One in 12 of the world's children is involved in the worst forms of child labour, including slavery, forced labor, hazardous work, militant action and the commercial sex industry, according to a report published Monday by the U.N. child welfare agency, UNICEF.

UNICEF UK said that globally, 352 million children aged 5 to 17 are engaged in some type of work, including 211 million who work in family homes or farms.

Ninety-seven percent of all working children live in developing countries; in Africa alone, nearly half the children between 5 and 14 are working, the agency said.

The report said children are driven into work and exploitation by poverty and inadequate education, exacerbated by the effects of HIV and AIDS.

"One way to put an end to the exploitation of children ... is by taking action to make poverty history and ensuring a commitment to more and better international aid," said David Bull, executive director of UNICEF UK, in a statement.

He noted that more than 30 years ago, the world's richest countries agreed to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income for development assistance.

"Yet today only five countries - Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden - are fulfilling their promise," he said. "One billion children around the world are still living in poverty and this is an unacceptable injustice."

Bull said Britain had shown "significant leadership" by committing to meet the 0.7 percent target by 2013, "but we are now calling for a firm pledge to reach this target before 2013 because it will really make a difference to children's lives.

"By 2013, still only half of Africas children will complete primary school and one in six will die before their fifth birthday."

UNICEF UK says that in the 43 countries with an average annual income of US$500 or less per person, the percentage of children in child labour is usually 30-60 percent, while in countries where income is between US$500 to US$1000, the percentage of child labourers drops to between 10 and 30 percent.

Globally, an estimated 114 million children of primary school age are not enrolled in school, depriving one in five children of an education.

UNICEF says children are exploited wherever there are gaps in the structures created to protect them.

Even in developing countries, they are often exposed to unacceptable risks; in Britain, for example there are large holes in the protection provided for children trafficked into the country from abroad to work.

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?tl=1&display=rednews/
2005/02/21/build/world/33-childlabor.inc

As the World Trade Organisation launches a review of trade policy in Paraguay, the ICFTU today publishes a report underlining a series of shortcomings in the application and enforcement of core labour standards in the Latin American country. The report, submitted to the WTO for consideration alongside their trade review, highlights absence of respect for trade union rights, discrimination and child labour as particularly problematic in the country.

A significant number of restrictions on trade union rights still exist today in Paraguay. In particular, the minimum requirement of 300 workers to form a trade union, coupled with excessive demands on potential trade union officers and difficult registration procedures heavily impinge on trade union activity in Paraguay. In addition, authorities fail to apply effective sanctions to prevent trade union discrimination, and harassment and unfair dismissals continue.

Discrimination in employment and wages is another failing of the country’s system. The few available statistical indicators show a large wage gap between men and woman, and that less than 10% of women are employed in public sector posts, professional and technical positions. Segregation in the workplace continues and unemployment among women is higher than among men.

Child labour is prevalent in Paraguay, and some 14% of all children between the ages of 5 and 17 years are employed, mainly working in the agricultural sector on family farms, as vendors or as domestic workers. Child prostitution is also a serious problem. More than a third (34.9%) of all working children between 5 and 17 years do not attend school.

Full report

http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991221569&Language=EN

Children's advocates are seeking to turn up the pressure on the World Bank to include children's rights in its poverty reduction strategies, used by some 70 low-income countries.

Under the World Bank's current model for poverty reduction, any country seeking assistance from the bank or its sister agency, the International Monetary Fund, must draft a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The papers should prioritise ''macroeconomic, structural, and social'' strategies to reduce poverty using input from civil society, according to the lending agency's Web site.

But for years, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and U.N. agencies have complained of being unable to get the bank to fund a number of socially related projects that protect the rights of children.

That difficulty has been among the signs that ''the world power structure is not organized in favor of kids,'' said Annie Leatt, a programme manager at the Children's Institute in South Africa who took part in a conference here this week on children and poverty.

Children's rights are broadly defined in Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child as ''the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social development.'' The United States and Somalia are the only countries in the world not to have ratified the treaty.

One billion of the world's 2.2 billion children currently live in poverty and 3,900 die every day because they lack access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency.

Participants in the conference, which ended late Wednesday, urged the World Bank to focus its programmes on services required to keep people out of poverty in the long run, and not simply on boosting poor families' incomes.

Education, for example, can break the cycle of poverty that passes between generations, said Rosalia Cortes, principal researcher at the Latin American social scientists' association FLACSO. However, she added, the bank's strategies do not help poor families develop the environment necessary for their children to attend school regularly

''In Latin America, poverty and welfare programmes don't address these issues. They just transfer money to the head of the household'' with no way to ensure how the money is spent, Cortes said.

While this system ''has contained social unrest,'' new studies show it has not raised school attendance nor increased job opportunities over the long term, she added.

The result ''is a continuation of a long-term pattern of low education, low skill, and low opportunity for employment,'' circumstances which then transfer to the children, Cortes said.

Howard White, senior evaluation officer in the bank's internal evaluation department, acknowledged that PRSPs are not based on a child rights model and said reference to children's rights likely could not be found in the strategy papers.

''On the other hand, I would say that approach is implicit,'' White told IPS. While some people use the concept of children's rights to include things like abolishing child labour, White said, the bank's broad focus ''is on the things that matter most.''

''For example, Bangladesh has reducing under-five mortality as one of the goals of the PRSP, and reducing child malnutrition,'' he said, adding that ''the biggest deprivation is having your children die.''

White further said that there might be some countries with specific groups of children that fall out of the Bank's reach. He largely attributed this to flawed data.

The bank bases its poverty strategy in large part on income-related poverty data gathered by household. This results in ''incomplete poverty analysis,'' White said, because it does not include poor children not living in households. For example, ''a bank survey in Mauritania did not cover nomads or street children,'' he said.

This is the ''nature of the way data is collected'' White said, and is not a matter of oversight. Children missed by the data, he added, while varying between countries, only amount to a maximum of 5 percent of the population..

White suggested that if people wish to raise other children's issues, these should be dealt with outside the PRSP framework. If this is not possible, then ''perhaps the PRSP should take notice of other issues,'' he added.

Children's rights advocates, however, said the PRSP model had become their focus largely because it casts a shadow over virtually every aspect of development policymaking at country level.

Their governments would not look at programmes that did not fit the PRSP model, they said, so how could NGOs and U.N. agencies work on children's rights outside that framework?

''PRSPs may not be perfect but within this imperfection lies the space to do something,'' said Jeffrey Maganya, an advisor on poverty, social, and economic rights to The Cradle, a Kenya-based children's foundation.

''When money gets allocated to a ministry you have a space. All policies get interpreted then implemented,'' Maganya said. But first, ''they have to decide on the definition of 'poor' or of 'marginalisation'. At that stage, let's be there to tell them what is 'poor'. Then you don't have to wait for the World Bank to review the poverty reduction report two or three years down the line.''

There also is some hope of closer cooperation between the bank and U.N. agencies. Uganda's PRSP, for example, is linked not only to national poverty reduction goals but also to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which broadly address child poverty, said Monique Segarra, an international development specialist and professor at U.S.-based Vassar College. (END/2005)

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28491

The number of children at work in Morocco is falling but the kingdom must do more to address the problem affecting 600,000 children, an official report said on Tuesday.

"Child labour is declining in Morocco," said a joint report by the government, UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation released at a seminar on child labour.

The number of children at work fell 4 percent from 1991 to 2001, the report said, because of efforts by the government to increase schooling opportunities for them.

The vast majority of the children work in the agricultural sector, but also in the textile industry making carpets.

Morocco is ranked 125th in the latest U.N. human development index based on education and public health and life expectancy.

The North African country's social indicators, such as illiteracy, are far worse in rural areas where a little less than half of the country's 30 million people live.

Fighting child labour will require efforts from local aid groups and parents, and not only the government, said Labour and Professional Training Minister Mustapha Mansouri.

"This is a major challenge for the Moroccan government. We have to get drinking water, electricity, schools and hospitals in our rural areas," Mansouri told Reuters on the sidelines of the seminar in the capital Rabat.
In 1999, the government launched a strategy to reduce child labour by raising the minimum schooling age, he said.

According to the report, 84 percent of working children are based in rural areas. More than half have never been to school and neither have their parents.

Some of the children work up to 61 hours a week in dangerous conditions, with a survey of 3,500 working children showing only 3 percent of them work in a safe environment, the report said.

Girls represent the majority of children at work, especially as housemaids in cities.

A study earlier this year revealed that 36 percent of women who were raped in Morocco last year worked as maids.

http://www.reuters.co.za/locales/c_newsArticle.jsp;
:426e6e7e:35d7a6753d2a66d?type=topNews&localeKey=en_ZA&storyID=8300448

Human rights activists called on Southeast Asian governments on Tuesday to crack down on sex tourism and child trafficking, saying the problem was becoming more rampant.

Experts and rights workers said more women and children in Southeast Asia were being trafficked to feed the appetite of sex tourists.

"There must be a co-ordinated and co-operative effort if we are to succeed in eradicating human trafficking, especially child sex trafficking from this region," said Vitit Muntarbhorn, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on child prostitution.

"It is most timely for ASEAN countries to tackle the issue in view of its recent declaration against trafficking," Muntarbhorn told Reuters.

ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations, includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

ECPAT, an international non-governmental organisation working to stop the commercial sexual exploitation of children, said there were more than 1 million child prostitutes involved in sex tourism in Asia, of which 300,000 were in Thailand, 100,000 in the Philippines and Taiwan and 40,000 in Vietnam.

"Many of them are tricked into the trade, it is easy to do so because the women and children are young, illiterate, vulnerable and gullible," Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation fighting against human trafficking, told Reuters.

The U.S. State Department estimates about 600,000 to 800,000 people -- mostly children and women -- are trafficked across national borders annually.

Girls from the villages of Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines are lured into cities or neighbouring countries with promises of lucrative jobs as waitresses and domestic helpers, only to end up in massage parlours and karaoke bars.

Others are flown as far as Australia, Japan, South Africa and the United States to be kept as slaves in brothels -- beaten, drugged, starved or raped in the first days of their reclusion to intimidate and prepare them for clients, the experts say.

Sex tourism is a profitable business. Data provided by the International Labour Organisation showed that 2 to 14 percent of the gross domestic product of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand comes from sex tourism, experts said.

"We can't just look at the supply factor. The picture would be incomplete without recognising that the sex market involves both local and foreign demand," Muntarbhorn said.

"We have to address sex tourism squarely to stamp out sex trafficking."

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=
5722826&cKey=1114521622000

Delegates meeting in Madagascar this week are expected to tackle the often-neglected issue of child rights in western Indian Ocean island countries.

The three-day conference, which started on Monday, brings together child rights advocates from Mauritius, Comoros, Seychelles and Reunion to discuss ways of dealing with the causes and impact of violence on children.

Recommendations from this sub-regional meeting are expected to contribute to a global study on violence against children, mandated by the United Nations Secretary General in 2001 for completion in 2006.

Participants at the gathering, organised by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), will also review legal and institutional responses to the battle against child abuse.

"We are here to make a difference in the lives of children. We are confident that our discussions during the next three days will cover ground in an area that merits our attention," UNICEF's officer-in-charge, Bashige Bashizi, said in statement on Tuesday.

UNICEF highlighted that, although sparsely documented, family violence existed throughout the western Indian Ocean countries: a 1998 study in Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, found that one in five children had suffered domestic violence.

The meeting is one of the first of a series of joint initiatives launched by UNICEF, the University of Mauritius and the Indian Ocean Observatory for Child Rights, which was set up last year to monitor the situation of children in the region.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/296f64d51030a1c55989141ea7f0f80f.htm

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working for children in Pakistan have stressed the need for a child to be defined as anyone under the age of 18.

Through a study on violence against children submitted to the United Nations, the NGOs have also asked the UN Commission for Human Rights to appoint a special rapporteur on violence against children, monitor the implementation of child protection laws, investigate abuses, and submit recommendations for child protection.

The UN General Assembly had mandated a study in 2003 to raise awareness about violence against children, help understand the causes of violence through data collection and analysis, and to make plans at local, national, regional and international level to curb the menace. In response to the UN mandate, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) and Plan Pakistan conducted the study.

Every individual under the age of 18 is a child, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Pakistan has not been able to evolve a uniform age definition for a child. It is 18 years according to the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) 2000, 15 years according to the Sindh Children Act and the Hudood Ordinance defines it according to puberty. Pakistan normally follows the CRC on the age issue.

The report submitted to the UN commission also demands an end to the violence against children, including corporal punishment in schools, new legislation in consultation with all stakeholders, the state as a protector of child rights, and basic education and shelter for helpless children.

