LABOUR: ILO Gains Tool to Uproot ‘Worst Forms of Child Labour’

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 17 1999 (IPS) - The international community adopted Thursday a convention banning the worst forms of child labour, which could help a majority of the 250 million children between the ages of five and 14 working in developing countries.

The International Labour Conference unanimously approved the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, which must now be ratified by the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) 174 member states.

The signatories of the accord are to adopt immediate, effective measures to ban and eliminate the worst forms of child labour.

ILO Director-General Juan Somavia, applauding the decision, said the member states had appealed to their “moral resolve” in voting for the convention, which is to apply to all minors under the age of 18.

At the year 2002 International Labour Conference, ILO authorities will report on the progress made in ratifying and applying the convention.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that fought hard to get the convention approved said they hoped to see significant advances in curbing child labour by the year 2005.

“There is no excuse whatsoever” for not resolving the problem by then, said Rosslyn Noonan, coordinator for Trade Union and Human Rights at Education International, a Brussels-based NGO.

But the convention will be ratified by member states only if people keep up the pressure on their governments, warned Asha de Souza, spokeswoman for the Global March Against Child Labour, which organised the arrival of hundreds of children from throughout the world in Geneva early this month.

Among the “worst forms of child labour,” the convention includes “slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage, serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, and forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflicts.”

With respect to the recruitment of minors by the military, the demand for an exception in the case of voluntary enlistment by youngsters under 18, put forth by the United States and other industrialised countries, prevailed.

De Souza described the clause on child soldiers as “falling short of our expectations,” and stressed that the Global March Against Child Labour would continue lobbying for a total ban on the use of minors under the age of 18 in armed conflicts.

Also banned by the convention are “the use of a child for prostitution, production of pornography or pornographic performances; use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs; and work which is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.”

The question of access to education, which gave rise to a lengthy debate at the conference, was left out of the definition of the worst forms of child labour.

But Noonan pointed out that the important role played by free primary education in the eradication of child labour was highlighted in the introduction to the convention.

The draft convention submitted in 1998 “was weak, because it lacked any reference to education,” but a strengthened text emerged from the last conference, she added.

The NGOS stressed that part of the significance of the convention lay in the fact that not only did it require a commitment from national governments, but from international organisations as well.

The treaty specifies that the views of other concerned groups – a reference to NGOs – must be taken into consideration during the planning and implementation of programmes designed to eliminate the worst forms of child labour.

Noonan said the convention was a document to which no one could object, and which had been assumed by “governments, workers and employers – all of the social partners in the ILO’s tripartite structure.”

She underlined that countries like Norway and the Netherlands had “played a decisive role” in negotiating the convention, which set priorities in the process of eliminating child labour, while complementing convention 138 on the minimum legal working age.

Somavia stated that “with this convention, we now have the power to make the urgent eradication of the worst forms of child labour a new global cause.

“This cause must be expressed, not in words, but deeds, not in speeches, but in policy and law. To those who exploit children, forcing them into slavery, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography or war, we are saying ‘stop it now!’.”

The ILO estimates that around 120 of the 250 million five to 14- year-olds involved in the labour market in developing countries work full-time, while the rest combine work and studies.