Daniel Berruezo is a civil servant in Salta’s provincial Ministry of Labour in Argentina. He is working to eliminate child labour in the region’s tobacco sector.

We would work during the summer months of December, January, February and March. We worked in the fields, loading and unloading the driers and helping wherever we were needed. We would see other children playing while we had to carry on with our work.

My brother and I knew that it was our way of contributing to the family’s income, and to our education. We also knew that almost inevitably our future was to continue working in the fields. So, we worked to be able to go to school and to earn our own money.

My brother and I around the time when we started to work in the tobacco fields. Here we are with our family for our first communion. Credit: Daniel Berruezo

We bought school supplies and clothes for the whole school year with the money we earned. It meant that work was almost obligatory for us. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had what we needed for school.

Although this experience marked my life in a negative way, we never felt resentment nor anger towards our parents. But we do feel that we missed out on play and sharing with other children. We couldn’t live the lives of normal boys.

We continued as tobacco workers until we were 22 and 23 years old. Eventually we took over the farm and had our own production enterprise.

My childhood experiences working in the tobacco fields mean I understand how other child labourers feel, and what pushes their families to put their children to work.

I know what it is to work in the tobacco fields. This is me as a teenager lifting a bundle of tobacco leaves onto the back of a truck. Crdit: Daniel Berruezo

In 2008, I started working at the Ministry of Labour in the province of Salta. The Minister at the time realised that a team from the ministry needed to work in the Lerma Valley so they could monitor not only undeclared work but also child labour. The Lerma Valley is the largest area of tobacco production in the province.

I head up that team. With my experience I met all the conditions necessary for the role. I had been a child labourer. I had been a tobacco employee, and I had been a tobacco producer. I knew the work that was involved and the activities where children would be working.

A large part of what we do is to constantly raise awareness about child labour and tell communities that children should not work, that they should not do anything other than be allowed to develop as children.

The challenge we face is that in society in general, people think it is normal and right for children to work. So that is what needs to be changed, especially among those who have the power to make decisions. They need to understand that child labour is not the best thing for children.

We have developed ways to prevent the occurrence of a lot of child labour through the children’s centres that operate during the tobacco harvest. These have been set up by the Tobacco Industry Chamber in collaboration with the government of the province of Salta and other institutions. With their children taken care of, parents can work without having to worry about them. It seems to me that this is one of the best and most successful policies helping to prevent child labour in this area.

Also, with modernisation, different types of driers are being used. Because of their design, children cannot work with them easily. This changing reality has also meant that fewer children are working.

Children at one of the centres set up during the tobacco harvests. They hold up signs they have made with phrases such as “I have the right to play” and “Respect our rights!”. Credit: Cámara de la Industria Tabacalera, Argentina

I found out about the ILO Offside project through my work. They invited us to participate in a training course on the prevention of child labour.

On the course we learned about other sectors where children are working. Elsewhere in the province of Salta, children are working in the wood industry. In my area they work in tobacco and in other areas child labour occurs in vegetable growing. Children can be found working everywhere, even in commerce.

Doing courses like this helps me in my work. I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know about or didn’t have a clear idea about before. I learned about how to detect child labour, how to implement policies to reduce child labour, as well as how to protect adolescents who are working. In our tobacco-growing area, a lot of adolescents are working without the necessary protections.

I don’t want my son to miss out on childhood experiences, like I did. I want him to simply enjoy his childhood and for him to fulfil all his dreams when he grows up. Credit: ILO/OIT Gastón Chedufau

My dream is that child labour will be eliminated. I think it’s the dream of many people – not only that children stop working but that they and their families receive support from the state and from intermediate institutions so that children don’t need to work. I think children end up working because of a palpable need.

A lot of progress has been made. Although I am very happy about this, we need to continue to do more. I always say this whenever this issue is discussed. During the ILO course, for example, I said that we need to have more sports facilities, including at the children’s centres during the tobacco harvests. This would help to attract more children and would stop them from working.

I am now married with two children. As a father, you always try to give your child what you didn’t have, don’t you?

There were so many footballs that I didn’t get to kick and many other experiences that I missed out on as a child. I want my children to enjoy their childhood as much as possible and to fulfil their dreams.

Children should be able to take advantage of education, sports, art, and music – all the things that will surely awaken the potential in every one of them and give them the capacity to develop fully into adults.

Fast facts

• Latest statistics, compiled in 2019, showed that 371,771 children, or 5.3% of Argentinian children between the ages of 5 and 15 were working.
• The ILO Offside project offers child labour awareness training to civil servants like Daniel, and other stakeholders working in Argentina’s agricultural areas.
• The project is funded by the United States Department of Labor (USDOL).
• An estimated 160 million children worldwide – almost one in ten – are engaged in child labour.
• Over the past few years, conflicts, crises and the COVID-19 pandemic, have plunged more families into poverty – and has forced millions more children into child labour.
• On World Day Against Child Labour, 12 June 2023, the ILO is calling for universal ratification of ILO Convention No. 138 on Minimum Age. This would provide all children with legal protection against all forms of child labour, alongside ILO Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, which was universally ratified in 2020.