The report stresses reporting on child issues by various stakeholders, investigation into child abuse cases, action against those guilty of abuse and elimination of causes of violence against children including poverty and illiteracy.

The report urges the UN to improve coordination and collaboration among all stakeholders, including UN agencies and governments. UNICEF should lead the campaign for child rights, it says. It asks civil society organisations to gain access to street children, work for the implementation of laws for children, and take note of child right violations at all levels.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_26-4-2005_pg7_14

Ten days ago, an innocuous eight-line press statement found its way into New Zealand newsrooms.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen announced a doubling of the child tax rebate, to be included in the next tax bill. The move would cost $7.2 million a year and could benefit up to 30,000 children, Dr Cullen said.

It sounded like working would become a better deal for children. And on paper, everything looks fine. Working children are entitled to written contracts, paid annual leave and sick leave. They can benefit from mediation in the case of conflicts with employers, receive parental leave payments, and those under the age of 16 cannot work between 10pm and 6am.

But the move has social services sector worried. A Caritas survey found Kiwi children aged 11 and 12 clean other people's houses to help pay for their family's expenses. They work till 1am and are rewarded with alcohol. They get cuts, burns, dog bites and broken bones from their jobs, work without contracts and have never heard of unions.

That is child work in New Zealand.

But the Government is keeping its eye on their tax bill. By mid-year, the amount of income, excluding interest and dividends, that a child can earn tax-free will increase from $1040 to $2340 a year.

The Government will adjust a rebate that was last reviewed in 1983, improve Labour's image among voters, and, according to Victoria University senior lecturer in public policy Robert Stephens, reduce the Inland Revenue Department's workload significantly. "Every dollar of earnings is effectively taxed at source. It is a lot of work for IRD to get the money, and they get very little from it. And many (young taxpayers) could claim some of the tax back – getting the low-income tax rebate (which would lower) the tax rate to 15 per cent.

"So why not get rid of all this administration and compliance cost hassle and increase the rebate?"

Yet this win-win situation may ultimately turn sour for those who are the most vulnerable.

Caritas, a Catholic social justice agency, is concerned the move, while long overdue from a tax perspective, may increase children's participation in a workforce that does not adequately protect them from harm.

A survey of 5000 working children in 2003 showed some used heavy machinery, carried excessive loads and were injured on the job. This was not being picked up by the Labour Department.

"The main issue for us is that there seems to be little active enforcement of guidelines," Caritas spokeswoman Lisa Beech said.

Another concern was that children from poor homes would be encouraged to work at the expense of their studies and time off.

The Caritas survey showed almost 40 per cent of children from poorer homes worked to supplement family income.

And a higher percentage of 10 to 12-year-olds than older age groups tended to pass on their earnings to their family.

The study also showed the lack of proper employment agreements and union coverage meant some employers were exploiting children, paying them less than $2 an hour. One in four children reported pay rates of less than $5 an hour. Current guidelines for children's employment were not being enforced in many areas, including restriction on children's use of machinery and working after 10pm.

Another concern was the number of children reporting accidents and those under 14 working unsupervised.

"We are reluctant to see anything that will increase children's participation in the workforce without improvements in the protection of children at work," Ms Beech said.

Mr Stephens said the rebate might achieve the wrong results. Well-off parents might attempt to divest assets to their children in order to receive the tax exemption, and it was likely some children would work and supplement the family income rather than study.

"Whether the tax exemption will make a big difference is unknown. I suspect not, partly due to ignorance of the exemption change," he said.

Action for Children and Youth Aotearoa says discussing tax breaks misses the point – it is far more urgent to enforce or strengthen existing legislation protecting children.

Chairwoman Alison Blaiklock said the present legislation was inadequate and lacked controls. Increasing the tax exemption, and thus the incentive to work, meant young children could be working very long hours.

"We have no minimum age of employment, no minimum wage for children under 16, and no maximum hours of work. That's against International Labour Organisation recommendations and surprising when you look at the trend for adults. There needs to be a system to protect children from being exploited."

Children's welfare was not high enough on the political agenda, though there were clear economic arguments for investing in them, she said.

Comparing New Zealand with other industrialised countries showed a higher mortality rate from injuries, suicide and transmittable diseases, a wider poverty gap, a higher number of teenage mothers and lower rates of teens in education.

Ms Beech said that arguing, as the Government did, that further restrictions on child labour were not necessary was misguided. "The work situation of children in New Zealand is of concern to the Human Rights Commission."

Not that the Labour Department shows a lack of interest in consulting child organisations – rather, it seems to be following its own agenda on child employment, with welfare associations largely unaware of policies and plans.

A long-awaited consultation meeting with Caritas last month was cancelled – and so far, no replacement date has been set.

<http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3260237a1864,00.html>

As the United Nations urged Nepal's government and Maoist rebels to leave school children out of the insurgency that has claimed over 11,000 lives since 1996, UNICEF said Monday the Himalayan kingdom would have difficulty meeting a global goal of getting an equal number of girls and boys in schools.

''The gender gap in South Asia is still unacceptably wide, with 80 per cent of boys in school compared with only 75 per cent of girls,'' said UNICEF's latest 'Progress for Children' report, focusing on gender parity in primary school attendance.

''The countries with the widest gender gaps in the region are Pakistan, where UNICEF projections for 2005 show a gender parity index (GPI) of just 0.83, and Nepal, 0.89,'' said the report.

Gender parity index is the ratio of girls' to boys' net primary attendance - the number of girls for every 100 boys attending primary school. A GPI of 1.0 represents 100 girls for every 100 boys in school. Between 0-1 indicates a disparity in favour of boys; greater than 1.0 indicates a disparity in favour of girls.

The world has made impressive gains towards getting equal numbers of girls into primary schools as boys. Some 125 out of 180 countries for which data were available to UNICEF are on course to reach gender parity by 2005 - a target set by the U.N. as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Yet according to UNICEF, the global average masks huge pockets of inequity. Three regions identified by the U.N. - Middle East/North Africa, South Asia and West/Central Africa - will not meet the gender parity goal.

Countries are considered on course to meet the 2005 goal if their GPI is between 0.96 and 1.04.

According to Nepal's Ministry of Education, there are 3.08 million children from the ages of five to nine in the country. Out of this number, 486,000 are not in school - of which 372,800 are girls.

Gender parity is a prerequisite if the world is to achieve universal primary education by 2015, the target date set by the UN for a key Millennium Development Goal.

The other MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger, reduction of child mortality by two-thirds, cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters, promotion of gender equality, and reversal in the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

''The reality is that we are not going to get all nearly half a million children to school in 2005,'' Samphe Lhalungpa, chief of UNICEF Nepal country team's education and child protection section, told IPS in an interview, as the new school year began last Friday.

The harsh fact is that Nepal faces a crisis in what many observers say is a looming civil war. And bearing the brunt of it are innocent school-going children.

''Many children in Nepal are growing up in an environment shaped by guns, bombs, bandhs (strikes), killings, the sight of dead bodies and the fear of war, leading them to be preoccupied with thoughts and fear about violence and other psychosocial consequences,'' said a recent report by the New York-based Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict.

''There is a high level of fear of attending school as a result of violence in and around schools, destruction of schools and school closures. Thousands of community schools have been among the local institutions most violated and threatened by the combatants in this civil war,'' added the report.

Nepal's private schools outside the capital, Kathmandu, obeyed on Friday a Maoist rebel order to shut as bombs, planted as a warning, exploded in three empty schools. All of the bombs exploded in rebel-dominated west Nepal, damaging the buildings but causing no injuries.

The Maoists want the institutions to cut fees, scrap singing the national anthem and remove photographs of King Gyanendra as part of their drive to install their own ''people's education'' system.

Gyanendra dismissed the government and imposed emergency rule on Feb. 1 in what he said was a move to tackle the Maoists who are battling to set up a kingless republic in the desperately poor country.

Last Thursday the U.N. released a statement urging the new school year in 2005, to be ''a year where the children of Nepal can learn, grow and play at school without fear and without disruption.''

Lhalungpa said UNICEF was working with Nepal's Education Ministry and non- government organisations to get as many children as possible, especially girls, enrolled in the new school year.

''A whole range of partners are working together for the first time on this kind of level of intensity,'' he said. ''We know there are these kids out of school, we kind of know the districts where they are in. Now our task is to see how many of them we can get into school this year and we will keep on trying to get them in.''

Lhalungpa said UNICEF is focussing on 10 to 12 districts along the Terai plains with India, where for ''reasons of social norms, cultural practices, enormous numbers of girls are out of schools''.

''There you have to basically be strong in your social mobilisation, you have to put your foot down and say girls must go to schools,'' he added. ''Community mapping has to include houses where girls are not in schools and to have a dialogue with the parents as to why they are not in schools, and how we could facilitate that situation.''

In the face of conflict UNICEF Nepal and its working partners are trying to make schools to be accepted as community assets in its 'Welcome to School Project'.

''Only when it is seen as something belonging to the community will the people protect it in times of conflict,'' said Lhalungpa.

''We're trying to create a win-win situation for everybody; the teacher wins, the school wins, the kids win and the parents win - rather than a zero sum game,'' added the UNICEF officer.

Aid workers told IPS, schools in conflict-affected areas have been turned into barracks and used for political meetings and enforced political-indoctrination sessions.

According to Watchlist, child marriages have become increasingly common in Nepal as a result of the armed conflict forcing many girls to leave school.

After Maoists abduct a girl for indoctrination, even if is just for a number of days, she is likely to be rejected for marriage proposals, said the monitoring group.

''As a result, some parents are withdrawing their girls from schools and marrying them at increasingly younger ages to prevent this situation,'' added Watchlist.

http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=28334

The cold streets of Guatemala City witnessed the murder of a 17 years old Guatemalan girl.  The night of April 20, Delfina Elizabeth Chocoj Ruiz was sleeping at a dark alley downtown.    Close to her, a group of teenagers were running away from a man who was persecuting them with a gun.   The teenagers escaped, but one of them, a 17 years old Honduran boy, hided close to Delfina.   The man shot him and Delfina.   She died instantly due to three gunshots that cross over her thin body.   The Honduran boy was also shot, and right now he is fighting for his life at a national hospital.

Investigation and prosecution is in charge of the Public Ministry of Guatemala.    This situation confirms again the violence suffered by Guatemalan society, which affects the most vulnerable population:  children and teenagers, who die day after day at the violent streets.

Social, economical and political crisis in Central America are the reason why hundreds of children run away from their home looking for a shelter in the streets.   Unfortunately, they find destruction, exploitation, rejection and violent death.   During more than two decades Casa Alianza has been denouncing this situation to government and society, but still we have not seen real actions to change children´s situation, even the State of Guatemala was condemned by the Human Rights Interamerican Court to implement an Action Plan to protect street children.   According to recent statistics, an average of two violent murders of children occur every day only in Guatemala City.   Most of these murders remain in impunity.

The violent death of Delfina Elizabeth Chocoj Ruiz is a call to provide a concrete answer to protect children and teenagers from the street, and we hope that Public Ministry authorities make the proper investigation to find the murderer and apply legislation.   Justice is the only way to construct a different society, where children find a hope for their future, instead of a nightmare at the streets.

Recently, Casa Alianza promoted at the Congress of Guatemala the creation of THE DAY OF NO VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS to create a commitment from government and society, and to honor the memory of every child who has been a victim of violence.   For any reason, children and teenagers should live and die in the streets.

© CASA ALIANZA

FOR MORE INFORMATION
comunicacion2@casaalianza.org.gt

Corporal punishment in schools, verbal and physical abuse in homes and institutions, use of children as domestic help, and the increase in the number of young girls working as commercial sex workers were some of the problems that Bhutanese children faced, according to a study commissioned by the UNICEF and the government.

Presented to about 120 teachers, doctors, lawyers, students and representatives of the international community at a two-day consultation in Thimphu on April 21 and 22 the study identified child workers, disabled children, children living in institutions, children in conflict with the law, commercial sex workers and rural children as the most vulnerable group of children likely to suffer violence or be mistreated in some way.

Although Bhutan was free from extreme forms of violence against children incidences, both reported and unreported, showed that violence of subdued forms was still practiced, according to the executive director of National Commission for Women and Children (NCWC), Dr. Rinchen Chophel. “There are certain gender stereotypes which are prevalent in our tradition and culture which can, under various international conventions, lead to a form of violence and abuse of children,” he said.

For example collecting firewood, fetching water, and tending to cattle were everyday chores in a rural home. “But by international norms, engaging a child in any physical work which is stressful and, at times, harmful, is considered an abuse,” said the executive director.

