Archive for category: African Countries (Page 2)

You are here: Home / Child Labor - International / Countries / African Countries

Harmful Child Labor Is Everyone’s Business

/0 Comments/in , , /by
Contributed by 
[This piece originally appeared on USAID’s web site on Wednesday, June 15th 2016].

ChildLabor3

Two little girls reading in Pakistan. / Save the Children

“Rose,” 16, never expected to end up living in the streets of Abidjan, sleeping nights under a table in the marketplace and having to sell sex for survival. She left her village in rural Côte d’Ivoire for a promise to live with her aunt in the city to attend school and perform domestic chores.

Things did not go as planned. Rose experienced harsh verbal abuse at the hands of her aunt and sexual abuse from her uncle and, in the end, her aunt threw her out of the house.

Rose was eventually discovered and taken to a transit center supported by a USAID PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) project implemented by Save the Children. Through this center, she was able to gain the strength and skills to return to school, despite testing positive for HIV/AIDS.

As a child labor practitioner, I am well aware of the risk factors for girls becoming domestic workers when migrating from rural to urban settings. So I have to wonder: Could we have helped Rose earlier, preventing the extreme trauma she experienced?

Girls sit in a circle in a classroom in Pakistan. / Save the Children

Girls sit in a circle in a classroom in Pakistan. / Save the Children

Every June, people from around the world commemorate the World Day Against Child Labor to speak up for the 168 million children working under harmful conditions in various sectors—including agriculture, on construction sites, hidden in households and exploited in brothels.

 

Harmful child labor takes many forms. And too often development practitioners do not recognize the risks of child labor when designing activities to spur economic growth or increase agricultural output, or when responding to humanitarian emergencies during times of crisis and conflict when child labor is often prevalent.

In addition, child labor programming has historically been narrow in focus, only looking at the child workers’ needs (like school and vocational training) or that of their parents within a community, rather than recognizing other harms surrounding children.

We could serve children better if we took a broader view of their risks given their particular environment and situation.

For example, the removal of a child from harmful work on a cocoa farm and relocation to a school in a nearby town is considered a successful outcome. However, is it really a success if she has no familial care or ends up sexually abused and impregnated by her teacher?

The theme of this year’s World Day is Ending Child Labor in Global Supply Chains—It’s Everyone’s Business. Recent regulations, certification and monitoring schemes have made businesses more accountable for how their commodities are produced. But all duty bearers, including government agencies and donors, need to address these issues. Not only for children working in formal settings, but also for those working in informal settings, like households.

Identifying and then tackling the root causes of child labor is key, including interventions like

  • Providing second-shift classrooms for working children as a chance to return to and catch up in school.
  • Supporting Community Child Protection Committees to better prevent and respond to violations such as child abuse and neglect, but to also create awareness and change behavior on issues like child marriage and gender discrimination.
  • Training teachers and communities to deliver school-based health and nutrition services, such as child-focused health classes and deworming campaigns.
  • Lifting up families with working children by providing vocational training, cash transfers and opportunities to start their own businesses.

ChildLabor5

Economic strengthening activities for women are part of the USAID-funded PEPFAR project in in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, that provides support to families affected by HIV/AIDS. / Save the Children

There is no silver bullet to deal with the worst forms of child labor, much less child protection risks globally. However, through enhanced coordination, integrated programming, advocacy efforts, and policy initiatives we can make a difference in the lives of children like Rosie.

We are on the right track. According to the International Labor Organization’s World Report on Child Labor, since 2008, the global level of hazardous and worst forms of child labor has decreased from 115.3 million children (7.3 percent) to 85.3 million (5.4 percent).

Let’s continue this work together and make it everybody’s business to keep children safe and protected.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy Blanpied is a Senior Child Protection Specialist at Save the Children.

Read more

Eradicating Child Labor in Supply Chains Requires Binding, Enforceable Standards

/0 Comments/in , , /by

[This piece by CLC member Sonia Mistry of the  Solidarity Center was first published on June 10th, 2016 in Thomas Reuters Foundation News.]

Sonia-Mistry-headshot-Clearer

He was completely covered in orange dust, from his hair to his toes. Maybe 7 or 8 years old, this little boy worked in an informal, or unregulated, mine in the southeastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was one of many children the Solidarity Center sought to remove from hazardous child labor and enroll in school.

Did he extract the minerals that ended up in my electronics? I’ll never know, and chances are that the company that made my phone doesn’t, either.