Find out more

• World Day Against Child Labour – 12 June

• ILO Offside project

• 2019 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labour: Argentina – USDOL report

• United States – ILO Cooperation

• ILO topic portal on child labour

  Advancing social justice

Jonas (a pseudonym) is a factory worker from Lithuania. He was tricked and trapped into modern slavery in the UK.

One day I was approached by a man called Mindaugas, who said he could find me a job in the UK that would pay me more in a week than I could earn in Lithuania in a month. He made it all sound very good and said I could get a good life there. It was a hard decision to leave my home country and quite scary but I needed the money.

I could not afford the fare but he told me that I could pay him back for the transport and accommodation once I started working. I had to trust him.

I decided to accept the job offer and go to the UK, even though I was scared. I needed the money. Credit: Olivia Newsome

Along with several other Lithuanians we drove to the UK in a van. It took more than two days.

When we arrived, we were met by a man called Marijus who took us to a house on the coast. It was very cramped with lots of people living there. They said they would find work for me and that I would have to open a bank account so that my wages could be paid into it.

It took a while to get a job and they kept telling me to be patient. I had no food and my debts were piling up. After a few weeks they took me to a factory where they prepared chickens for the supermarkets. It wasn’t pleasant and it was repetitive but I was very relieved that I was finally working for decent money.

In the first couple of weeks, I was paid with cheques – not into my new bank account. I had to go to a shop where they cashed them for you. They charged commission, of course!

Trapped

Marijus had his men follow me and as soon as I got the money they would force me to hand it over to them. I was very frightened and feared that if I did not do as they said, they would beat me up and take it anyway. I gave them all of my wages for the week – about £260. They took £220 and gave me £40 back ‘to live on’, they said. They told me I still owed about £1,000 for the transport to the UK and my accommodation and food so far, so I should get used to it.

They were charging me about £60 per week for a bed in a shared room, sleeping on the floor with three others but they said if I did not live in the house they provided, then I would not get work. I was trapped!

They were charging me £60 per week for a bed in a shared room, sleeping on the floor. They said if I did not live in the house they provided, then I would not get work. Credit: Olivia Newsome

After a few weeks I’d had enough. They were taking nearly everything I earned. I was working for nothing. This was not the life I had been told about.

We talked in the house about what we could do. Two other men felt the same as I did and so we decided to risk it and run away. We found a different place to live but knew that we were always in danger as Marijus would come looking for us.

He managed to contact me by phone. He threatened me so we went back to the chicken factory. He had contacts there and made sure we were put on a shift where his men could watch us.

Death threats

Then one day we were followed back to the flat. Marijus and his men forced their way in and threatened me. They started rifling through all my things and found what was left of the money I had brought with me from home. They took it and then found some cash withdrawal slips I had from a new bank account I had opened. They were furious and demanded my new bank card and passport. When I refused, they beat me and knocked me unconscious. They searched the flat and found my bank card but I had hidden my passport in my pillow case. I told them I’d lost it. I didn’t want to give that up or there would be no chance of escape.

Marijus yelled at me: “You came here not to earn and save but to manage and get through.” In other words, he was telling me I was nothing more than their slave and was brought to the UK to earn money for them and not for me. He said if I talked to anyone I would disappear and that if I tried to get back to Lithuania, they would find my family and kill them.

I guessed money was passing through the bank account they set up for me and suspected this had come from prostitution and drugs, so I put a block on it. When they found out, I received texts threatening my life.

Marijus and his men forced their way in and threatened me. They were furious and demanded my new bank card and passport. When I refused, they beat me and knocked me unconscious. Credit: Olivia Newsome

Rescued

Then one day at the factory, I was interviewed by a woman who said she was from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority – the GLAA. She said they were trying to find out if workers at the factory were legitimate and being treated and paid properly. I didn’t tell her anything at the time because I didn’t know if I could trust her but later I called and told them everything. They told me about the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for trafficking victims. Then it dawned on me. I had no idea that’s what I was until it was explained to me. Me – a victim of human trafficking!

They explained I’d been brought to the UK to be exploited. I was being forced to work. I had no control over my life. That’s what human trafficking is!

Soon after, Marijus disappeared from the house but I lived in fear he would come back one day looking for me.

The NRM moved me to the north-west of England – safe from the eyes and the threats and the fists of Marijus. I stayed there for a couple of months and thought about getting another job – one where I would be paid properly and earn the kind of money I had been promised at the start. But I wanted out. I’d had enough. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be safe.

I hope Marijus and his gang will be found and pay for what they did. They are not humans. I wanted to leave this world for a time and I never want to feel that way again.

Fast facts

• Jonas’ story is real, names have been changed. Jonas was rescued by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA).
• The GLAA works to protect vulnerable and exploited workers in the UK. It regulates the recruitment of workers in supply chains in agriculture, horticulture, shellfish, related processing and packaging, to make sure companies respect the law.
• The ILO has collaborated with the GLAA throughout the years, including in the framework for the Fair recruitment Initiative, the 50 for Freedom campaign, and to facilitate training on the detection and investigation of forced labour cases by law enforcement officers.
• An estimated 27.6 million men, women and children were in forced labour around the world in 2021, including 17.3 in the private sector. Every country is affected.
• Forced Labour generates USD 150 billions of dollars in illicit profits. Industries and businesses face unfair competition and states loses billions in tax income and social security contributions.
• The ILO’s Forced Labour Protocol is a legally-binding treaty that requires governments to take effective measures to prevent forced labour, protect victims and ensure they have access to justice and remedies.
• This story was originally produced for the ILO’s 50 for freedom campaign, calling for countries to ratify the Forced Labour Protocol. To date, 60 countries have ratified the Protocol.