Although Bhutan had been successful in removing corporal punishment in schools and institutions which was viewed as a standard method of punishment, a NCWC survey conducted among rural parents showed that “they have no qualms in meeting out corporal punishment to their children for bad behaviour and other misdemeanours”. “Fear of corporal punishment is the only emotion that can guarantee good behaviour in their children,” the report stated.

Many teachers said that the removal of corporal punishment in schools had affected discipline. “Maintaining discipline among the students has become increasingly difficult with this new practice,” said a high school teacher. “Unless it is replaced by a good alternative in the system it would just be giving freedom to the child.”

Rural-urban migration, economic conditions, undesirable influence of media, and nuclear family systems were viewed as some causes having “negative impact” on children. “Family and community cushions which were afforded to the children in our old system is now beginning to shift towards the nuclear families where children are more vulnerable to negligence by parents and caregivers,” said Dr. Rinchen Chophel.

Meanwhile the Penal Code of Bhutan, 2004 provides provisions to protect children from any form of violence or abuse.

Some participants felt that unless some proper and effective mechanism was put in place and a child protection system established, very little could be done to help the children. “There is general awareness about the basic support system that the children must be given in the society but this has to be turned into productive action,” said one participant.

Student participants from schools in Thimphu and school dropouts said that they found the forum interesting, very relevant, and an eye opener. “I knew nothing about the rights of the child or the kind of abuses children go through in the hands of irresponsible adults,” said a Class XI student of Nima High School, Yenten Thinley.

Both Sherab Thinley and Pema Zangmo of Pemagatsel who were school drop outs said that such a forum should be held in other districts to “make the children understand their rights and responsibilities better”.

Dr. Rinchen Chophel said that it was important to involve children and get their perspectives on issues that dealt specially with them. “Every right comes with responsibilities which the children must understand,” he said. “Its like two sides of a coin. On one side you have the rights and on the other your responsibilities.”

The national consultation programme, organised by NCWC and UNICEF was planned as a part of a series of regional consultation which was undertaken by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan, to carry out a world study on violence against children.

Bhutan will participate at the South Asia regional consultation on violence against children in the last week of May this year in Islamabad, Pakistan. “For Bhutan, it comes at a crucial moment as we are also schedule to present the periodic report on Convention of Child Rights in 2005 at the UN,” said Dr. Rinchen Chophel.

http://www.kuenselonline.com/article.php?sid=5339

The Global Action Week on Education April 24 to April 30, looks at the connection between poverty and education.

IT is school time on a weekday. At the migrant workers' colony in Shanthinagar, Bangalore, Renuka (9), is busy blowing into a three-stone stove outside her plastic tent to cook. At the Gulbarga slum, Anjali (8) is trudging around with her brother Saab Reddy (eight months) at her waist.

Family labour, especially of girls, is the main form of child labour that prevents the realisation of free and compulsory elementary education (F&CEE) despite more than half a century of shifting deadline-setting and fulsome rhetoric for its avowed achievement. Recently, the Prime Minister lamented that more than 50 per cent of children in India still fail to complete F&CEE.

Moment to introspect

The Global Action Week on Education (GAWE), April 24 to April 30, is an opportune moment to introspect on the reasons for this betrayal. Goal Two of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is to "Achieve universal primary education" by 2015, while the sub-goal is to eliminate gender disparity in education by 2005. Given the daily reality of Anjali and Renuka, this sub-goal has already been by-passed. The Centre's own professed goal via Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is to achieve F&CEE for all by 2007.

Groups in India are proposing several actions to focus on the plight of the Renukas and Anjalis of India during GAWE. A look into their lives may provide the reasons for our collective failure. Renuka was in Standard II when her mother ran away. Her father asked her to leave school and keep house and look after her younger brother.

Renuka is up daily at 5.00 a.m., fetches water, washes vessels and cooks a meal, all by 8.30 a.m., to enable her father eat and leave for work by 9.00 a.m. After that, she just chats around till the evening when she has to cook before her father comes home drunk. So what prevents Renuka and her brother from attending the nearby government school from 9.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.? The teachers say, "We never knew about Renuka's problems." There has been no enquiry by an Attendance Authority as per the law to find out why Renuka is not attending school or any attempts to find solutions.

Anjali says, "When Saabu is four years old, I will go to school". Her father, Madappa, cannot work since he broke his leg after being hit by a lorry. Anjali's mother, Bheemamma, is the sole breadwinner. Anjali has to mind Saab Reddy and Marthanda (4) until her mother's return and also do other household jobs. Anjali cannot leave the children at the local "bread school" (the municipal balawadi — so called because the children there are given bread) and attend primary school because it accepts only children above three years and works only up to 1.00 p.m.

"Will you do our housework and look after the younger children if we send the older girl to school?" parents ask the teachers. The teachers have no solution to offer.

The 86th Constitutional Amendment (C.A.), passed in 2002, made elementary education a fundamental right. But there are no laws to implement it to. One draft of a Bill to actualise the 86th C.A. spoke of persuading parents by school development committees and gram panchayats . But the law also needs to say what is to be done if persuasion fails. The central Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act does not ban household labour of children during school hours, though that is the most frequent cause of child labour.

Silent laws

The Indicative Law on Child Labour drafted by the Second National Labour Commission — and several State compulsory education laws too — speak only of punishment of parents (usually with a fine), for a child's non-attendance of school without a valid reason. But this is never invoked even in cases where it could be done, as in Renuka's case. Worse, the law does not say the State's onus if a parent pays the fine but still does not send his child to school. It is also silent on the State's role in cases where the family or child genuinely needs assistance, as in the case of Anjali. There are no penalties on officials for failing to ensure the right to education of any child. The Karnataka High Court in 1997 had given the enlightened ruling that "the state being the guardian of a minor" it should take charge of the child and ensure its rights when parents are unable to fulfil them. This too has never been implemented.

Yet, ministers and officials may be jet-setting, attending international conferences on child labour and Renuka will continue to blow into the stove all her life, and peer helplessly through the smoke of ignorance enveloping her; and Anjali will trudge around with Saab Reddy at her waist, crippled and disempowered by illiteracy, for the rest of her life.

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/04/24/stories/2005042400370400.htm

A "hidden army" of girls - some as young as eight - is being forced to work for armed groups involved in conflicts worldwide, a charity says.

A Save The Children report found over 120,000 girls and young women have been abducted and pushed into conflict.

The charity says they often end up serving as soldiers or performing domestic jobs but almost of them all are forced into becoming sex slaves.

It urged world leaders to do more to stop "the war on children".

Figures released by Save The Children showed that around 6,500 girls have been captured by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo another 12,000 are believed to be involved in armed organisations while another 21,500 (43% of all children fighting) are thought to be associated with conflict in Sri Lanka.

A spokesman for the organisation said the study was not unique to any one country or continent and it showed a worrying global trend.

The report also criticised world leaders and donors for failing to address the problem and said that rehabilitation programmes set up by the international community were considerably underfunded.

Director general of Save the Children Mike Aaronson added: "When people picture conflict they think of men in bloody combat, but it's horrifyingly girls who are the hidden face of war.

"This appalling abuse of girls' rights demands urgent action. Its time to stop the war on children."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4478913.stm

Child rights advocates have banded together in a bid to cope with ongoing concerns about the welfare of Southern Africa's children.

At a recent meeting organised by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Swaziland, delegates from Lesotho, Malawi and South Africa highlighted the need to bolster care programmes targeting children under five years.

"In Swaziland we have begun a network of Neighbourhood Care Points that provide a structure for assisting orphans and vulnerable children. In Malawi they are using a comprehensive approach for all children, not just orphans," UNICEF country director, Alan Brody, told IRIN.

Participants from Malawi said some gains had been achieved through legislation protecting children, while funding from government and the private sector had resulted in an improvement in their nutritional status and school performance.

Swaziland has a population of about 1 million, of which 70,000 are children under the age of 15 who have lost parents to AIDS.

"Despite the breakdown of the family and the extended family [due to the AIDS pandemic], we are fortunate to still have community structures," said Derek Von Wissell, director of the National Emergency Response Committee on HIV/AIDS.

Swaziland's first Neighbourhood Care Points were established in 2002-03 by community members.

"UNICEF gave nothing more than a big cooking pot to them, a few toys and some soap. But as soon as the food appeared in those pots, scores of children appeared from impoverished homesteads ... sometimes with no parents or adults left [because of AIDS] to look over them," said Brody.

Swazi authorities allocated R47 million (US $7.6 million) to the education of orphans and vulnerable children this year, while UN agencies are providing additional assistance through targeted programmes.

"The mix of children at the care points has changed, and most of those we find there now are very young - aged between two and seven. Some of them arrive there already in a compromised state, because their infant care and nutrition has not been adequate," Brody added.

Following discussions with their Malawian counterparts, Swazi officials and NGOs were expected to expand early childhood assistance to all under-five children.

"We need to ensure good early childhood development outcomes for all the children in our communities, but with special emphasis on the most vulnerable," said Brody

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/42db30f329d1620d21a32fb468999dad.htm

The recommendations of the children parliament's fourth round held on April 11-13 on the issue of “Situations of children between legislation and reality” stressed the issue of trafficking Yemeni children into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The children parliament's fourth round was attended by representatives from the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood, the Ministry of Interior, the Committees of Constitutional Rights and Freedoms at the Parliament and representatives from international organizations concerned with the issues of childhood.

The recommendations stated that the government should be responsible for solving the issue of child trafficking, particularly the Ministry of Interior as well as imposing penalties for those found to be involved with children trafficking.

The Children's Parliament urged the Yemeni and Saudi authorities to capture those who traffic children into the KSA and refer them to the court, and conduct medical check-ups on children who returned after being taken to Saudi Arabia.

The recommendations emphasized the necessity of establishing a juvenile police and training police recruits how to deal with children, calling on the concerned authorities to activate the international and local laws related to child rights.

The Children's Parliament was formed three years ago and holds its regular round once a year at the Yemeni Parliament.

The Yemeni Parliament referred the phenomenon of child trafficking over eight months ago to the Committee of Public Freedoms and human Rights, which in turn sent its recommendations to the Council of Ministers. However, a vote has still to be set, despite the fact the suggestions include fighting child trafficking.

The phenomenon of child trafficking has been magnified over the past two years and has increasingly become a matter of serious concern. Recent studies conducted on child trafficking indicate that around 64.4 percent of children smuggled between the ages of seven and fourteen were beaten and sexually abused.

Al-Wasat Newspaper mentioned in issue No. 47 that over 3797 children were trafficked from Yemen into Saudi Arabia in January 2004 while 3741 children trafficked in March of the same year, however there is some doubt about the authenticity of these figures.

http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=835&p=community&a=2

ACTING labour minister Dr Brian Chituwo has said irresponsible sexual behaviour by males is putting young girls at risk of sexual exploitation and HIV infection.

And International Labour Organisation (ILO) director Louis Ndaba-Hagamye has observed that 600,000 children are working under the worst forms of child labour in Zambia.

At the launch of the ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) project on HIV/AIDS induced child labour, Dr Chituwo said negative tendencies by men needed to be dealt with and discouraged if the issue of child labour was to be eradicated.

"This irresponsible sexual behaviour by males to exploit young children is an issue that needs to be addressed. There is a need to sensitise men on these issues because the negative tendencies and practices have put young girls at risk of sexual exploitation," Dr Chituwo said.

Dr Chituwo said millions of children affected by HIV and AIDS faced a high chance of working for their survival.

"This makes such children vulnerable to sexual harassment and manipulation," he said.

Dr Chituwo bemoaned the dimensions of HIV and AIDS that had seen the worst forms of child labour in the country.

He added that cultural practices, gender-based power relations and other inequities that coerced children into providing sexual favours or engaging in survival sex needed to be discouraged.

And Ndaba-Hagamye said 600,000 children in Zambia were involved in the kinds of labour that were hazardous to their health and development.

Ndaba-Hagamye said issues such as child prostitution exposed many children to HIV and AIDS.

He said the launch of the new programme would endeavour to address the deep causes of child labour, as it had become a hindrance to economic development.

Ndaba-Hagamye said there was a need to tackle the vicious circle between child labour and HIV/AIDS through focusing on developing national strategies and withdrawing children from labour.

And Zambia Federation of Employers representative Harrington Chibanda expressed concern that amendments concerning children's rights were taking too long for Parliament to put legislation in place.

He said due to this it was difficult to bring culprits to book because there was no legislation to refer to.

Zambia Congress of Trade Unions president Leonard Hikaumba said the country should brace itself to deal with serious crimes if issues such as poverty were not addressed.

He said many children were forced into labour due to poverty

Hikaumba said when these children did not find work, they would resort to serious crimes in the future.

