LABOUR-RIGHTS: Worldwide Protests Against Child Labor

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 8 1997 (IPS) - Human rights activists are planning protest marches on every continent during the first half of 1998 in an effort to mobilize a campaign to end child labour and enforce the right of children to education and recreation.

The first protest “caravan” will depart from the Philippines in January and will make its way across Asia towards Geneva, headquarters of the International Organization of Labor (ILO). In February, the South American march will get underway in Brazil, which will join groups from Central and North America before moving on to Europe. In Africa, a protest caravan will form up in March, in Cape Town, South Africa.

The protesters will converge on Geneva on July 5 to demand “a more rigorous and intransigent international accord” to fight the exploitation of child labor, the Brazilian coordinator of the South American march, Lelio Bentis, explained.

Marchers will will demonstrate their outrage at the fact that there are over 250 million children under 15 who are forced to work, he said. The date for the demonstration in Geneva has been timed to coincide with a tripartite ILO meeting of government representatives, business leaders and workers.

On the road to Geneva, the march will also incorporate itself into the celebrations of International Workers Day on May 1 to raise awareness about child labor. This will take place in the United States, where the caravans from South, Central and North America will come together, according to Luis Gonzaga de Araujo, a consultant for the Brazilian Confederation of Agricultural Workers, which is actively participating in the Brazil protests.

Bentis pointed out that some 10,000 nongovernmental organizations and labor unions and federation are involved in the protests. These are from both wealthy countries like the United States and Germany and poorer ones from Asia and Africa.

According to Bentis, the main concern, at least in Brazil, is to “eliminate the most extreme and degrading forms of child labor,” like the harvest of sisal – a vegetable fiber with sharp leaves that regularly results in serious injuries like blindness and the loss of limbs.

The harvesting of sugar cane has also been included, as well as orange picking, the production of vegetable coal, and “any job that impedes school attendance and thus the intellectual and moral development of children,” and creates health risks, he added.

Bentis is an attorney at the Ministry of Labor – an organ of the judiciary. He maintains however that his work for the campaign against child labor is a personal project undertaken as part of his consulting activities with the Abrinq Foundation, an organization created by businessmen in the toy industry to the defend the rights of children.

The Brazilian movement against child labor has estimated that the issue affects some 4.5 million children between the ages of five and 14. These numbers make the Brazilian situation the worst in Latin America, where the total number of child laborers is approximately 17 million, according to the ILO.

Nevertheless, official statistics show the number of children working to have declined by 900,000 over the past several years, leaving the figure at 3.1 million. This decrease took place primarily in agriculture as a result of mechanization and the increased productivity of that sector.

The campaign against child labor in Brazil is moving along well, involved over 40 institutions including labor federations, churches, non-governmental organizations, and organizations from the business sector, Bentis said. The country is “an example of social mobilization, because it moved from a position of formal condemnation to one of active participation,” against child labor.

Yet this is a question that requires responsibility on a global scale, particularly in the context of the globalized economy in which corporations seek the cheapest labor in poor, peripheral countries, he added.

International commerce could help solve this problem by adopting the “social seal of approval” – a document that would certify that particular products were not made by companies that exploit child labor. This is preferable to the imposition of sanctions against the so-called “social dumping,” which could ,serve as a cover for protectionism.

Bentis stated that, “the seal of approval, much like certificates of equality, “provide a positive incentive,” for consumers to worry “not only about the product, but also about who made it.” (FIN/IPS/mo/mj/lb pr hd/97)