Find out more

• Gangmasters & Labour Abuse Authority

• Forced labour Protocol

• Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage

• ILO topic portal on forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking

• ILO Fair recruitment initiative

• Advancing social justice

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 21 2015 (IPS)

The “surprise” re-election of incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Mar. 17 elections has been met with a flood of media comment on the implications for the region and the rest of the world.

However, one of the reasons for Netanyahu’s victory has dramatically slipped the attention of most – the support he received from young Israelis.

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, 200,000 last-minute voters decided to switch their vote to Netanyahu’s Likud party due to the “fear factor” and most of these were voters under the age of 35.

Roberto Savio

Perhaps the “fear factor” was actually an expression of the “Masada factor”. Masada is a strong element in Israeli history and collective imagination. The inhabitants of the mountain fortress of Masada, besieged by Roman legions at the time of Emperor Tito’s conquest of the Israeli state, preferred collective suicide to surrender.

Israelis today feel besieged by hostile neighbouring countries (first of all Iran), the continuous onslaught by the Caliphate and the Islamic State, overwhelming negative international opinion and growing abandonment by the United States.

Netanyahu played a number of cards to bring about his last-minute election success, including his speech to the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress on Mar. 3, which was seen by many Israelis as an act of defiance and dignity, not a weakening of fundamental relations with the United States.

His support for Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, his denial of the creation of a Palestinian state and his show of contempt for an international community unable to understand Israel’s fears led Netanyahu’s Likud party to victory.

In Israel, being left-wing mean accepting a Palestinian state, being right-wing means denying it. In the end, the Mar. 17 vote was the result of fear.“Taking refuge in parties that preach a return to a country’s ‘glorious’ past, blocking immigrants who are stealing jobs and Muslims who are challenging the traditional homogeneity of society, country … is an easy way out”

Israeli’s young people are not alone in moving to the right as a reaction to fear. It is interesting to note that all right-wing parties which have become relevant in Europe are based on fear.

Growing social inequality, the unprecedented phenomenon of youth unemployment, cuts in public services such as education and health, corruption which has become a cancer with daily scandals, and the general feeling of a lack of clear response from the political institutions to the problems opened up by a globalisation based on markets and not on citizens are all phenomena which are affecting young people.

“When you were like us at university, you knew you would find a job – we know we will not find one,” was how one student put it at a conference of the Society for International Development that I attended.

“The United Nations has lost the ability to be a place of governance, the financial system is without checks and corporations have a power which goes over national governments,” the student continued. “So, you see, the world of today is very different one from the one in which you grew up.”

As Josep Ramoneda wrote in El Pais of Mar. 18: “We expected that governments would submit markets to democracy and it turns out that what they do is adapt democracy to markets, that is, empty it little by little.

This is why many of those of who vote for right-wing parties in Europe are young people – be it for the National Front in France, the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain, the Lega Nord (North League) in Italy, the AfD (Alternative for Germany) in Germany and Golden Dawn in Greece, among others.

Taking refuge in parties that preach a return to a country’s “glorious” past, blocking immigrants who are stealing jobs and Muslims who are challenging the traditional homogeneity of society, country, and bringing back to the nation space and functions which have been delegated to an obtuse and arrogant bureaucracy in Brussels which has not been elected and is not therefore accountable to citizens, is an easy way out.

This is a major – but ignored – epochal change. It was long held that an historic function of youth was to act as a factor for change … now it is fast becoming a factor for the status quo. The traditional political system no longer has youth movements and its poor performance in front of the global challenges that countries face today makes young people distrustful and distant.

It is an easy illusion to flock to parties which want to fight against changes which look ominous, even negative. It also partially explains why some young Europeans are running to the Islamic State which promise a change to restore the dignity of Muslims dignity and whose agenda is to destroy dictators and sheiks who are in cohort with the international system and are all corrupt and intent on enriching themselves, instead of taking care of their youth.

What can young people think of President Erdogan of Turkey building a presidential palace with 1,000 rooms or the European Central Bank inaugurating headquarters which cost 1,200 million euro, just to give two examples? And what of the fact that the 10 richest men in the world increased their wealth in 2013 alone by an amount equivalent to the combined budgets of Brazil and Canada?

This generational change should be a transversal concern for all parties but what is happening instead is that the welfare state is continuing to suffer cuts. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), young people in the 18-23 age group will retire with an average pension of 650 euro. What kind of society will that be?

Without the safety net now being provided by parents and grandparents, how can young people in such a society avoid feeling left out?

We always thought young people would fight for social change, but what if they are now doing so from the right?

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

There is rising anger among trade unionists, environmentalists and civil society groups in Gabon after a wood company, Rain Forest Management (RFM), sacked 38 fixed-term workers last month in Mbomao, Ogooué-Ivindo province.

RFM, a Gabonese wood processing company with Malaysian investment, is one of several exploiting the rich natural forests in Gabon. The forestry sector is the country’s second source of foreign exchange after oil.