Zambia is the first country in the world to pioneer this new programme, which will be headed by Dr Yuki Nose of ILO/IPEC

http://allafrica.com/stories/200504210094.html

Pakistan's leading child rights organisation has started renovation work at the main juvenile prison facility in the provincial capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Peshawar. The physical condition of almost all 22 jails in the province is grim, a rights activist told IRIN, with little renovation work having been carried out in more than half a century in most cases.

"This is a part of our overall programme to improve the living conditions of juveniles in prisons throughout the country by providing them with recreational facilities and improving drinking water and sanitation systems," Arshad Mehmood, deputy national coordinator of the child rights' body, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), told IRIN from Peshawar.

According to the SPARC official, out of a total some 256 juvenile prisoners in the NWFP, the juvenile section of Peshawar central jail houses some 193 children in three blocks. Here, renovation is going in with financial support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Jail conditions have long been a major concern for rights activists, since complaints regarding inadequate food, poor sanitation and lack of medical care in overcrowded jails are common, according to the 2004 annual report of a leading human rights body, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

According to an interior ministry report released in June 2004, 73 prisons in the country held more than 80,000 prisoners against a permitted capacity of 35,365 inmates.

Given the prevailing conditions, the HRCP report said, riots erupted in about eight jails across the country on several occasion during 2004. Prisoners in Multan, Faisalabad, and Lahore jails went on hunger strike to protest against inhumane conditions in prisons and the provision of unhygienic food.

As of December 2004, over 2,500 male juvenile offenders were imprisoned in various jails across the country, Mehmood said, noting, "the number of female juvenile inmates is not known since they are counted with adult female prisoners in all four provinces."

The HRCP report appreciated the efforts of the government of Pakistan's most populous province of Punjab to improve the security system, health facilities and food provisions for the prisoners, besides constructing new blocks inside jails.

Rights activists are hopeful about the improvement in jail conditions for both juveniles as well as adults. "Change is there, though at a slower pace, but we just need to put a consistent approach for further betterment," Mehmood noted.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/fe8d3e719b908db3fb22573e1a8a5c7b.htm

In Indonesia there may still be three million child workers engaged in various sectors, according to a report by ANTARA Wednesday.

It quoted Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Fahmi Idris as saying that the Indonesian government has a strong commitment to eradicate the sufferings of child workers.

He made the statement at a meeting with the executive director of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for Standards and Principles and Basic Rights at Places of Work, Kari Tapiola here Tuesday.

ANTARA said many child workers are reportedly employed in many places in Java and Sumatera islands because the two islands have most of the population in the country.

The problem of employment of child workers is mainly caused by minimum education and the low welfare of their families, the news agency said.

In 2001, Indonesia issued a Presidential Decree No 12 of 2001 on a National Action Committee for Eradication of the Worst Form of Suffering of Child Workers, which forbids the employment of children in five sectors, namely at offshore rigs, deep sea diving, prostitution, mining, footwear industry, and narcotics industry.

The ILO also launched a book on the eradication of child labour: A Handbook for Manpower Supervisors.

The handbook had been approved by the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration during the meeting.

When asked about the condition of child workers in Indonesia compared to those in other countries, Kari said the progress of a country cannot be compared to that of another country but the situation in Indonesia is already favourable, as its government is already committed to overcome the problem.

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news_lite.php?id=130209

Migration organization works to free the "fishing boys"

Children who have been released from forced labor in Ghana’s fishing industry are suffering from both physical and mental traumas, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

With support from the U.S. State Department, the IOM has been helping local organizations for more than two years in an effort to liberate children who had been sold into forced labor by impoverished families in Yeji, on the shores of Lake Volta. The project has brought the release of 537 youngsters so far, most recently a group of 107 in February.

In an April 15 briefing, IOM spokeswoman Jemini Pandya said the children are medically fit to attend school, but they will still need a minimum of two years of medical evaluations and treatment to recover. Physically, the children suffer from illnesses such as malaria, and eye, stomach and head ailments; mentally, the youngsters show evidence of post-traumatic stress disorders, the spokeswoman said.

A 2003 article by IOM Project Director Ernest Taylor describes the children’s plight.

The State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs publication Responses to Human Trafficking examines trafficking in West Africa and other parts of the world.

Following are the IOM’s April 15 press briefing notes:
International Organization for Migration
[Geneva, Switzerland]
Press Briefing Notes - 15 April 2005
Spokesperson: Jemini Pandya
Ghana - Severe Toll On Mental and Physical Health of Trafficked Children

The high level of trauma suffered by children trafficked for forced labour into fishing communities in Yeji in Ghana, has resulted in major physical and mental health problems for the victims, according to IOM.

IOM has so far rescued 537 children who had been sold by their impoverished parents to fishermen in Yeji, on the northern shores of Lake Volta. In February 2005, a group of 107 children were rescued and have since spent time trying to recover from their ordeals in a rehabilitation centre in Accra before being reunited with their parents at the end of the month.

Although most of the children have now been declared medically fit to return home and attend school, they will all need a minimum of two years of constant medical evaluations and treatment to fully recover. The most severe illnesses affecting the children are bilharzia, malaria, amoebiasis and chronic eye, stomach and head ailments. In addition, there is evidence of post-traumatic stress disorders, reflecting the acute trauma the children suffered during their servitude. As a result, they will need extensive counselling.

Boys were often forced to dive into Lake Volta’s muddy and dangerous waters to free tangled nets and worked extremely long hours to cast and retrieve nets. Some have died in the process and almost all were regularly beaten and poorly fed.

For the 430 children who have already been reintegrated into their communities, IOM will be running two mobile clinics to provide primary healthcare services. The trauma the children suffered is still having an impact on their physical and mental health and they will need counselling and medical assistance on a regular basis for some time to come.

IOM is preparing to rescue another group of children shortly, but there is no clear picture of the extent of child trafficking into fishing communities in Ghana. Upon IOM’s request, UNICEF has committed to funding two baseline research studies on child trafficking in the Central and Volta regions, both of which begin in June. This programme, which is carried out in cooperation with the Ghanaian authorities is funded by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) of the US State Department.

http://usinfo.state.gov/af/Archive/2005/Apr/19-775995.html?chanlid=af

HIV/AIDS and poverty are the stumbling blocks to achieving the target of gender parity in most Southern African classrooms by 2015, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The latest UNICEF report, released on Monday, indicated that school enrolment statistics in five Southern African countries - three of them with extremely high HIV/AIDS prevalence rates - were not on course for achieving gender parity.

In Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho, children from households affected by HIV/AIDS were often forced to quit school, pointed out Changu Mannathoko, UNICEF's regional advisor. Girls dropped out to run the home, while boys were forced to share the economic burden of the family by working.

Mannathoko noted that Angola and Mozambique, the two countries with the lowest primary school enrolment rates for girls in the region, had emerged from decades of conflict that destroyed rural infrastructure, including classrooms.

Gender parity is a prerequisite for achieving universal primary education by 2015, the target date set by the UN for this Millennium Development Goal (MDG), and is regarded as essential to promoting gender equality and empowering women, another of the eight MDGs. Progress towards this goal is measured by the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education.

"Attempts are being made by Mozambique and Angola to improve access to school for girls, while countries like Lesotho are planning to introduce free primary education," said Mannathoko.

The abolition of tuition fees "has become more generalised in the region since the 1980s - a period of economic austerity - and has proved to be one of the keys of swift progress in primary enrolment," noted the UNICEF report, entitled 'Progress for Children'.

While introducing free or mandatory primary education, countries also had to safeguard the quality of education by building more schools, boosting the number of teachers and ensuring that measures to protect girls from abuse were in place, cautioned Mannathoko.

Poverty was a "fundamental barrier" to increased access to education. "Children from the poorest 20 percent of households in the developing world are, on average, three times less likely to go to primary school than those from the wealthiest 20 percent. This average ratio masks huge disparities between regions and between countries," said the UNICEF report.

To "relieve children from the burden of assisting their households, the social welfare systems in each country has to provide safety nets, such as food packets for vulnerable households," Mannathoko pointed out.

"Education is about more than just learning. In many countries it is a life-saver, especially where girls are concerned," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said at the launch of the report. "A girl out of school is more likely to fall prey to HIV/AIDS, and less able to raise a healthy family."

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/861f167598f0c50c80ae6ddd3a26d5a0.htm

In a “good news-bad news” review on the gender gap in education, a new United Nations report today shows more youngsters than ever going to school, but with millions of girls still excluded, a “quantum leap” – and an extra $5.6 billion a year in international aid – are needed to reach the goal of universal primary schooling by 2015.

The overall increase stems in part from a rise in the number of girls in school, and the gender gap is shrinking globally, but in many parts of the world it still yawns wide, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) “Progress for Children” report.

“This report proves that our strategic focus on getting more girls into school is working to increase attendance rates for boys and girls in primary school,” UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said at its launch in Geneva. “But it also makes clear that a quantum leap is needed both to break down the barriers keeping girls out of school and to make school available to all children.”

Universal primary schooling by 2015 is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that world leaders set themselves at the UN Millennium Summit of 2000, and making it and gender parity a reality will require radical shifts in thinking and policy.

Opening the school gate to all wishing to enter has put a massive strain on already over-burdened resources, hence the need to drastically increase international aid, with UN estimates putting the price tag at an extra $5.6 billion per year.

“The goal of universal primary education with equal opportunity for girls and boys is realistic. It is affordable, it is achievable and what’s more, it’s our children’s birthright,” Ms. Bellamy said. “Education is about more than just learning. In many countries it’s a life-saver, especially where girls are concerned. A girl out of school is more likely to fall prey to HIV/AIDS and less able to raise a healthy family.”

Some 125 out of 180 countries for which data are available are on course to reach gender parity by 2005, a prerequisite for achieving the education MDG, but the global average masks huge pockets of inequity. Three regions – the Middle East and North Africa; South Asia; and West and Central Africa – will not meet the gender parity goal.

At the current rate of progress most countries in the Middle East and North Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean regions are on track to achieving the MDG. At the other extreme most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and many in South Asia will not come close unless they greatly accelerate their rates of progress.

Barriers include poverty, with children from the poorest 20 per cent of households in the developing world on average three times less likely to go to primary school than those from the wealthiest 20 per cent, and lack of a mother’s education, with 75 per cent of those out of primary school coming from mothers who did not go to school.

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS, civil conflict, child labour, child trafficking and natural disasters also have a clear impact on access to schools and all tend to affect countries with already weak educational infrastructures.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=13998&Cr=education&Cr1

Some private schools in Nepal closed on Friday after a Maoist student union demanded they shut down indefinitely or risk attack.

The latest threat comes after an 11-day nationwide strike sponsored by the Maoists to protest against King Gyanendra's move to fire the government and seize power. The strike, which ended on Monday, crippled businesses and transport.

The All Nepal National Free Students' Union (Revolutionary) told private schools in the Himalayan kingdom to close or else. There are about 1.5 million students in 8,500 private schools.

The rebels, inspired by the teachings of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, have been waging a nine-year insurgency to topple the monarchy and create a communist republic.

In Butwal, a business centre 300 km (190 miles) west of Kathmandu, educators said schools did not open on Friday because of rebel threats to bomb classrooms.

"There is no security. We can't take the risk," Raju Gurung, principal of the Siddhi Childrens' school, told Reuters from Butwal, an area where the Maoists have a strong presence.

But in the high-security Nepali capital Kathmandu, a group representing private schools said its members would ignore the threat.

Umesh Shrestha, head of the Private and Boarding Schools Association of Nepal, said Maoist students had sent emails to schools asking them to close.

"They are using children for political purposes," he said.

Some schools in Kathmandu opened on Friday after vacations while others will open next week.

State-run schools were open as usual.

REGULAR CLOSURES
In the past, Maoists have regularly sponsored school closures to demand lower tuition fees and nationalisation of education, and set off bombs in schools when children were not present.

The guerrillas have targeted private schools, saying these attract children mainly from affluent families, including bureaucrats, whom they accuse of exploiting Nepal's poor.

In recent years, the conflict has meant schools in many parts of the country have opened for fewer than half of the 220 days required by law, authorities say.

The United Nations called on both sides to ensure that schools were not disrupted.

"All schools and school grounds should remain free of weapons and explosive devices and free of any political or military activity," the U.N. said in a statement on Thursday.

"Children should not be taken for political indoctrination or recruitment, nor should they be harassed as suspected insurgents or placed in preventive detention," it said.

The Maoists regularly kidnap children for indoctrination and recruitment.

The king seized full power on Feb. 1, saying it was necessary to crush the Maoist insurgency, which has left more than 11,000 people dead since 1996.

