Tag Archive for: Bolivia

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NCL Expresses Grave Concern about Bolivia’s Decision to Lower the Age of Work to Ten

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Washington, DC—The National Consumers League (NCL), the nation’s oldest consumer advocacy organization with a long history of fighting to improve child labor laws in the US and abroad, decries the decision last week by Bolivia to enact a new law that lowers the age of work from 14 to 10.

“Ten-year-olds belong in school–not in mines, forests, and factories. Bolivia’s baffling action is a huge step backward and endangers the country’s 500,000 to 850,000 working children,” said NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg, who is also the co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which NCL has co-chaired for 25 years. “In the last decade, the world has made remarkable progress in reducing abusive child labor by one-third, according to estimates by the International Labour Organization.”

“Our great fear is that the health and safety of Bolivia’s many thousands of children in hazardous work–like mining–will be endangered as a larger number of children sent out to work by their families will be legally employed,” said Reid Maki, NCL’s Director of Child Labor Advocacy and the coordinator of the CLC. The US Department of Labor lists nuts, bricks, corn, gold, silver, sugarcane, tin and zinc as products produced with child labor in the country–children are already doing some of the most grueling work in the world in Bolivia.”

“Bolivian government officials have said that they are unable to control child labor and that lowering the age of work will lead to greater protection of child workers because their work will now be legal,” noted NCL’s Greenberg. “Essentially, the government of Bolivia is surrendering. The level of exploitation will increase, and children will pay the price.”

“We also do not accept the argument that legal child labor is a necessary tool to reduce poverty in Bolivia, which ranks 70th on the ‘fragile states index,’ an annual ranking of the stability and the pressures countries face,” said NCL’s Maki. If 69 countries facing greater problems than Bolivia have not had to lower the age of work, surely Bolivia does not.”

“I’d like to remind the global community of the words of Hull House reformer Grace Abbott, an early child labor advocate in the US,” said Greenberg. “If you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for…poverty, you will have both until the end of time,” she told us.

For release: July 22, 2013
Contact: NCL, Director of Child Labor Advocacy, Reid Maki, reidm@nclnet.org and 202.207.2820

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US Department of Labor awards nearly $20 million to combat exploitive child labor in Bolivia, Egypt and Jordan

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor today announced nearly $20 million in grants awarded to combat exploitive child labor in Bolivia, Egypt and Jordan.

The grants will fund projects that provide children with education and training opportunities, and help improve the livelihoods of families so they no longer need to rely on children’s labor. These projects will work with countries that have shown strong political will to address abusive child labor and tackle its root causes. They will collaborate with national partners to scale up and sustain these efforts, and will conduct rigorous evaluations of the impact of project interventions.

“Eradicating child labor is a necessary task that binds us all together and has global benefits for everyone,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. “Our experience shows it is important to forge partnerships with countries to ensure that children are educated and not exploited.”

In Bolivia, the department awarded a $6 million grant to Desarrollo y Autogestion for a project that will work closely with indigenous leaders, urban and rural communities, and the government of Bolivia. The project will raise awareness of health and occupational hazards inflicted by the worst forms of child labor. The grant also will combat forced labor, and support Bolivia’s new education law by helping to provide children with basic and accelerated education. In addition, it will develop technical secondary school programs, offering economic empowerment to communities and support to small enterprises that raise household incomes.

The department awarded $9.5 million to the World Food Program to address child labor in Egypt’s agriculture sector. It will encourage school attendance by offering school meal programs for children and food rations for their families. It will also provide entrepreneurial skills training to improve household livelihoods and access to microfinance opportunities such as village savings and loan programs, with a special focus on women.

Save the Children Federation was awarded $4 million under the department’s grant to Jordan. The project will address child labor within identified pockets of poverty. It will reintegrate children into formal or nonformal education systems, and transition older children of legal working age to vocational training programs or ensure their employment under safe and legal working conditions. The project will also provide vulnerable households with linkages to livelihood opportunities, improve vocational training centers, establish community protection committees and work with community leaders to raise awareness of exploitive child labor.

Since 1995, Congress has appropriated approximately $780 million to the Labor Department to support global efforts to combat exploitive child labor. As a result, the department has rescued approximately 1.4 million children from exploitive child labor. More information on the department’s efforts to combat exploitive child labor is available at https://www.dol.gov/ilab/highlights/if-20101215.htm.

ILAB News Release: [12/29/2010]
Contact Name: Gloria Della
Phone Number: (202) 693-8666
Release Number: 10-1775-NAT