RFM and the woodworkers had been locked in a lengthy dispute over working conditions, lack of contacts and legal working hours, among other complaints.

According to the Entente Syndicale des Travailleurs du Gabon (ENSYTG) union, RFM refused to negotiate with them and workers who were planning to take part in trade union meetings were threatened and intimidated.“Although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity” – Forests Monitor

After numerous threats and charges of intimidation, on Feb. 17, as the employees were returning to work, RFM called on police to evict them from their company-supplied dormitories, claiming that the workers had violated company rules.

The dismissals were linked to worker protests over poor working conditions, unsanitary housing infested with rats, cockroaches and snakes, demands for legal working hours and payment of wages on time.

Léon Mébiame Evoung, president of ENSYTG, told IPS that the workers were simply calling on the company to respect basic rights and provide a pharmacy and an infirmary that should be managed by competent Gabonese health professionals.

RFM failed to meet any of these demands, said the union official. Instead, it decided to execute its earlier threat by firing all protesting workers.

The action has provoked the ire of civil society groups and syndicates, including Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWINT), which is circulating an online petition to help the strikers’ return to their jobs.

Marc Ona Essangui, founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon, a network of NGOs, told IPS in an online interview that he could not accept such “gross suppression” of workers’ rights. “I have signed up to the call to protect the workers,” he said.

“I strongly protest against the dismissal of these workers, which is clearly linked to their strike action,” he insisted. Such anti-union activities, he added, violate International Labour Office (ILO) conventions 87 and 98 (on freedom of association and the right to organise and bargain collectively, respectively).

Along with other environmentalists in the region, Essangui – who once received a suspended sentence for accusing a presidential ally of exploiting timber, palm oil and rubber in Gabon’s “favourable agri-climate” – is troubled by risks to the region’s natural forests due to development activities.

The Gabonese government and international donors, however, regard the exploitation of timber as central to the country’s macroeconomic development.

According to Forests Monitor, an NGO that supports forest-dependent people, “although Gabon’s forests are often described as being relatively undamaged and offering great potential for long-term sustainable timber production, it is clear that industrial forestry within the current policy framework threatens their future integrity and the country’s biodiversity.”

The NGO notes that “production levels are already considerably above the official sustainable production estimates and are set to continue rising”, meaning that “the contribution which forestry sector revenues make to the country’s population as a whole and to people living in the locality of forestry operations is questionable.”

On its website, the World Resources Institute (WRI) notes that “nowhere is the pressure (on resources) more intense than in Gabon, a nation with 80 percent of its territory covered by dense tropical forest. With resource use demands spiralling in recent years, Gabon urgently needs better forest management planning if the government is to achieve its goal of becoming an emerging economy while preserving the country’s natural resources.”

RFM’s woodworking factory lies at the centre of three national parks – Lope, Crystal Mountain, and Ivindo – and to the east of Libreville. The park area is a small fraction of the land marked for development on a WRI map. The wood used by RFM is locally sourced.

Established in 2008, RFM produces windows and doors for the Gabonese domestic market. It exports semi-finished products to Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The company employs more than 700 workers, with a Gabonese majority.

Since November 2009, when log exports were banned, the formal economy production of processed wood has increased significantly.

According to a WRI report titled ‘A First Look at Logging in Gabon’, compiled by seven Gabonese environmental organisations, “Gabon has vast forest resources, but rapid growth of logging activity may threaten those resources. If managed properly, Gabon’s forests could offer long-term revenues without compromising the ecosystems’ natural functions.”

However, the authors continued, “(we) found information about forest development unreliable, inconsistent, and very difficult to obtain. We believe that more public information will promote accountability and transparency and favour the implementation of commitments made to manage and protect the world’s forests, which would significantly slow forest degradation around the world.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

Children such as these are used as smugglers across the India-Bangladesh border. Credit: Sujoy Dhar/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 8 2014 (IPS)

Most of the world’s governments are taking measures to reduce the worst and most hazardous forms of child labour, according to a major report released here Tuesday by the U.S. Labour Department.

In its annual assessment of progress toward eliminating that kind of exploitation, the 958-page report found that roughly half of the 140-some countries and foreign territories covered by the report had made what it called “moderate” advances in the field.“I’m talking about children who carry huge loads on their backs and wield machetes on farms…who scavenge in garbage dumps and crawl in underground mine shafts." -- U.S. Labour Secretary Thomas Perez

Thirteen countries – most of them in Latin America — were found to have made “significant” progress in eliminating the worst forms of child labour during 2013 compared to the year before.

But another 13 nations and territories, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela, were found to have made none at all.

“This report shines a light on children around the globe who are being robbed of their futures, who spend their days and often their nights engaged in some of the most gruelling work imaginable,” said U.S. Labour Secretary Thomas Perez, at the release of the ‘2013 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor’.

“I’m talking about children who carry huge loads on their backs and wield machetes on farms…who scavenge in garbage dumps and crawl in underground mine shafts searching for precious minerals from which someone else will profit,” he said. “Children with munitions strapped to their bodies, pressed into service as combatants in armed conflicts; children who are victims of trafficking or commercial sexual exploitation.”