He said he had to act because bickering politicians had failed to find a solution to the crisis. In the process, however, he has curbed civil liberties, imposed restrictions on the media and locked up many political figures.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP52859.htm

Heavy penalties are expected to be imposed on the violators of the new law prohibiting the use of child jockeys in camel races, said Dr Ghalia bint Mohamed bin Hamad al-Thani, member of UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. The warning is intended to deter any possible offences at “private” races.

Dr Ghalia told reporters yesterday that the new regulation banning child jockeys had stemmed out of Qatar’s respect to the children’s basic rights, saying that she played a role in drafting the law, putting an end to the use of child jockeys in Qatar.

She denied that there was international pressure behind such measures, saying that the move showed a genuine concern of the leadership to consolidate the status of the child, regardless of his/her nationality. r Ghalia indicated that the law would contain the mechanism of implementation, and protect jockeys aged over 18. It also includes safety measures. The child rights activist said that less than 40 children were engaged as jockeys in Qatar, most of them from Sudan, and a few from Somalia.

Dr Ghalia’s statements came as a five-day training seminar to raise awareness of children’s rights got under way. Officials from the Supreme Justice Council, Public Prosecution, and the ministries of interior, and civil service affairs and housing took part in the seminar. “The seminar is part of Qatar’s obligation to the international agreements signed in 1995 on child rights,” said Abdullah bin Nasser al-Khalifa, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Family Affairs, the organisers of the event.

Frej Fenniche, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Arab Region, called on Qatar to join the international agreements regarding rights on fields like economy, social, culture, civilian and politics. He praised Qatar’s initiative to establish and host the UN regional centre for human rights covering the Arab countries, and Southeast Asia.

Fenniche called for organising seminars on other domains in which Qatar signed, such as the international convention to ban all forms of apartheid, and the anti-torture pact.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=33764&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16

UNICEF has hailed Armenia’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Both were signed by President Kocharyan today after being cleared by the Armenian National Assembly on 21 March 2005.

“The ratification of these two international instrum ents paves the way for the implementation of the country’s ten-year National Plan of Action for Children. It is a key step in ensuring a “protective environment” for Armenia’s children,” says Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative in Armenia.

The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict raises the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities to 18 years from the minimum age of 15 years specified in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It also raises the age of mandatory recruitment to the armed forces from 15 to 18 and the minimum age for voluntary recruitment to 15 years.

”Hundreds of thousands of children are being exploited in conflicts throughout the world,” says Yett. “Through the ratification of this protocol, Armenia pledges to ensure that children in this country will never have to face the prospect of actively participating in hostilities, consequently spending the rest of their lives scarred by conflict.”

The Optional Protocol on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict has been ratified by 89 countries, including Armenia.

ILO Convention 182 calls on the parties to the Convention to take immediate actions to remove all children below 18 from labour that is detrimental to their health and dignity.

UNICEF estimates that 250 million children worldwide are engaged in child labour. Many are working in horrific conditions, working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides and working with dangerous machinery.

“They are everywhere, but they are invisible,” says Yett. “They are toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops and kneeling in the mud of the world's fields.

“Child labour reinforces a cruel cycle of deprivation. On one hand it is symptomatic of widespread poverty. On the other hand, because child labour usually keeps children out of school, in poor health and exposes them to psychological and physical abuse, it reinforces this poverty by keeping yet another generation from fulfilling its potential.”

The new labour code of Armenia adopted earlier this year is largely consistent with ILO Convention 182 and other international instruments regulating child labour.

“UNICEF is working with the Government of Armenia to ensure that all children have access to quality education,” says Yett. “But we also need to work actively at community level so that children and parents see school as a better immediate option than work.”

Armenia is the 154th country to ratify ILO Convention 182.

On 19 March 2005 the Government of Armenia ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. \

http://www.unicef.org/media/media_26000.html

The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, announced Wednesday that Mexico scored only a 5.71 of a possible 10 in a new scale known as "The Index of Mexican Children's Rights,' intended to rank opportunities and development from birth to age 5.

The scale measures health, education, nutrition and other values needed for a healthy childhood. The score released Wednesday reflects conditions for children in 2003, the most recent year for which data is available. Calculated backward, the index would have measured 4.68 in 1998, and 5.25 in 2000, the report said.

"This score opens the debate as to why if Mexico has the technology and money and the capacity hasn't it gotten better?' said Yoriko Yasukawa, a representative for UNICEF in Mexico.

One of the key points, Yasukawa said, is "to think about how to improve incomes.'

The scale is based on government reports on infant mortality, death rates for mother and children, malnutrition and school attendance.

While the measurement suggests a slow but steady improvement in children's conditions since 1998, the goal of UNICEF and the Mexican government is to reach a 7.45 rating by 2010.

The measurement the first of three ratings to be announced applies to children ages 0 to 5 years. Separate rankings will be released later this year for children in the age groups 6 to 12, and 13 to 18.

The ranking varies widely among Mexican states, from 8.10 in the relatively wealthy, northern industrial state of Nuevo Leon, to 2.90 in the poverty-stricken southern Pacific coast state of Guerrero.

"On average, a child born in Guerrero state in 2003 would have one-third the chance of growing up healthy and educated as a child in Nuevo Leon,' the report noted.

The worst results, the report notes, are found in the states with the highest percentage of Indians in their population.

http://www.sgvtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,205~24512~2814847,00.html

Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel were awarded the annual World Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child, chosen by 2.4 million children from around the world, the jury said on Wednesday.

The former South African president and anti-apartheid icon and his Mozambican wife sent their thanks by video. A frail 86-year-old Mandela vowed to continue fighting for children's rights "whether I am alive or in the grave".

The winners of the Swedish award, in its sixth year, are selected by children voting in 10,000 schools from 75 countries. The $100,000 award is divided among the winners for their work to defend children's rights.

"I love children and just want to give them a voice," said Machel, whose 20-year campaign for children has focused on the right of girls to attend school.

Mandela's daughter Zindzi and Machel's daughter Josina were in Sweden to accept the award on their behalf.

Zindzi Mandela said her father, whose foundation helps children in families affected by HIV/AIDS, believed "the soul of a society is reflected in the way it treats its children".

If that is so, the horrors inflicted on many of the 14 child jurors present at the prize announcement- a joyous affair with national costumes and dancing child bands from South Africa and Bolivia- were a ringing indictment of world society.

They included a Ugandan boy soldier, a Mozambican girl crippled by a landmine, a refugee from Western Sahara, a girl from Nepal representing children sold into prostitution, a Vietnamese girl scarred by the defoliant Agent Orange, kids from conflict zones in the Middle East and Colombia, a street boy from Brazil and a bullied Roma girl from the Czech Republic.

"Maybe this will help change things," 11-year-old Railander de Souza from Brazil told Reuters, moved to tears as Swedish children had their pictures taken with him and asked for his autograph.

The jury also honored 20 Kenyan women- the Mothers of St. Rita- who help AIDS orphans, and Bolivia's Ana Maria Maranon de Bohorquez, confined to a wheelchair since the age of two, who has spent 30 years helping street children.

http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-4-13/27838.html

The disarmament effort of the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as MONUC, has brought almost 3,000 minors into the care of child-protection agencies working in the northeastern district of Ituri.

They are doing their best to reintegrate the so-called child soldiers into society, but many end up in trouble.

"In the militia we smoked dope and we shot. I did not mind that others killed people, I am sure they had good reasons to do that," a 15-year-old former soldier told IRIN in March, at a centre for reintegrating children in Bunia, Ituri's main town.

Many of the youngsters were forced to become porters, cooks, cleaners and spies, and "were often victims of daily psychological, verbal and physical violence", according to Massimo Nicoletti-Altimari, head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Bunia.

Officially, these children are not former child soldiers but "children associated with armed groups". As such, they receive special treatment once they arrive at a disarmament site. They are separated from the adult militiamen and, after registration, quickly returned to their families. However, this is often difficult.

"Finding families of former child soldiers can prove almost impossible, with the lack of communication facilities and the current security problems in Ituri," Bienvenue Panda, UNICEF's protection officer in Bunia, told IRIN.

Many of these children's parents are no longer in their home villages, but in towns and camps for internally displaced persons, and cannot be easily traced.

AFTER ABDUCTION
The story of one child, 14-year-old Anna, is typical of many girls who were kidnapped by militias. She told IRIN how she ended up as a prostitute.

"I was taken by force, but then got used to staying with the soldiers," she said. "When I was 12, I had to cook food for them. When the foreign troops arrived I left them."

She said that because she could not go back to her family, she now survives as a prostitute.

"My family is far and I live with my grandmother who is poor. I survive together with other children in the centre of Bunia town," she said.

According to UNICEF, such girls were often raped whilst abducted by militias, exposing them to HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

By the end of March, only about 1,500 children of those who had registered with UNICEF had been returned to their parents - mainly those from villages near the registration sites.

The others were handed over to orientation and transit centres for children (CTOs), run by NGOs with the support of UNICEF. There they received shelter, food and schooling.

"In tracing families of children who came from faraway places we had only 10 percent success. Some of the minors [have] already [been] stuck in the CTOs [for] six months," Panda said.

In some cases, families do not even want their children back.

"Some children are no longer accepted because they are violent and maltreat their parents," Panda said. "Even their language is affected. The term 'I want to kill you' comes very easily - death became a banality for them."

Charles, 17, previously recruited by the predominantly Hema militia group Union des patriotes Congolais, is now living in a CTO run by Caritas, a Catholic aid agency, in Bunia.

"We did not kill for pleasure, but for revenge only," he told IRIN.

He added that it had been safer for him to stay with the militias than at his home village, which was attacked several times.

Unlike adult fighters, former child soldiers are not required to give up any guns in order to benefit from the reintegration programmes that are available to surrendering militias.

Each child receives a basic kit, which includes a shirt, trousers, shoes, a sleeping mat, a blanket and toiletries.

According to UNICEF, "the provision of civilian clothing is an important part of the reintegration process, as many children arrive at the disarmament sites wearing military uniforms." It also helps them to forget their past.

Another former child soldier, 12-year-old David, who lives in the Caritas CTO in Bunia, told IRIN: "The militias threatened to kill my parents when they refused to hand me over to them. My brothers were also forced to join the militias - one was killed. I hate the militias."

NEW ROUTINES
Reintegrating these abused children into normal life requires psychological care and lots of patience.

According to UNICEF, most children want to go home and back to school. However, there are also many examples of children who do not want to rejoin their families.

"One child we demobilised started crying, asking 'What will I do without my family? The army is my family.' He was with the Forces armees du peuple congolais militia for one year and, before that, in several other militias," Panda said.

A Caritas psychologist, Jean-Paul Dhelo, told IR IN that he was making sure the children were not abused again.

"Families and foster families have to sign a paper - that the children won't be sent back to the militias and that they respect the children's human rights," he said. "We follow-up what happens to them."

Despite efforts by humanitarian aid workers to reintegrate them, some children still end up in trouble.

"It is a fact that many girls who were sexually abused are finally ending up on the street again, working as prostitutes," Panda said.

SOME BOYS END UP AS CRIMINALS
Edward, 17, used to escort a local influential figure and fight with militias he said were backed by foreigners.

"I remember the war in Chai, Marabo and Peka which lasted three days. It was bloody, all my friends died and I killed many people," Edward said.

"After the arrival of the MONUC troops I left. I was hidden away for several months so that my bosses could not find me," he added.

Eventually, Edward found a foster family in Saio, a suburb of Bunia. Many are now afraid of him there.

"He joined armed bandits, usually goes out at midnight and comes back in the morning," his former best friend, Francis, told IRIN.

Edward's foster father, Papa Hadji, recalled a day when local youths from the neighbourhood beat up the boy because he had stolen something. "Suddenly militias showed up to free him," Hadji said.

Hadji sees Edward as "a real danger to the public". However, Edward said his actions were a matter of survival and would, once he made money, stop stealing and become a mechanic.

"In my new family everybody is busy looking for food. I need $30 to start a cigarette-selling business," he said.

[Editor's Note: All children's names in this article have been changed to protect their identities]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/50f10e41dbd2190f236606643fb3e05a.htm

An estimated 1.2 million children are on the streets of Pakistan’s major cities and urban centres, constituting the country’s largest and most ostracised social group. These include ‘Runaway’ children who live or work on the street, as well as the minority that return to their families at the end of the day with their meagre earnings.

According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) survey, 72% of working children do not have contact with their families and 10% have no knowledge of their families.

"World Vision is gravely concerned with their growing numbers. Children are turning to the streets amidst increasing poverty, unemployment, swelling family size and social disintegration seen in abuse in schools, as well as domestic violence, neglect and family breakdown,” said World Vision Country Director, Sigurd Hanson.

