of child labor) or Convention 138 (on the minimum age): 1 in 3

Agriculture

6 in 10 child laborers work in agriculture, most commonly as unpaid workers on family farms

Sub-Saharan Africa

While many areas of the world are experiencing some progress in reducing child labor, Sub-Saharan Africa is seeing an increase in child labor activity.

Hazardous work

Levels of hazardous work seem to be dropping for girls but not for boys.

The World Wide Recession?

The number of youth, 15- to 17-years-old, who work increased 20 percent in the period 2004-2008, while child labor rates are believed to have fallen among young children, particularly girls.

Total Child Workers

The estimate of child laborers in the world: 168 million Source: ILO

Decline of Child Labor Slowing?

The ILO reports that while child labor around the world decreased 10 percent between 2000 and 2004, it only decreased 3 percent between 2004 and 2008.

Nutrition

Almost 55 million children under the age of 5 in India are underweight.

2000: Human Right's Watch Report Fingers to the Bone

Human Rights Watch publishes a report outlining the exploitation of children in US agriculture entitled “Fingers to the Bone: United States Failure to Protect Child Farmworkers.”

Trafficking - Africa

According to a UNICEF report in 2003, the number of 53 African countries with human trafficking problems: 49

Trafficking

Nearly one in five victims of trafficking around the world are children.

1995: Death of Iqbal Masih Child Labor Activist

Iqbal Masih, a former child slave in the carpet industry in Pakistan, is murdered for his international advocacy of child rights at the age of 13. His courage and determination continues to inspire children, activists, and officials.

1832: Association Condemns Child Labor

The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workingmen officially condemns child labor.

1836: Union Proposes Minimum Age Laws

Early trade unions at the National Trades' Union Convention propose requiring state minimum age laws for factory work.