The report, which consists mainly of specific profiles of the child labour situation and what national governments are doing about it in specific countries and territories that benefit under the U.S. Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) or other trade-boosting programmes, such as the Andean Trade Preference Act or the African Growth and Opportunities Act, has been mandated by Congress since 2002. The report also recommends steps governments can take to improve the situation.

It gains widespread praise from labour and child-welfare activist groups that use it as a way to raise public consciousness and as a source of pressure on foreign governments to do more to eliminate it.

While the Labour Department itself cannot take punitive action against unresponsive governments, the report can influence actions by other U.S. agencies, such as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that can, for example, reduce or eliminate trade benefits in cases of serious violations of international labour conventions.

“Overall, this report has been a fantastic tool for the advocacy community,” said Reid Maki of the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which includes more than two dozen labour, church, consumer, and human rights groups. “It gives us something to measure progress each year and allows countries to compare their performance with others.”

“I think the report is a tremendous achievement,” Brian Campbell of the Washington-based International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) told IPS. He praised, in particular, its treatment of Uzbekistan, whose government has long been criticised for forcing school students to take part in the cotton harvest.

“They demonstrated a lot of courage …by making very clear that not only have children been taken out of school, but also that the whole system is based on forced labour by the government,” he said. “The challenge will be for the other U.S. government agencies to take on this analysis – including the Customs Service which is required to ban imports produced by forced labour.”

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines the “worst forms of child labour” as all forms of slavery, such as debt bondage, child trafficking, and forced recruitment of children in armed conflicts; the use of children for prostitution or pornography; their use of illicit activities, such as the production or trafficking of drugs; and “hazardous work” which, in turn is defined as any that “jeopardises the physical, mental or moral well-being” of a child.

According to ILO statistics, the number of children engaged in the worst forms of child labour or whose age is below the minimum prescribed by national law has fallen from about 246 million in 2000 to 168 million in 2012. The latter figure still accounts for roughly one in every 10 children from five to 18 years old worldwide.

The number of children engaged in “hazardous work” halved – from 170 million to 85 million – over the same period, according to the ILO.

The report divided countries into those where advances in eliminating the worst forms of child labour were “significant”, “moderate”, “minimal”, and none. Progress was assessed according to a number of criteria, including the enactment of laws, efforts at enforcement and co-ordination, the adoption of specific policies, and the implementation of social programmes designed to eliminate the problem, and encourage children to remain in school.

The 13 countries whose progress was deemed “significant” included Albania, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Tunisia, and Uganda.

The CLC’s Maki, who also serves as the director of child labour advocacy at the National Consumers League, called the list “very encouraging.” “Most of these countries have had a lot of child labour problems in the past,” he told IPS.

He noted that “steady progress” had been made over the last several years, in particular. Since 2011, he said, the number of countries that had made “significant” progress had grown from two to 13, while the number with “moderate” advances had likewise increased from 47 to 72.

Conversely, the number of countries and territories with “minimal” or “no” progress has fallen from 82 to 50 – 20 of which were small islands, such as Anguilla, Barbados, Tonga, Tuvalu, and the Falkland/Malvinas Islands with small populations, Maki pointed out.

Besides the DRC, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela, the more-significant laggards in the “minimal” category included Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Serbia, South Sudan, Uruguay, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

One weakness of the report, according to ILRF’s Campbell was its failure to address how the private sector – including powerful multinational corporations — contributes to the worst forms of child labour.

“In the Malawi section, for example, the reports focuses at length what the government has done, but it doesn’t address the contract system of production of tobacco, as implemented by U.S. tobacco companies and their subsidiaries, which is a root cause of the child labour problem there,” he said.

“It’s largely because the Labour Department views its Congressional mandate as very limited; i.e., only what the governments are doing,” he said. “I think they could interpret the scope of the report to include other issues, such as the business practices of companies and how they also contribute to the problem.”

But Maki was more reserved. “If you expand the scope of the report to the business world,” he said, “you might muddy things enough to let the governments off the hook.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com. He can be contacted at ipsnoram@ips.org

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Saudi authorities rounded up more than 4,000 illegal foreign workers at the start of a nationwide crackdown ultimately aimed at creating more jobs for locals, media reported on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of workers have already left the kingdom following a grace period of seven months during which authorities told expatriates that if they did not fix their legal status they had to leave the country or face jail.

Many workers stayed off the streets to avoid checkpoints looking for invalid labour papers as a special task force of 1,200 Labour Ministry officials combed shops, construction sites, restaurants and businesses. Police manned roadblocks to enforce the kingdom’s strict labour rules that make it virtually impossible to remain in the country without an official employee-sponsor.

The campaign reflects a wider drive to trim reliance on foreign workers across the Gulf Arab states, whose rulers fear the changing demographics of the region. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries have aggressively supported proposals to open more jobs for their own citizens, worrying that chronic unemployment could feed dissent and challenges to their power.

“We want more Saudi men and women to work in the private and public sectors,” Saudi Deputy Labour Minister Mufrej Al-Haqbani told reporters Sunday just before the end of an “amnesty” period for the estimated 1.5 million foreigners — about 16 percent of the total nine million non-Saudi work force — who are believed to have violated residency and labour rules by leaving their sponsors, sneaking into the country or simply staying after making the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Workers had until Monday to comply with the law or face arrest and deportation.