Statistics bode ill for this nation where more than 40% of the population is under 15, 48 million people live below the poverty line and earn less than US$2.00 a day. Nine out of 100 children die before they reach their first birthday. Half the population is illiterate.
“Street wise” as early as four, these children beg and scavenge around rubbish dumps or industrial waste sites or take on menial jobs as cart pushers or dish washers, working 12-15 hours a day to earn around 75 rupees or US$1.25- enough to buy a meal if they are fortunate. Most survive by prostituting themselves, stealing or smuggling, making them vulnerable to contracting sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Jaundice and liver or kidney disorders. A large proportion sniffs cheap, readily available solvents to starve off hunger, loneliness and fear.
Child ‘rental’ for begging is a new and increasingly popular phenomenon among poor households. Parents ‘rent’ their children out to an individual or group and both parties share the child’s earnings. The inhumane treatment drives children to drugs and into the arms of criminal gangs who promise protection, food and a better life.

“World Vision is acutely aware that these children desperately need protection, care and a sense of belonging. We are committed to making this a national priority. If we don’t act now, they will constitute another lost generation,” said Hanson.

World Vision Pakistan is appealing for funds to implement a comprehensive, long-term programme initially focusing on advocacy, raising awareness of children’s rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention and referral for treatment.
Working through local partners, World Vision will also establish drop-in-centres in Lahore and Rawalpindi in the Punjab Province and Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier Province where especially vulnerable children can receive a daily nutritious meal, a bath, medical care, psychosocial counselling and an informal education. The centres will assist up to 1,000 children over a six-month period and will accommodate more children as further funding is received.

World Vision will establish and build the capacity of referral services to secure safe accommodation for extremely destitute children and where possible, support families so that children can return home and go to school.

In the longer term, rehabilitation and skills training centres will be established in Rawalpindi and Peshawar. Older children will acquire marketable skills through training and apprenticeships to enable them to earn a decent living wage to support themselves and their families, instead of engaging in menial work or criminal activity.

“Runaway children abandon their childhood on the streets,” adds Hanson. “World Vision Pakistan and its partners want to see childhood restored”.

http://meero.worldvision.org/news_article.php?newsID=622&countryID=0

Recruiters of child soldiers should face prosecution by the international criminal court, a human rights group has said.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (CSUCS) has called on the UN to name, shame and pursue armies and militias which use children to fight.

Fighters under the age of 18 have been used in 22 conflicts in the last three years, it reveals in a new report.

It says the US and UK were among countries recruiting underage soldiers.

In the early stages of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, up to 62 children aged 17 were sent in by US forces, according to the report.

Prosecutions
In its detailed study covering five continents since 2001, it warns that while wars ending in Afghanistan, Angola and Sierra Leone led to the demobilisation of 40,000 children, over 25,000 were drawn into conflicts in Ivory Coast and Sudan alone.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed groups sexually abused and raped girls and forced children to kill their own relatives, the report said.

In Colombia, child soldiers of the FARC guerrilla group were ordered to execute other children for disciplinary offences.

Children have been used as informants, spies or messengers in hotspots such as Indonesia, Israel and Nepal.

"A world that does not allow children to fight wars is possible, but governments must show the political will and courage to make this happen by enforcing international laws," said Casey Kelso, head of the CSUCS.

The coalition is made up of human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights watch and charities such as Save the Children and World Vision.

Rachel Brett, of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, a member of the coalition, told BBC News that child soldier recruiters were already facing prosecution in conflicts including Uganda, the DR Congo and Sierra Leone.

"The first successful prosecution for using children in this way will have a huge impact," she said. "If these recruiters know they will be caught, it will force them to change their behaviour."

'No under-18s'
Ms Brett said governments and rebel groups were "remarkably sensitive" about how accusations of using child soldiers could harm their credibility.

"If governments are being named by the UN Security Council, then I think they will take that seriously," she added.

The CSUCS wants a ban on recruiting under 18s into the armed forces but most child soldiers are members of rebel groups, or government-backed militias.

Many are forced to take up arms, others volunteer to fight to take revenge, or to make a living.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4019087.stm

Qatar renewed its pledge to carry out its national and international commitments regarding child rights through taking steps which have been studied and researched. This came in the address, Sheikha Alia Ahmed bin Seif Al Thani, member of the delegation of the state of Qatar, delivered at the 61st session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which opened on March 14 to run through April 22.

In her address Sheikha Alia said the right of the child has a great importance on the national and international level and in this regard pointed out that Qatar is witnessing an accelerating development as far as the protection of the rights of the child was concerned.

In this frame work she added, the Supreme Council for Family Affairs took the initiative of creating a national commission aiming at studying guiding strategies to combat trafficking in persons.

In view of this, the council of ministers established a national commission in January 2004, supervised by the supreme council for family affairs. The commission, chaired by Dr Ghalia bin Mohammad bin Hamad Al Thani, member of UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, includes all concerned bodies in the state of Qatar.

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=
Qatar+News&month=April2005&file=Local_News2005040933633.xml

A one shekel kid is an under-age worker selling nic-nacs, sweets, cakes or cheap plastic items for a shekel a piece. DCI took a small sample of these children this week for International Child Labour Day on June 12.


DCI Palestine notes that the deteriorating economic situation in the Palestinian territories due to Israeli closures and curfews is having a significant impact on children, both in terms of a falling standard of living and loss of opportunities and the rising incidence of child labour to supplement meager family income.

The last Palestinian Bureau of Statistics survey on the issue calculated the incidence of child labour at 3.5% in 2001 , but since this time, a further drop in family income has put 60% of Palestinians below a poverty line of $2 a day , pushing more and more children out onto the street, after school, in the holidays and as an alternative to education.

Israeli checkpoints, and the permanent queues of people trying to get through the barriers, make a natural gathering point for under-age workers. There are regularly 10-15 children at Qalandiya checkpoint outside Ramallah, while in the centre of Ramallah, our researchers saw over 20 children in a two hour period.

Most of these children are working to support their families (all 10 in the DCI sample) financially and to pay for school fees and basic needs. The average working day for children is 9.45 hours, with some working as long as 12 hours a day. Average earnings are 20-30 shekels a day ($1= NIS4.44), although one child earns only 5 shekels. The youngest worker was just 6 years old, selling Quranic excerpts for 1 shekel a page at Qalandiya checkpoint. See results 

DCI is concerned about the long hours and the risk of exploitation of these children who often work unaccompanied in hostile and tense environments. Checkpoints in particular are regularly scenes of confrontations between soldiers and civilians, sometimes resulting in shootings and gas attacks. Muhammad (1) has suffered this experience already. In total 5 of 9 of the children said that they had been attacked while working, whether by other children, the Israeli army or even the Palestinian police.

Here are the stories of just 3 of the children interviewed by DCI:

Case 1: Abed (not his real name) is a 12 year old boy from Sumu'a, a village in the Hebron district. He is spending his summer holidays at his brother's house in Ramallah. It is the first time that he has been far from his home and family, but he only goes home every two or three weeks. Abed is working 9 hours a day in the streets of Ramallah selling plastic wallets for 1 shekel each. He sells about 25 of these a day. He saves up the money to give to his family, as his father has lost his job due to the current political situation and his mother doesn't work. It is up to him and his brother to make sure that there is enough money to pay the school fees for the new year. Two days ago, while Abed was shouting to get attention from the crowd the Palestinian police saw him, walked up to him and started beating him to 'make him silent'. Fortunately, Abed's brother and cousin were not far away and came to protect him. However, Abed was badly beaten and two days later his body still hurts. Abed is scared to be alone in the streets, but he does not have a choice.

Case 2: Hassan is sad. He has been working all day since the morning, he is tired and wants to go play with his friends. However, he is selling goods at Qalandiya checkpoint. His father used to have a decent income but he can no longer go through the checkpoint to work in Israel, so he has set up a street stall where Mohammed helps out after school and in the holidays. Qalandiya is a dangerous area and Hassan has already been involved in an incident when Israeli soldiers who then threw teargas at the crowd. Fortunately Hassan was not wounded, but the situation around the checkpoint is always tense and the weather is very hot. Hassan would much prefer to go and play with his friends.

Case 3: Fourteen year-old Saleh lives in a refugee camp just outside Ramallah. He is spending his summer holidays as a 'street waiter' selling drinks and juices to the market sellers. He earns 20 NIS a day which he gives to his family, keeping 5 NIS to himself to buy some little things. This is the first time that he has been officially employed. The last three years he has been selling things on the streets by himself, but he thinks he is too old for that now. He is working with three other minors all selling juices and drinks. Saleh works 8 hours a day for 7 days a week. He does not have time to see his friends and he feels pretty tired. However, he is happy that he can help out his family in this difficult situation.

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/Other%20Updates/One_Shekel_Kids.htm

The United Arab Emirates, under pressure to stamp out the use of children as camel jockeys, plans to introduce robot riders this year.

"The mechanical jockey is light in weight and receives orders from the instructor via a remote control system fixed on the back of the camel," the daily Gulf News said on Sunday, quoting an official statement.

It said President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan was behind the initiative. The Gulf Arab state last month enacted new laws to crack down on the trafficking of under-16 camel jockeys, a practice internationally condemned as a form of slavery.

The paper said the first prototype mechanical jockey was tested on Saturday and the first batch would go into service in August in the lucrative sport, popular among Bedouin Arabs.

Rights groups say several thousand boys, some as young as four, work as jockeys in the sport in the oil-rich country, many after being abducted or sold by their families.

They say the boys, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, are kept in prison-like conditions where they are deliberately underfed to keep them light so the camels can run faster.

New regulations also ban the use of boys weighing less than 45 kg (99lb), a move aimed at preventing children being brought in on false passports with the wrong age.

International scrutiny has led the UAE to set up a rehabilitation centre in the capital of Abu Dhabi for boy jockeys.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050410/od_uk_nm/
oukoe_rights_emirates_robots_1

About 1.06 million NWFP children in the age group of 5-14 years are actively involved in various types of labour, which is higher than in comparison with child labour situation in rest of the three provinces of the country.

A situational analysis of child labour recently presented at a workshop, while quoting the national survey of child labour, showed that the total number of children in Pakistan in age groups of 5-14 was 40 million. The total number of economically active children was 3.3 million, which makes 8.3 per cent of the total children population of the country.

The province-wise statistics of child labour showed that out of 22.63 million children in the age group of 5-14 years of Punjab province, 1.94 million were involved in child labour, which make 8.6 per cent of the child population of the area.

Similarly, in Sindh province 0.30 million children out of 8.62 million population of the same age group are involved in active economic activities. That makes 3.5 per cent of the total child labour.

In Balochistan 0.01 million children out of 2.07 million population of the same age group are child labour, which make 0.5 per cent of its population. However, in NWFP the situation is quiet different as compared to the rest of the provinces, where 1.06 million children are actively involved in economic activities that makes 15.8 per cent of the 6.71 million children in age group of 5-14 years.

The survey also said that children's involvement in work in the rural areas is about 8 times greater than in the urban areas. It further said the employment status by broad categories indicate that about 70 per cent of the working children are unpaid family helpers.

In rural areas, the survey maintained, three fourth of the working children are working as unpaid family members; while in the urban areas it is one third. The analysis observed that the child labour was a humanitarian issue with roots in poverty, high rate of population growth and unequal distribution of wealth in the society.

http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en77922&F_catID=&f_type=source

AN estimated 60,000 to 100,000 Filipino children are exploited in the sex trade, forced to work in unsanitary conditions or are directly involved in the armed conflict between government and various rebel groups in Mindanao, a study commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund said.

The study, conducted by professors at the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative Development Studies (UP-CIDS), said an undetermined number of poor children are being exploited through child pornography perpetrated by foreigners and locals.

The Unicef said heightened armed conflict in Mindanao has made the region one of the hotspots in human trafficking, with children being smuggled out to Malaysia, among other neighbors.

The report, "Combating Child Trafficking," the first to be conducted in Asia, said children who want to help their families, gain material wealth and improve their physical appearance are lured to big cities or to Japan as entertainers.

"Among the main causes of child trafficking in the Philippines are poverty, low economic development in communities of origin, gender inequalities, limited employment opportunities, existence of and access to public infrastructure, large family sizes, inadequate awareness among families, and sex tourism," the report said.

Dr. Nicholas Alipui, country representative of Unicef Philippines, said the agency commissioned the study because of persistent reports of widespread child exploitation in the country.

The Philippines, he said, is also advertised in the Internet as a sex haven where young girls and boys can be had cheaply.

Unicef executive director Carol Bellamy, who is in town for the 112th Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting at the Philippine International Convention Center, told the IPU general assembly that child trafficking worldwide has become a $10 billion a year industry.

She said the UN study found extensive evidence of child pornography in the Philippines, particularly in tourist destinations like Pagsanjan in Laguna, Angeles City, Baguio City and Puerto Galera in Mindoro.