June 12 is World Day Against Child Labor, and this year’s theme, “End child labor in supply chains: It’s everyone’s business,” is relevant not simply because consumers are increasingly concerned about ethical purchasing but also because 168 million children around the world remain trapped in child labor.

The emphasis on supply chains provides an opportunity for companies to highlight their codes of conduct and efforts to monitor how their products are made. Consumers do not want to buy products made by children or exploited workers, and more businesses want to avoid the stain on their reputations. Company codes of conduct prohibit child labor and lay out other standards that businesses expect their suppliers to meet. But what happens when these standards are violated? Maybe a business cuts its ties with offending suppliers. Maybe nothing. And that is the point. Codes of conduct are voluntary, with little to no enforceability. External audits happen only periodically and cannot verify the absence of child labor or other abuses after auditors leave.

Eradicating child labor is not charity or good public relations. Child labor is a violation of human rights. It is a symptom of the confluence of other entrenched issues, like poverty, inequality, a lack of decent work for adults, poor governance and the absence of adequate social protections or policies that reduce vulnerability to risks like unemployment or illness. Children work because of these issues, and their exploitation perpetuates the cycle.

The only truly sustainable and meaningful alternatives to voluntary codes of conduct are binding and enforceable standards that employers and governments must abide by and which uphold the labor standards enshrined in the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) conventions, like the prohibition on child labor and the right of workers to form or join unions. Just this week, representatives of governments, businesses and workers gathered at an ILO meeting to discuss what will hopefully result in a new convention on supply chain accountability.

Unions are key partners in eradicating child labor through the promotion of decent work for adults and advocacy for improved government policies. Workers are the best workplace monitors, capable of identifying violations, including child and forced labor. Through collective bargaining, unions have engaged employers to address many of the root causes of child labor, including inadequate access to education, low wages and excessively high production quotas.

Read more

10 Facts About the Latest Research on Child Labor in West African Cocoa Growing Areas from Tulane University:

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

[On July 30, 2015, Tulane University researchers released their latest study — “Survey Research on Child Labor in West African Cocoa Growing Areas”– we present highligths here written and compiled by Mary Donovan, contributing writer to the CLC.]

  1. Child labor in cocoa production in West Africa is increasing. The total numbers of children in cocoa production, child labor in cocoa production, and hazardous work by children in cocoa production in West Africa all increased from 2009/10 to 2013/14. In 2013/14 there were 2,260,407 children working in cocoa production in West Africa. 1,303,009 of those children work in Cote d’Ivoire and 957,398 work in Ghana.
  1. A plan to eliminate child labor in the industry exists. Fifteen years ago, representatives of the international cocoa industry signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol “to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the cocoa sectors of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.” The Protocol provides a framework for accountability and outlines action steps. The Ministers of Labor from Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire signed a Declaration of Joint Action to support the implementation of the Protocol in 2010. In spite of this initiative, child labor in cocoa production in West Africa has increased.
  1. Cote d’Ivoire experienced an especially large growth. The numbers of children working in cocoa production increased by 59%, the number of children doing child labor in cocoa production increased by 48%, and the number of children doing hazardous work in cocoa production grew by 46%. Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s largest cocoa producer.
  1. The number of children working in cocoa production fell slightly in Ghana.
… Read the rest

Buried Childhoods — Child Labour in Mining and Quarrying

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

 

Jestoni* quit school at age 14 in order to take part in small-scale mining as a means to help support his family. They had abandoned farming for mining because of frequent flooding in their region of the Philippines. Jestoni’s mother worried about his safety as he dug in mineshafts for gold and carried heavy sacks of rock for eight to 12 hours per day.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than half (85 million) of the world’s 168 million child labourers perform hazardous work. Jestoni was one of the one million who work in mining.

The United States Department of Labor’s 2014 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor and Forced Labor indicates that child labour and forced labour is used to produce 29 products in the mining and quarrying sector. The top products in this sector, based on the number of countries using child labour in the production, include gold (18 countries[1]), coal (seven countries), and diamonds (six countries), but numerous other minerals, gems, and stones are also mined and quarried with the labour of children.

According to the ILO, almost all child miners work in artisanal, small-scale mining (ASM), beginning to help out as young as 4 and 5 years of age and working full time by the time they reach adolescence.[2] Artisanal mining is a low-technology industry where miners use their hands and rudimentary tools to extract minerals and raw materials,[3] with little protection from the inherent hazards of the work.… Read the rest