A petition in support of a Saudi woman’s right to drive has attracted more than 16,500 names in advance of a weekend campaign in which female motorists are expected to defy the kingdom’s rulers and take to the roads

While some Gulf countries have plentiful oil and gas resources to lavish on relatively small local populations — foreigners outnumber natives about 5-to-1 in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — the pressures on Saudi Arabia stand out. Its 27 million people are more than the populations of all the other Gulf states combined, and its vast oil wealth has not trickled down enough to prevent impoverished areas and slums.

Unlike other places in the Gulf, low-income Saudis are willing to work the types of jobs that have long been held by Indian, Egyptian, Pakistani and Filipino migrant workers, though perhaps not for the same low wages that can be the equivalent of just several hundred dollars a month. Yet unemployment among Saudi nationals has remained stuck at 10 percent for several years, according to the International Monetary Fund. Unemployment among Saudis under 30 years old — about two-thirds of the population — is about three times the national average.

Saudi Arabia promised 120 billion dollars to fund job creation, debt forgiveness, higher public sector wages and social programmes that help young Saudis buy homes, a prerequisite for marriage. It also accelerated its so-called “Saudisation” programme, which seeks to require businesses to ensure that Saudi nationals make up at least 10 percent of the workforce.

But numbers tell another story. Only one-third of the seven million new jobs created over the past decade went to Gulf nationals, according to the International Monetary Fund.

A report in the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National said at least 51 million more jobs are needed by 2020 to avoid a rise in unemployment among Arab Gulf nationals.

Rights groups attack ‘irony’ of Saudi Arabia alleging Security Council double standards as kingdom cracks down on rights.

The Saudi crackdown may whittle down the number of foreign workers, but it may fail to address deeper issues that touch all Gulf nations such as allegations of abuses of domestic help and employment rules that have been harshly criticised by rights groups.

Nearly every worker in the Gulf — from construction sites to board rooms — is directly “sponsored” by an employer who has say over exit visas, residency and work permits. Groups such as Human Rights Watch and the International Labor Organisation have accused employers of violations such as withholding workers’ passports or ignoring their demands. In May, hundreds of construction workers in the United Arab Emirates were sent back to Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries after waging a strike to protest meal costs deducted from their pay.

Any worker who leaves a sponsor without permission to find another job is considered in violation of labour rules.

“The problem on one level is that the migrants keep salary levels low,” Saudi expert and author Karen Elliott House said. “Another problem is that Saudis are either not qualified for the jobs they want or do not want to accept the low salaries of jobs they are qualified to do.”

*Posted under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

The burden of domestic chores and the lack of flexible work schedules limit women’s access to management-level positions in state enterprises in Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

Despite the progress made by Cuban women in education, where they account for 64 percent of university graduates, they continue to have a limited presence in management positions.

“We still face many barriers in access to management-level and executive jobs,” Mirtha Reina Reyes, head of the legal department for the state Construction Enterprise Group in Havana, told IPS.

The 44-year-old lawyer took her current job in 2008 as a way of working closer to home so that she could devote more time to her youngest son, who has Down’s syndrome. “I never imagined that I would be in industry,” said Reyes, who previously worked in a courtroom.

“What is hardest for women is the high cost that comes with being in management jobs,” she said.

She added that women “are too tied down to domestic work, even if they don’t have children or elderly family members to take care of.”

Extended workdays (longer than the regular eight-hour day and sometimes involving weekends), a need for strategies to gain respect as managers or executives, and an excessive burden of domestic chores are among the principal hurdles identified by women managers studied by psychologist Dalia Virgilí.

She is one of the few researchers who use a gender-based approach in the unexplored world of the Cuban state-run business enterprise, currently comprising 2,250 companies, according to 2012 figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).

“There are major inequalities between men and women in the business world, at the executive level and at all other levels,” Virgilí told IPS.

“Women pay higher costs; they face conflicts because they are women, and they are forced to find strategies for keeping their jobs,” she said.

“This is a level to which everyone wants access,” she said. After women gained ground in the world of academia and research, they began to move up in the country’s public enterprises.

These companies, especially in productive areas and tourism, represent the best employment opportunities in Cuba’s depressed economy. In these sectors, workers who have gone through the “sistema de perfeccionamiento empresarial” or “business improvement system” receive performance-based pay and better bonuses.

The system, implemented since last decade with the aim of increasing productivity, autonomy and efficiency, was revised as part of the current economic reforms, which include a focus on giving a boost to state enterprises, according to excerpts published from the latest session of parliament.

Despite the limits they still face, five state companies that are implementing the system in the municipality of Isla de la Juventud – the second largest island in the Cuban archipelago – achieved productivity levels in 2011 that enabled them to pay monthly salaries of more than 550 Cuban pesos (about 22 dollars).

That year, the average monthly salary nationwide was 455 Cuban pesos, an indicator that rose slightly – to 466 pesos – at the end of 2012, according to ONEI. The highest salaries are paid in the construction sector.

While men and women are supposed to receive equal pay, activists and experts warn that in practice women tend to receive lower wages, because they tend to miss work more often to take care of their children and older relatives. They also have less access to high-income jobs.