Bellamy said the Philippines is among the few countries that are making a dent in the fight against the trafficking of women and children.

But she challenged lawmakers to enact stricter and more comprehensive laws against child exploitation and to strengthen law enforcement capability.

The Philippines passed the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act in 2003 which provides for the establishment of the National Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking in Persons, the lead agency that coordinates the work of similar councils now being established at the provincial and city levels.

"This is not going to be easy," Bellamy said. "We are dealing with criminals and they are not stupid. There are lots of money to be made and they will go to any length to continue harming and exploiting children in this awful way. We need governments to make good laws and beef up investigative work.

"(Parliamentarians) can make decisions that ensure the protection of children, or they can make decisions that leave children vulnerable to being exploited and abused. The first choice virtually guarantees strong national development; the second choice virtually guarantees the continuation of poverty," Bellamy said.

"Parliamentarians are very powerful. They have a voice. They are leaders. And they have the power of inquiry. We hope that providing them with information and examples of policy, of what has to be done to actually go after traffickers, we could help strengthen their laws, policies and actions," Bellamy said.

The UN official said the unsupervised use of the Internet by children makes them vulnerable to child pornographers through e-mail, chat rooms, web sites, web cameras and Internet cafes.

The child sex trade, she said, is difficult to stop on the web because Internet providers and credit card companies, citing privacy rights, refuse to divulge information on pedophiles and producers of pornography.

Dr. Elizabeth Protacio-de Castro, head of the Program on Psychosocial Trauma and Human Rights at UP-CIDS, who was at the launch of the handbook at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati yesterday, said they are so frustrated with Internet providers who are "totally uncooperative" when it comes to providing leads on child exploiters.

She said she has also been tipped off that one can now download pornographic images of children in one's cellphone for as low as P100.

Unlike child prostitution, De Castro said child pornography is more difficult to stop because it is not visible.

She also blamed the Filipino concept of utang na loob which enabled an elderly American to have sex with 17 minors in Puerto Galera after he gave their parents money and had their houses renovated.

According to the study, the number of reported child pornography victims totaled nine in 2000; four in 2001; seven in 2002 and 13 in 2003. Child prostitution data listed 186 reported cases in 2000; 224 in 2001; 245 in 2002, and 247 in 2003.

Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman, who also spoke during the book launching, said these cases indicate that children from poor areas are at greater risk from adult predators because aside from Central Luzon, the national capital region and Calabarzon, most of the reported cases took place in the poorest areas of the county like Eastern Samar, Mindanao and the Bicol region.

http://www.malaya.com.ph/apr06/news4.htm

The participants in a day long workshop stressed media, government and non government organizations to play their effective role in eliminating the menace of child labour from the country. It was jointly organized by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, International Labour Organization (ILO) and International Program on Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) held here at a local hotel on Wednesday.

The workshop was attended by official of ministry of information and broadcasting, journalists, representatives of the NGOs, social workers and labour leaders. The participants argued that all the stakeholders would have to jointly contribute towards addressing this social issue that engulfed the whole country. It was recommended on the occasion that the national press should give proper coverage to the events involving child labour with main focus on positive and accurate reporting.

The participants were informed that since the matter involved children, therefore, the media should avoid creating sensationalism while filing any report on a child abuse, exploitation or adult delinquency. It was stressed that necessary legislation should be enacted both at the centre and the provincial level to make the existing anti child labour laws more effective.

Director ILO Ahmed in his address during the inaugural session said that the Organization was closely working with the Federal and Provincial Governments in Pakistan on labour related issues for a very long time. In the recent past, the ILO has been providing technical assistance to the Pakistan on the development and subsequent implementation of the Decent Work Country Programme comprising four strategic objectives.

He said the ILO over the past decade launched various projects in Pakistan to curb and eliminate child labour in its worst forms. Presently there are eight programmes being implemented in Pakistan by ILO/IPEC in the sectors of carpet industry, surgical manufacturing, child trafficking, bonded labour, education and Training for rural economic empowerment and media.

Ahmed said that ILO is targeting six hazardous sectors in which child labour is found which included deep sea fishing in Gwadar, mining in Chakwal, Tanneries in Kasur, surgical instrument in Sialkot, rag pickers/scavengers in Rawalpindi/Islamabad and glass bangles industry in Hyderabad.

The overall development objectives of all these programmes is to withdraw, prevent and rehabilitate children from the worst forms of child labour, he added.

The ILO Director told the participants that child labour is a serious social problem worldwide as well as in Pakistan. According to the first ever Child Labour Survey conducted in Pakistan in 1996, some 3.3 million Pakistani children are economically active, two-thirds of them in the agriculture sector, he maintained.

Provincial Minister for Information Technology Hussain Ahmed Kanju in his concluding address said that the NWFP Government has taken various steps for poverty reduction that included recruitment of teachers on massive scale in education department, formulation of Industrial policy, and establishment of rehabilitation centers for beggars and provision of free text books.

He disclosed that the provision of free text books increased the enrolment at the primary level by 29 percent.

He also urged the media to launch a campaign for elimination of child labour and added that the frontier province was backward where poverty rate was higher than other provinces.

Prominent Social Worker and Chief of NGO "Save the Children Pakistan", Seemi Mehmud Jan MPA in her address called for separation of the National Commission for Child Welfare Development and Provincial Commission for Child Welfare Development from the Department of Social Welfare and making it separate entity like NCHD.

She said it was a matter of concern that both these institutions have not met for a single day despite its constitution in 1991. She maintained that no progress has been made by the NWFP Government with regard to the matter.

She suggested birth registration and establishment of Enterprize Schools to impart vocational training to the poor children in order to make them useful citizens.

Khalid Hassan representative of the ILO NWFP in his presentation on combating child labour through education and skills informed that drop out ratio at primary school level was 44 percent in the frontier province and said, the drop out joined child labour club.

He also referred to the project launched by the ILO in the NWFP and said that first phase of the project completed in 2003 while its second phase due for completion in December 2005. He said the project was initiated in Peshawar and Nowshera districts at a cost of 769237 US dollars. He said, the NWFP has the highest number of child labour.

About purpose of the project the ILO representative said is to support the government efforts to develop effective strategies to combat child labour and to integrate child labour issue into social, economic and development policies.

He said the NWFP Chief Minister has proposed new legislation to ban child labour.

President of Journalist Democracy and Human Rights (JDHR) Shafqat Munir in his detailed presentations on "Child Work and Media Activism" and "Media Ethics for Reporting issues involving children" apprised participants about different aspects of reporting with special reference to child abuse, exploitation and sexual harassment.

Minister for Information Technology Hussain Ahmed Kanju also gave away certificates to the participants of the workshop.

http://www.kashar.net/technews/compleat.asp?id=1501

Dutch military police have arrested 18 people and broken up a gang accused of smuggling Chinese children into Europe to be sold as cheap labour, authorities said on Thursday.

The last two arrests were made on Tuesday, wrapping up a five-month investigation into human trafficking at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, said a spokeswoman for the military police, who are responsible for airport security.

The gang -- including two Schiphol employees who were taken into custody this week -- is believed to have smuggled 10 to 20 children through Schiphol, one of Europe's main business airports, and sold them for as much 15,000 euros ($NZ27,568).

Spokeswoman Frederique Hermie said military police began the investigation last November after a tipoff by the Dutch-based child welfare organisation Nidos that young Chinese asylum seekers were disappearing from their temporary homes.

"This gang was smuggling the children into the Netherlands using forged documents and then sending them to European countries such as Italy and France, where they were sold," she said.

Only two of the smuggled children have been found, she said.

The majority of those arrested, ranging in age from 15 to 55, were naturalised Dutch citizens of Chinese origin. One suspect holds a Turkish passport and another a Bulgarian one.

The Schiphol employees arrested were both Dutch-born.

The group is charged with human trafficking -- which experts say is a global industry worth $7-12 billion a year -- and with using forged documents and money laundering.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10119330

Hundreds of millions of women and children have no access to potentially life-saving care and it is no surprise then that 10.6 million children die before the age of five and half a million women globally die at child birth, according to the World Health Report, 2005 released here today. The report points out that these deaths could be sharply reduced through wider use of key interventions and a "continuum of care'' approach for mother and child that began before pregnancy.

The report puts India in the list of 51 "slow progressing'' countries as far as infant and child mortality and maternal mortality is concerned with an estimated 1,36,000 maternal and one million newborn deaths, and newborns suffering from pregnancy birth-related mortality and where morbidity continued to take a toll on the lives of Indian women and their newborns.

Globally about 5,30,000 women die annually in pregnancy or childbirth, more than three million babies are stillborn, more than four million newborns die within the first days of weeks of life, and altogether 10.6 million die before their fifth birthday, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) report. In "The World Heath Report 2005 — Make Every Mother and Child Count'', WHO estimates that out of a total of 136 million births every year worldwide, less than two-thirds of women in less developed countries and only one-third in the least developed countries have their babies delivered by a skilled attendant.

The report was launched in India to draw the attention of the Indian Government towards this issue. "Maternal and child health is a human rights issue of women and children. It is politically important to care for maternal and child health and the present situation is unacceptable,'' Joy Phumaphi, assistant Director-General, Family and Community Health, WHO said.

Trends in perinatal and infant mortality show a slow but steady decline in infant mortality rates in India but steady decline in infant mortality rates (IMR), less for neonatal mortality (NMR) and almost no change for rate of stillbirths. Each year 27 million infants are born in India, of which 10 per cent do not survive for five years. In absolute terms, India contributes to 25 per cent of the over 10 million under-five deaths occurring worldwide every year.

Nearly, half of under-five deaths occur in neonatal period.

Infant mortality
Over the decades there had been a declining trend in infant mortality rate, neonatal mortality rate and stillbirth rate.
However, the decline for NMR shows signs of slowing and stagnation -- only 15 per cent decline in NMR during the 1990s, compared to a 25 percent decline during the 1980s. The decline has become even less during 1995-2000, a meagre 4 points (48 to 44 per 1,000 live births).

According to the report, one in every three world's malnourished children lives in India and about 50 per cent of all childhood deaths in India are attributable to malnutrition.

The proportion of low birth weight babies remains high at one-third of all births. Describing human resources for the health sector as a major challenge, the report however, points out that a number of innovations were underway to increase the capacities in the health workers, both in numbers and skills.

There are regions in the country with health profile comparable to developed countries and there are others that lag well behind. Regional disparities in maternal and neonatal mortality are wide. Maternal mortality is so low in Kerala and Punjab that indirect estimates for these States could not be attempted. In contrast, in as many as 10 of the 15 major States (Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) where maternal mortality ratios (MMRs) exceed 400 per 100,000 live births and three states (Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh ) where MMRs are as high as 700 or more.

The health care expenditure in India currently stands at 6.1 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is increasing.

The total government expenditure on family welfare has shown an increasing trend from Rs. 4.9 billion in the Fifth Plan (1974-79) to Rs. 271.25 billion in the Tenth Plan (2002-07). A sum of Rs. 63.59 billion (23 per cent) of the Tenth Five Year Plan outlay has been allocated to the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) programme.

http://www.hindu.com/2005/04/08/stories/2005040803671300.htm

The Lesotho government released two studies on Friday, highlighting the growing problems of child labour, abuse and exploitation.

The studies, 'Hear Us' on child domestic workers, and 'Speaking Out' on youth sexuality, "allow us to discover the voices of the voiceless through young people themselves," said J K Thabane, principal secretary of the Ministry of Gender and Youth, Sports and Recreation (MOGYSR) at the launch.

"The studies revealed the hardship endured by children and young people as they become more and more reliant on various forms of labour to sustain their poverty- and HIV/AIDS-stricken families. The CDW [child domestic worker] study uncovered the highly abusive nature of relationships existing between many CDW and their employers," noted a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) statement.

"The Youth, Gender and Sexuality Study unveiled the often-controversial issues of gender, sexuality, prostitution and youth behaviour and attitudes. Both will inform national legislations, and programmes," the agency noted.

Commissioned by UNICEF and MOGYSR, the CDW report underlines the exploitation of children against the background of HIV/AIDS in the small, impoverished mountain kingdom.

A 16-year-old child worker is quoted in the CDW study as saying, "He said I should kiss him; I refused. He said I should sit near him; I refused. He had promised me money for food and clothes on condition that I returned sexual favours to him."

Enormous antagonism still exists in relation to the concept of children's rights. "Most adults felt threatened when confronted with issues of children's rights; they do not feel comfortable with children having rights," said the UNICEF statement.

