LABOUR: It’s Up to Governments to Eliminate Child Labour

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 25 1998 (IPS) - When individuals break the law, they feel the full weight of the legal system. But when states flagrantly violate internationally accepted standards, what is the solution?

New, stricter standards, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has apparently concluded, with respect to eradicating one of the world’s most glaring human rights violations: child labour.

Although the ILO Minimum Age Convention (No. 138) and Forced Labour Convention (No. 29) have been ratified by a large number of countries, more than 250 million five to 14-year-olds continue to work throughout the world.

Given that situation, the ILO will present new international labour standards on extreme forms of child labour at the Jun. 2-18 International Labour Conference in Geneva.

The debate on the new standards coincides with a campaign that included the Global March against Child Labour, which set out from Manila Jan. 17 and plans to reach Geneva on the occasion of the International Labour Conference.

The core message of the Global March – which toured 97 African, Asian, Latin American, North American and European countries – calls for respecting a child’s right to be free from economic exploitation and the right to free compulsory education.

The new standards focus on extreme forms of child labour: work that is likely to jeopardise the safety, health and morals of children; slavery and practices similar to slavery; child prostitution and pornography.

Prior to drawing up the draft to be presented at next month’s Conference, the ILO sent a questionnaire to governments, unions and employers, whose responses were compiled in a report released Monday.

Taking into account those responses, the ILO decided to suggest that the new standards take the form of conventions, which create legal obligations on states which ratify them, supplemented by recommendations to provide further guidance and suggestions for implementation.

The ILO wants the new standards to ensure that immediate action is taken to suppress extreme forms of child labour, grouped in three main categories:

– a) all forms of slavery and practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, forced or compulsory labour, debt bondage and serfdom;

– b) the use, engagement or offering of a child in illegal activities, for prostitution, production of pornography or pornographic performances;

– c) any other type of work or activity which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to jeopardise the health, safety or morals of children, so that they should not be used or engaged in such work or activity under any circumstances.

The director of the ILO’s Working Conditions and Environment Department, Assefa Bequele, said that “there is overwhelming support among ILO constituents for putting an end to the intolerable exploitation and abuse of children in hazardous work and conditions of slavery and practices similar to slavery.”

The ILO would like this year’s Conference to debate the initiative and arrange for the preparation of a final draft to be approved at the 1999 Conference.

The United Nations body also recommends the creation of monitoring mechanisms to ensure effective application – generally the touchiest items in negotiations on international agreements.

The ILO’s latest report indicates that of the 250 million children working worldwide, 61 percent live in Asia, 32 percent in Africa and seven percent in Latin America.

But while most child labour is found in developing countries, industrialised economies are not entirely free of the scourge. In eastern and central Europe, for example, child labour has been reappearing in the wake of social and economic dislocation caused by the transition to a market economy.

ILO data indicates a boy:girl ratio of three:two in child labour. The highest rate of girls involved in economic activity is found in Africa, where 37 percent of girls work.

There are believed to be five major international networks trafficking in children: from Latin America to Europe and the Middle East; from south and southeast Asia to northern Europe and the Middle East; a European regional market; an associated Middle Eastern regional market; and a West Africa export market in girls.

Poverty, which leads to the inability of many rural and urban families to support and educate their children, lies at the root of the commercial sexual exploitation of children in many countries, the ILO points out. In some cases, ethnic origin, cultural practices, and social discrimination render children from indigenous populations, minority groups and the lower castes especially vulnerable.

“Such exploitation and abuse not only jeopardise the physical and mental well-being of children, but are also gross violations of their human rights and dignity,” says Bequele.

The ILO found that some 50 percent of working children surveyed described their work as stressful, up to 60 percent said they returned to their homes exhausted and up to 80 percent said they had no days off or free time.