The International Labour Organisation reported a reduction of the gender-based salary gap between 2008 and 2011 in countries where statistics were available, which did not include Cuba. However, this reduction was not always caused by better conditions for women; sometimes it was due to fewer men obtaining jobs due to the global crisis, the ILO reported.

“When Cuban women obtain business management positions, they and their families are economically empowered,” Virgilí said. “The potential of women in that sector is not being fully exploited, even though they graduate from their higher education studies with better grades than their male counterparts.”

Cuba’s public enterprises need to make changes to fully incorporate women, she said. “We find women in an identity crisis because they feel like they need to become men when they become managers and executives, and they encounter serious difficulties in reconciling their work and home lives,” she added.

The changes that she proposed include: less masculinised management styles, a ban on the extended workday, advocating women for management jobs, gender training, and recreational activities for personnel that include families.

In addition, more changes are needed for working toward gender equality within families, changing sexist mentalities, and ensuring better services for the care of children and the elderly, Virgilí said.

But not all women managers have the same story.

Consuelo Díaz, an oil industry manager, told IPS that she experienced “certain moments” of discrimination when she started her business career. “But following my own firm ideas, without losing sensitivity or respect, day after day gave me key elements for success.

“I’m very demanding when it comes to quality work performance, but I never allow mistreatment or rudeness. I have never used profanity in addressing my workers,” said Díaz, an economist who has worked for almost 30 years in different management jobs in a liquefied gas plant, where most of the employees are men.

Ensuring that women, youth and other marginalised groups are employed is a challenge in combating poverty. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Walter García and Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 19 2013 (IPS)

In the aftermath of the global economic crisis and with three years to go until the 2015 deadline of the Millennium Development Goals, global leaders are struggling to formulate a post-2015 agenda that can address the widespread dilemmas of employment and inclusive growth.

At a meeting attended by global leaders, ambassadors and civil society to discuss the post-2015 agenda last Friday, panellists agreed that better and more job opportunities are high priorities that must be included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Created in 2000 at the Millennium Summit, the MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education and improving maternal health.

At the meeting, speakers critiqued a report on jobs and growth issued by the high-level panel for post-2015, co-chaired by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Civil society leaders found the report too conservative, as it failed to properly address structural issues and income inequality.

For people under the age of 35, the desire for employment opportunities is particularly high. According to data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), unemployment increased from 170 million people in 2007 to 200 million people in 2012, 75 million of them young people.

To give experts a better understanding of global workers’ views on employment and growth, people were consulted through World We Want, an online platform.

The information they shared was “well-rounded and insightful”, Selim Jahan, director of poverty practice at UNDP, told IPS, and revealed civil society’s seemingly inherent, if surprising, understanding of the risks and issues at hand regarding jobs and growth.

“These are no economists we are talking about. These are not policymakers. But people talked about macroeconomic policies and…different measures to deal with inequality, about measures to deal with education and skill training,” he said.

Their ideas and comments reveal the myriad and complex issues people face in securing and keeping a job. One World We Want user, an executive assistant from Brazil, believed a more open dialogue about HIV/AIDS to be vital in job development.

“[There should be] government incentive for companies [and] tax deduction to hire HIV employees. We still suffer [from] prejudice. We still need to keep this disease as a secret to maintain the job,” the user, who remained anonymous to protect his or her identity, said.

For another user from India, renewable energy was an integral part of future development.

Challenges to job creation

Strong population growth presents a huge challenge for future job creation. With the world labour force growing by 40 million people a year, according to the report, 470 million new jobs will have to be created from 2016-2030 to keep up with the demand for work.

Engaging women, youth and other marginalised groups in employment is another difficulty, with a huge gender disparity in some regions. In the Middle East and North Africa, the gaps are the biggest, with male employment at around 60 percent and female employment hovering around or below the 20 percent mark.

While bringing more women into employment could require a shift in cultural norms, the low numbers of employed women in the MENA region also has to do with the way data is collected, Martha Chen, international coordinator at Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), told IPS.

“In the MENA region, it may also be the case that there are a lot of women doing home-based work and other forms of [paid] employment that do not get captured in the official statistics,” Chen added. “So the gap may not be as big as we think, but the problem may be that women’s work is not being fully captured.”

“It’s a mindset of those who do the interviewing and those who design the questionnaires,” she pointed out. “It’s a mindset about what…work [is], and the fact that women can be doing work in the home.”

“I think there [are] probably a lot of women in their homes doing something for the market, not just for subsistence,” Chen noted.

Youth are not the only ones who will be vying for future jobs. An aging population means that older people will also be looking for work.

“Job training, education, jobs, these are all issues important to older people. We don’t just stop living when we reach age 60,” said James Collins, U.N. representative of the International Council on Social Welfare and chair of the Committee on Aging in New York.

“As governments raise the retirement age, it’s very important that at the same time, they improve access to employment for older people who want to work,” Collins added.

Indigenous students learning to operate equipment at a communications workshop. Credit: Courtesy of PCSAN/Daniela Silva

By Clarinha Glock
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, May 21 2013 (IPS)

Indigenous communities in remote areas of Brazil have begun to recognise that they have the right to not be hungry, and are learning that food security means much more than simply having food on the table.

Rosiléia Cruz, 19, dreams of studying journalism. She chooses her words carefully during her interview with Tierramérica* by mobile phone from Tabatinga, in northwest Brazil, which can only be reached by plane or river travel.