"We must be furious at these findings. We need stronger recommendations and actions, and we need to eradicate underage labour. We have social, moral and mandates responsibility to protect the children and youth in Lesotho, and bring justice and respect for their rights and dignity," urged Bertrand Desmoulins, UNICEF country representative in Lesotho.

<http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/e7
b3b7a89502104494c7642760b1f083.htm>

Pressure is mounting on the government of Kenya to urgently establish a law seeking to make free primary education compulsory if the East African country is to achieve its goal of eliminating child labour by 2020.

The government announced Mar. 31 its commitment to end all forms of child labour in the next 15 years. It is using the Children’s Act, enacted by parliament in 2001, to outlaw the abuses.

"Permitting children to work in the worst forms of child labour amounts to serious neglect...The recently enacted Children’s Act holds parents accountable for negligence of their children. I would like to sound a warning that the government will vigorously enforce the provisions of the Children’s Act and promptly prosecute offenders,’’ Nancy Kirui, the permanent secretary at the ministry of labour and human resource development, said Mar. 31.

She made the remark in Kenya’s capital Nairobi Mar. 31 following a demonstration against child labour, organised a day before the launch of the Time Bound Programme, an International Labour Organisation (ILO) funded project.

The project seeks to compel governments to implement the ILO convention 182, and put a time frame upon when to end child labour. Adopted in 1999, the convention requires member states to prohibit and eliminate the worst forms of child labour, which include commercial sex exploitation, domestic labour, and working in commercial agricultural sectors such as plantations and fisheries.

ILO statistics show that 246 million children worldwide are child labourers, with Asia and the Pacific accounting for the largest proportion of working children - 127 million. Sub-Saharan Africa has 48 million.

Child labourers are exploited economically and forced to work over long hours with no time off and low wages. They often lack social as well as legal protection.

Kenya has 1.9 million working children aged between five and 17, according to the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics. About 34 percent of the children are in commercial agriculture and fisheries, 23.6 percent in subsistence agriculture and 17.9 in the domestic sector.

ILO says, in addition to enforcing the Children’s Act, Kenyan authorities should make free education a must, pull children out of work and keep them in school.

"The government needs to make free education compulsory and a law would greatly help to enforce it," Joyce Waituti, ILO country programme coordinator, told IPS.

Introduced in 2003, the free education initiative saw an additional 1.3 million children, previously locked out of the education system enroll in schools. But some 1.5 million children still remain out of school, according to last year’s United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report.

Waituti says the issue of nutrition should also be addressed to enable children to take advantage of free education. ‘’If there is no food in the house, the child will not make it to school. We need to look at free education not just as the provision of books only, but must encompass issues of nutrition as well," she explained.

A source at the ministry of education described the nutrition issues as teething problems, which, he said, were being addressed. "The government is aware and nutrition is seriously being taken into consideration. In fact, there are plans in the pipeline to provide food supplements to some of the schools," the official, who requested anonymity, told IPS.

Analysts say parents’ inability to provide nutrition and basic school requirements to their school-going children demonstrates poverty at household level.

In a research conducted recently on child labour in commercial agriculture covering coffee, rice and sugar plantations by the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE), poverty was cited as a major cause of child labour. About 37 percent of the children interviewed said they worked to supplement the family income and pay for school fees. Thirty percent said they just accompanied their parents during peak agricultural seasons.

"Even as we seek to achieve a child-labour free country, we must first and foremost address the issue of poverty. This can be done by improving our economic performance through coming up with policies that promote private sector participation, which will create employment opportunities," Titus Waithaka, FKE’s head of research and advocacy, observed.

According to official statistics, about 56 percent of Kenyans live below the poverty line of less than a dollar a day.

Waithaka noted that poverty in the East African nation had been exacerbated by HIV/AIDS, which had created orphans and child-headed households, whereby children had no choice but to engage in child labour in order to provide for their siblings.

Truphosa Atieno, 16, testifying at the Mar. 31 demonstration in Nairobi, said: "My parents died in 2001 from HIV/AIDS, leaving me to take care of my three sisters and two brothers. Since we had no one else to help us financially, I came to Nairobi to look for something that could earn me an income. I was employed as a domestic worker, where I was earning about eight dollars a month. I used to send the money upcountry to my grandmother who I left to care for my sisters and brothers.’’

Atieno has enrolled in a dressmaking college in Nairobi and hopes to generate a decent income upon completion of her training.

Official statistics show that there are more than one million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, a pandemic whose prevalence rate currently stands at seven percent. More than two million Kenyans out of a population of over 30 million are living with HIV/AIDS, according to the ministry of health.

<http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=28131>

Many garment factories, especially small sub-contractors, in Bangladesh are yet to comply with the rule of not using child labour, finds a recent survey on garment industries.

Non-governmental organisation Nari Udjog Kendra conducted the survey, which finds that many such factories still have not ensured workers’ rights to health and safety, minimum wages, maternity benefits, freedom of movement and good working environment.

The organisation at a roundtable, Compliance Development in the Garment Industry in Bangladesh, had a discussion on the survey in the BIAM auditorium in Dhaka on Monday.

Stakeholders and discussants viewed that a change in the mentality of the factory owners is required to implement compliances extensively.

The survey finds only 30 per cent factories in small sub-contracting category have implemented health and safety requirements, 40 per cent obeyed the minimum wage rule, and 20 per cent provided good working environment; maternity benefits or freedom of association have been left out.

The random survey conducted in 40 factories in Dhaka, Narayanganj and Gazipur has found better implementation of compliances in the factories in the export processing zones and factories working directly with buyers or buyers’ agents.

About 55 to 90 per cent factories in this category have implemented health and safety requirements, 70 to 100 per cent obeyed the minimum wage rule, 30 to 100 per cent provided maternity benefits, 50 to 80 per cent provided good working environment and 70 to 80 per cent ensured freedom of movement.

‘Changes in attitude and mindset of garment factory owners are required to bring about a change in labour condition,’ said Aminul Haque Amin, a labour leader.

Tauhidul Islam, another labour leader, said some factories have implemented labour compliances prescribed by the buyers.

‘But compliances should be implemented thinking labour welfare and sustainable business in emerging market situation arose out of growing competition,’ he said.

http://www.bangladesh-web.com/news/view.php?hidDate=2005-03-29&hidType=BAE&hidRecord=0000000000000000039303

Parents have been told to stop using their children as labourers or they would be prosecuted.

The Minister for Labour and Human Resource Development, Dr Newton Kulundu, said any form of child labour would not be tolerated.

He said this in a speech read on his behalf by the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Nancy Kirui, during the pre-launch of the programme on elimination of forms of child labour at Uhuru Park.

"May I remind parents and guardians that it’s their duty to ensure safety, security, and prosperity of their children. Any form of child labour and neglect will be dealt with by the law," he warned.

He said the Children’s Act would hold parents accountable for neglecting their children. "Permitting children to work in the worst forms of child labour amounts to serious neglect. I would like to warn that the Government will vigorously enforce the provisions of the Children Act and promptly prosecute offenders," he added.

Over 1.9 million children in Kenya are employed in sugarcane growing areas of Western Kenya, fishing grounds around Lake Victoria, quarries and mines.

Earlier, the Commissioner of Labour, Mr Johnston Kavulundi, flagged off the procession that snaked through Haile Sellasie Avenue, Moi Avenue, Kenyatta Avenue and Uhuru Park.

Several children took part in the procession that was delayed for over two hours for lack of the national flag to start the event.

Africa Network for Protection and Promotion of Child Abuse and Neglect representative, Mr Peter Munene, called for elimination of child labour.

The representative from World Vision-Kenya, Mr Robert Kisyula, said his organisation has started a programme in Busia, Siaya, Maragwa and Malindi districts to take disadvantaged children to school.

The Federation of Kenya Employers asked the Government to improve terms of service for employees so as to end child labour.

"It is due to poor working conditions that parents and guardians involve children in work to gain more money," said Titus Waithaka.

http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=16844

Countries in South-East Europe are failing to take effective measures against people trafficking, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) says.

A Unicef report says that while countries in the region have strict anti-trafficking laws they do not tackle the root causes of the problem.

Unicef found that young people at risk often did not know how to protect themselves from traffickers.
Few knew that traffickers were often friends or even family members.

The report looked at trafficking in Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania and Serbia-Montenegro.

No one knows exactly how many people fall victim to traffickers - it is a secretive and complex business.

But Unicef does know what kind of people are trafficked: young women between the ages of 15 and 17 are sold for sexual exploitation; children under 13 are trafficked for forced labour and begging.

Children ill-informed
Many countries in South-East Europe have harsh laws against trafficking, but they focus on preventing illegal migration or cracking down on prostitution and organised crime.

What is missing, Unicef says, are child-focused strategies to prevent trafficking in the long term.

Children surveyed in Montenegro, for example, suggested that not walking alone at night might protect them.
In Romania, trafficked children returning from European Union countries are simply sent back to their families by the police, without involving the child protection agency and without investigating the situation of the family concerned.

But there are some success stories. Moldova, Europe's poorest country, has set up community services for abused children and introduced family and life-skill classes for those most at risk.

Education and awareness-raising are, Unicef says, the strategies most likely to prevent trafficking in the long-term. Repressive laws alone will not work.

Deborah McWhinney of Unicef told the BBC that the repressive measures taken were "not empowering - they don't focus necessarily in their response on the human rights of victims, but on preventing the movement of people".

She said NGOs were reporting that the problem of trafficking in South-East Europe had "gone underground, so that we are no longer finding tens or hundreds of women in bars that are being noticed and picked up during raids, but there's just as much trafficking going on in private homes".

Nevertheless, she added that "south-east European countries have shown that they are much more willing to address the issue than many countries in western Europe".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4397497.stm

"The rebels told me to join them, but I said no. Then they killed my younger brother. I changed my mind."

It was with this matter-of-fact description to a Radio Netherlands reporter in 2000 that a 7-year-old boy in Liberia encapsulated the world's largest, but least understood, case of child abuse.

When we think of war, we typically imagine a world of men and women in uniform fighting for their nation. Children rarely, if ever, come to mind. But the face of war has changed during the past decade.

Children as young as 5 years old make up 10% of the world's combatants. More than 300,000 underage soldiers serve in conflicts around the globe, from Afghanistan to Sudan, according to United Nations' reports.

With U.S. forces so widely deployed since Sept. 11, it is not just an issue of tragedy, but a challenge that our soldiers increasingly wrestle with. Indeed, the first U.S. soldier killed from hostile fire in Afghanistan was shot by a 14-year-old sniper. More recently, according to various news reports, U.S. forces have had to confront this problem in Iraq; incidents range from child snipers to a 15-year-old who tossed a grenade into a truck, blowing off the leg of a U.S. Army trooper. More than 100 young Iraqis have been captured fighting against U.S. forces, including boys as young as 12 in the urban warfare in Fallujah and Najaf last year.

Young terrorists
Groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have pulled children into the terrorism game. More than 30 suicide bombings since 2000, according to Time magazine, have been carried out by children, and multiple juvenile al-Qaeda terrorists have been detained at the U.S. military prison on Guantanamo Bay in the special "Camp Iguana" facility.

Thus, the problem of child soldiers is far bigger than we think and more relevant to Americans than generally understood. The international community needs to develop a system of punishment and deterrence against those leaders who use children in war (rather than the U.N.'s failed tactic of "naming and shaming" the shameless), as well as provide better preparation, equipment and training for our soldiers.

Aid vs. security
This shift in warfare also casts a new light on how the United States should think about children, about humanitarian aid - including aid to such special at-risk groups as orphans and refugees - and about these children's relationship to our security.

We often discuss aid to those in need as a moral issue, as in the case of the tsunami. But we also need to view aid through a lens of security, as a means to deal with the underlying causes of instability, radicalism and conflict. Even the AIDS pandemic and natural disasters bear closer scrutiny. That's because orphans are the prime at-risk group for recruitment into war.

Some countries where tens of thousands of children were orphaned by the tsunami are conflict zones well known for child recruitment: Aceh (an Indonesian island site of civil conflict between Christian and Muslim militias), Myanmar and Sri Lanka (home of the Tamil Tigers). And tsunami orphans are already being targeted for recruitment.

We need a wider array of programs to bolster rehabilitation and steer children away from violent groups, thus breaking the multigenerational cycle of violence that characterizes most war zones.

Our government's continuing failure to effectively respond to both short- and long-term calamities, such as mass disease and global poverty, should not simply be viewed as embarrassing or shameful, but as undermining to U.S. national security.

In a world of globalization, terrorism and now, child soldiers, developing an effective aid strategy is not just the moral thing to do. It is an investment in avoiding future generations of violence and thus more conflicts where U.S. soldiers will be facing off against kids.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050331/
cm_usatoday/tragicchallengeofchildsoldiers