Entries by Reid Maki

Tulane Report Focuses Attention on Child Labor in Cocoa Industry

/in , , , , , /by

The Payson Center’s Report can be downloaded here: https://childlabor-payson.org–Reid] West African children still exploited to make chocolate By Marco Chown Oved Associated Press Updated: 10/08/2010 09:06:06 AM CDT ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — West Africa’s cocoa industry is still trafficking children and using forced child labor despite nearly a decade of efforts to eliminate the practices, according to an independent audit published by Tulane University. A U.S.-sponsored solution called the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001 by cocoa industry members to identify and eliminate cocoa grown using forced child labor. A child-labor-free certification process was supposed to cover 50 percent of cocoa growing regions in West Africa by 2005 and 100 percent by the end of 2010. But independent auditors at Tulane University’s Payson Center for International Development said in a late September report that efforts have not even come close to these targets. “Hundreds of thousands of children are involved in work on cocoa farms,” the report said. Child trafficking for labor also continues virtually unabated as well, it said. Thousands of children travel from impoverished neighboring countries to the cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, where some of them live in substandard conditions and receive little or no pay. Research in border areas shows that only a tiny proportion of children in cocoa farming ever see a police officer on their […]

Southern Sudan to purge child soldiers from army

/in , /by

By Maggie Fick Associated Press Writer / August 30, 2010 JUBA, Sudan—The government of Southern Sudan said Monday it will purge child soldiers from the ranks of its former rebel army by year’s end, a policy change that could see thousands of young troops pushed out of the military. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army launched a new “Child Protection Department” intended to help the army fulfill an agreement it signed with the United Nations in November. The agreement commits the army to release all children in its ranks by the end of the year and to end the use of child soldiers across Southern Sudan. The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates that about 900 children serve as soldiers in the south. The southern military did not say how many child soldiers it believes it has, but the chief of staff indicated it was several thousand. Oil-rich Southern Sudan is widely expected to vote for independence from northern Sudan in a scheduled January referendum, an outcome likely to lead to the breakup of Africa’s largest country. The 2005 peace accord that ended decades of war between Sudan’s north and south committed the armies to an extensive demobilization process. But because both armies are preparing for worst-case scenarios as the southern vote nears, analysts say neither side has an interest in reducing the […]

Uncovered

/in /by

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

Sub-Saharan Africa

/in /by

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.

Nigeria: Millions Lack Schooling

/in , , /by

`Nigeria has the highest number of children out of school’ By Ayo Okulaja [article from Next.com] [Originally published September 22, 2010 01:43PM In ranking Nigeria amongst the worst place for a child to be in 2010, a report by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) has stated that Nigeria has more children out of education than any other country in the world. The report claims that an astounding 8.2 million children are not provided with adequate education in Africa’s most populous country. Comparing the nation’s wealth with the apparent low standard of education, the report claims that “the report is made all the more appalling by the fact that Nigeria is far from poor, by African standards. On paper at least it is among the continent’s richest countries, the world’s sixth largest producer of crude oil. But decades of failure to invest in education have left the basic school system hardly functioning, especially in the country’s impoverished north.” For Primary education, the report claims many students drop out of the school in their first year of education due to `unequal provision of education’ and this it argued, is caused by the lack of political will to address and arrest the issue. “A lack of political will is a major factor in the country having the highest number of children out […]