Cruz is a member of the Ticuna indigenous ethnic group, one of the most numerous in the country. The Ticuna live in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, in the Alto Solimões region around the river of the same name, near the borders of Peru and Colombia.

The lands of their ancestors were invaded for decades by “seringueiros” (rubber tappers), fishermen and loggers, who left poverty and destruction in their wake.

Up until three years ago, young people like Cruz had few prospects, and many sought relief in alcohol and even suicide.

But in January 2010, the Joint Programme on Food and Nutrition Security for Indigenous Women and Children opened a window of hope, with activities aimed at creating agricultural and other nutritional solutions, but with particular emphasis on training and awareness raising.

Cruz forms part of a group of 50 young people from Ticuna and Kokama indigenous communities participating in communications workshops held in local schools. At the Umariaçu II community school in Tabatinga, she learned how to conduct interviews, take photographs, and produce daily news billboards and radio programmes.

She was thrilled by the opportunity to handle a microphone or camera in order to question the village chief about community problems, explain the importance of breastfeeding to mothers-to-be, or inform children about healthy habits, soft drinks, processed foods and the fruits of the region.

“There are a lot of young people that we can rescue from alcoholism,” she said. “We just prepared a news report on ‘Indian Day’ (a Brazilian holiday celebrated every Apr. 19) and I’m going to participate in Indigenous Babies Week.”

The aim of the workshops is to motivate young people to promote and defend their rights. An agreement with a local television station made it possible for the youngsters to be trained in the use of the equipment donated by the joint programme. The radio station in Tabatinga provided them with space in its Saturday programming schedule so that they could broadcast their own radio show.

The group also uses loudspeakers mounted on posts in their villages to get their message across. The daily news billboards are displayed on the walls of medical clinics and schools, and internet workshops have provided them with the skills to run their own website, which will be launched on May 21.

Once all the workshops are completed, the participants will share what they have learned with other students. Partnerships with local governments, universities and indigenous organisations will ensure continuity, and the internet will serve as a platform to disseminate the results, expand communication and inspire other young people.

These experiences form part of a wider project to help Ticuna and Kokama communities to organise in order to demand health care, education and economic and political participation.

The joint programme is an initiative of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Achievement Fund, set up with a financial contribution from the government of Spain and administered by various United Nations agencies, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in partnership with the Brazilian government.

Now in the stage of collecting data and evaluating results, since it will conclude in June, the programme focused on the municipalities of Tabatinga, Benjamin Constant and São Paulo de Olivença in the northwestern state of Amazonas, and the municipality of Dourados in the southwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, which are home to a combined total of 53,000 indigenous people.

These areas were chosen because of their high rates of malnutrition, substance abuse and violence, as well as their remote and difficult-to-reach locations. It is hoped that the positive results expected can be extended to other regions of the country, Fernando Moretti, the national coordinator of the joint programme, told Tierramérica.

In the three and half years since the programme was launched, International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples has been translated into the Guaraní, Terena and Ticuna languages. Brazil ratified the convention in 2002, but its implementation remains a challenge.

Another concrete outcome was the publication of a book that shares the perceptions of 25 children and adolescents in villages in Mato Grosso do Sol and neighbouring Paraguay on food and nutrition security. The book, which includes photographs, letters and artworks, will be distributed in a Portuguese-Guaraní bilingual edition to schools, libraries and cultural centres.

“When we talk about food security, it is not simply a matter of food production, but also of training in health and self-esteem,” said Moretti.

The activities are aimed at motivating people to use the region’s biological and agricultural diversity sustainably.

Communities were provided with rural technical assistance and guidance for the establishment of agro-forestry systems, which combine farming with sustainable use and recovery of local forests, and of school gardens. In Dourados, indigenous farmers reintroduced yerba mate – used to prepare a hot beverage widely consumed in southern Brazil and neighbouring countries – and other native plant species with significant commercial potential.

In the village of Panambizinho, two plant nurseries were constructed, and the local residents learned how to make eco-friendly stoves that use less firewood, thus preserving the forest, and reduce harmful smoke emissions.

There were also discussions of concepts and practices related to healthy eating and disease prevention. Awareness raising and the creation of opportunities allowed the project to grow naturally, said Moretti.

Some families created gardens in their homes. Indigenous community members were trained to measure and weigh babies and children in order to provide data on these populations to the Food and Nutrition Security System.

In Alto Solimões, the ILO is supporting an association of craftspeople with a market study to help their products reach buyers.

For Moretti, what was most important was strengthening institutions and expanding interaction with the indigenous population. From now on, there will be two indigenous representatives on the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security, the agency responsible for implementation of the Zero Hunger policy launched by the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration (2003-2011). Indigenous community members are also organising to participate in municipal councils.

In Dourados, the National Indigenous Fund and UNICEF organised a colloquium in order to create a network for the protection of indigenous children and adolescents and to define the measures to be adopted in cases of abuse, abandonment and alcoholism. A similar event will be held with communities in Alto Solimões on Jun. 17-19.

An ethnic mapping exercise was also conducted, which included the identification of what is produced in each region. “These are tools that the indigenous people themselves will be able to use,” stressed Moretti.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

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