HUMAN RIGHTS-AFRICA: Renewed Debate on Child Labour

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Mar 31 1998 (IPS) - The condemnation to death of a 13-year-old boy soldier by a Congolese military tribunal has helped to focus attention on the issue of child labour in Africa.

The boy, Malamu, shot and killed a local Red Cross worker following a dispute on a soccer pitch in Kinshasa on Mar. 29. The military authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) quickly held court under a mango tree and sentenced him to death.

Malamu was one of some 20,000 child soldiers who, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), fought in the then rebel army of Laurent Kabila, during the October 1996 – May 1997 campaign that resulted in the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Kabila replaced as president.

UNICEF says it is persuading the Kabila administration to demobilise the children, some of whom were barely 12 years old when they joined up, and send them to school.

Fighting in rebel armies is one of the more extreme forms of child labour to be found in Africa, where estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) “suggest that the number of child workers between five and 14 years of age … is around 80 million,” says ILO Deputy Director General Kari Tapiola.

“Our assumption is that over the next ten to fifteen years, this figure will rise, with at least one million new child workers annually,” Tapiola told a Mar. 30-Apr.1 conference here on ‘Defending Workers’ Human Rights in the Global Economy’.

By the year 2005, there could be 100 million African children working — and deprived of education and healthy physical and mental development, according to Tapiola, who added that “child labour is a product of poverty, misery, and the lack of educational opportunities, but it also involves crude exploitation.”

Bill Jordan, general secretary of the Geneva-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), called for tough laws to punish countries where child labour is practiced.

“Countries where the abuse and exploitation of children is tolerated should become outcasts from the world trading system … no more than they deserve,” said Jordan. “Those countries which are trying to work their way out of poverty and eliminate child labour at the same time should be given help.”

Jordan said a third of the 250 million children who, according to the ILO, are at work worldwide are engaged in exploitative or hazardous practices including long working hours, exposure to dangerous chemicals, heavy loads, and even forced labour or outright slavery.

Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi told the conference his government was determined to enforce laws to combat the practice. “The use of child labour is unacceptable,” he said. “It is exploitative and also denies the child the opportunity to develop skills that will make him or her a useful member of society.”

There are about four million working children in Kenya, which ranks sixth in Africa with 41.3 percent of its children aged 10 to 14 years economically active, according to the latest figures on child labour in the East African country.

Tapiola said enforcing standards alone would not eliminate child labour. “This is why the ILO and its International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) strives at finding time-bound arrangements which can ensure that the educational and other alternatives for work are in place.”

“Without viable alternatives, attempts at eliminating child labour may only amount to a shifting of the problem, sweeping it under the rug and out of sight — but to conditions which are worse for the children concerned,” he warned.

Without transitory arrangements, Tapiola added, the health and morals of the children will be seriously damaged. “This concerns, for instance, the commercial sexual exploitation of children, bondage and work in slave-like conditions, and hazardous work of young children,” he noted.

However, Moi said certain cultural practices by African rural communities required children to play a role in family activities at an early age and take on greater responsibilities as they grow up.

“Strictly speaking, these are not cases of child labour because they do not involve payment of wages,” he argued. “But there is also a need to be cautious to ensure that poor families do not resort to the use of their children’s labour as a way of supplementing family income.”

Kenya’s government, he said, will improve support measures for poor families, particularly single-parent ones: he did not elaborate.