WASHINGTON: Nepal´s Ambassador to the United States Dr Shankar Sharma yesterday inaugurated a photography exhibition depicting rehabilitation of child labourers. On the occasion, he appraised the macroeconomic situation of Nepal and the efforts that its government is making to alleviate poverty.

The photo exhibition ‘Faces of Freedom’ was organized in the President’s Gallery of World Bank. The photographs are images from South Asia — mostly Nepal — of children who have been helped out of the rug industry and rehabilitated and educated.

The idea of the exhibition is to disseminate the method Nepal has used to eliminate child labour from the carpet industry. The method that has been employed is one of independent third party inspection of factories, certification of child labour-free products and labelling. The method develops a contractual understanding between the exporter and importer while working to raise consumer awareness.

“Nepal has formulated and enforced a Master Plan and implemented the Child Labour Act to prevent worst forms of child labour. The time-bound program activated by the government has helped rescue and save several thousands of children from being engaged in worst forms of child labour,” Sharma informed the gathering.

He stressed that Nepal can achieve Millennium Development Goals except in primary education and anti-HIV/AIDS, if the present trend continues.

The seminar was attended by high-level staff of the World Bank, Nepalese carpet importers, labour experts and representatives of the United States government. The photographs were taken by photographer, filmmaker and human rights educator Roberto Romano.

An Indian charity has accused Lindsay Lohan, the Hollywood actress, of claiming to have helped to rescue 40 child labourers in New Delhi when she was not actually in the country.

Lohan is accused of claiming to have helped to rescue 40 child labourers in New Delhi when she was not actually in the country.

The star of Mean Girls, who went to India to make a BBC documentary about child trafficking, appeared to claim she had rescued the children in just one day and was now changing the world "one child at a time". But according to the charity which organised the raid, neither Lohan, 23, nor the BBC, were present.

In a series of posts on Twitter, Lohan, who has undergone treatment for alcohol abuse, appeared to boast of her role in the rescue and suggested that it had changed her life.

"Over *40 children saved* so far...... Within one day's work...... This is what life is about..... Doing THIS is a life worth living!!!" she said. She later added: "Focusing on celebrities and lies is so disconcerting, when we can be changing the world one child at a time.... hope everyone can see that." Her comments caused a stir in India and anger among those who led the raid.

A leading social activist and lawyer, known only as Bhuwan, of the campaign group Bachpan Bachao Andolan, accused Lohan of portraying dangerous child rescue operations as superficial events, which could be carried out in a day by passing celebrities.

The raids, which involved two months of planning by local police and magistrates, were on 15 workshops in central New Delhi where children as young as seven were making mirrored ornaments for export. Some of the children said the traffickers had paid their parents 2,000 rupees (£25), while other parents had handed over their children for promises of payments which were not made.

All worked from 8am to 1am the following morning, but only some were paid.

Those who had been working for several years received 800 rupees per month (£10) while others were paid just 200 rupees.

According to Bhuwan, they were freed on Tuesday, hours before Lohan arrived in India and a day before she and her BBC Three film crew visited the Ashram rehabilitation centre where the children were taken before being returned to their families. "She was not even in the country when this raid happened," he said.

"We'll be complaining to the BBC and talking to our lawyers ... Would Lohan know where these workshops are?"

Ruchira Gupta, an anti-trafficking campaigner, said: "If celebrities do it to get publicity then they are trivialising child-trafficking."

A BBC spokesman said: "Lindsay Lohan has just completed filming in India for a BBC Three project on child trafficking. We would like to stress that she did not say she was present at the raid, this is a misinterpretation. She was merely referring to a raid that happened connected to child trafficking - the subject of the programme.

"It is not uncommon for well known faces to be involved in current affairs programmes and often helps engage younger audiences with subjects they don't traditionally go to such as international affairs. The final documentary will have all the hallmarks of BBC content - and will be high quality, informative and engaging."

JOHANNESBURG — Lesotho-born Thato was brought to South Africa at age three, by a woman she knew simply as "granny".

Five years later, her "granny" sold her into sexual slavery. The woman who bought her was running a sex ring that police are still investigating to find out how many children were involved.

It's a scenario that South African authorities and child welfare campaigners are already working to prevent during the football World Cup next year, which authorities fear could draw in child traffickers hoping to cash in on the fanfare around the games.

Thato, now 10, was rescued just three months ago by a social worker who brought her to Amazing Grace Children's Home, which houses 79 children outside Johannesburg.

The home's founder Grace Mashaba, who explained Thato's story, said her parents probably had no idea that the "granny" would sell their daughter.

"That 'granny' doesn't have children, so she keeps asking people, 'Can you give me your child so she can stay with me?' She has a good house, so people trust in her," Mashaba said.

Thato at least was able to speak about her abuse. Another 10-year-old Lesotho girl rescued from the sex ring is too traumatised to talk, Mashaba said.

An estimated 247,000 children in South Africa now work in exploitive labour, including prostitution, according to the Child Protection Action Plan for the World Cup, created by government?s department of social development.

Campaigners worry that the problem will grow with the influx of tourists next year, especially as South African schools will be closed during the World Cup, which runs from June 11 to July 11, meaning many children could be left unattended during the day.

"Child trafficking is a big concern because of the big economic pull of the event," said Stephen Blight, the head of child protection in South Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"All the fans and visitors spending money will create a whole network that criminal networks will want to benefit from."

The government worries that child trafficking could increase as poor South Africans struggle for a slice of the four billion dollars the World Cup is expected to generate.

Parliament is due to consider a trafficking law early next year, aiming to prevent children from getting recruited to beg or hawk souvenirs on the streets, or more worryingly forced into prostitution.

Rebecca Pursell, a social worker for Kholisa Management Services, a child advocacy group, said the school holidays could add to the problem for children.

"They will be loitering around without much activity, which places them at high risk not only of trafficking but of sexual exploitation," she said.

In addition to cross-border trafficking from Zimbabwe, Mozambique or Lesotho, many poor South Africans will leave rural areas to look for work in the cities during the games, she said.

Mariam Khokhar, of the UN's International Organization for Migration, said prevention campaigns are already underway, including theatre programmes in rural areas to educate people about the danger of trafficking.

"Criminal elements often tend to exploit such events, and there will be an increase in criminality which could possibly include trafficking," she told AFP.

The number of child labour in climate change affected countries like Bangladesh may rise in near future as the change may make it more difficult for children to attend school whose families struggle to survive, warned Save the Children, UK.

In a new report titled 'Feeling the Heat: Child Survival in a Changing Climate' the charity said, "There have already been reports of an increase in trafficking and child brides in areas where families are separated or forced into destitution by extreme weather patterns." 

The report on effects of climate change on children was compiled prior the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

Emergency coordinator for Save the Children in Bangladesh, Alora Serdous will attend the climate change summit in Copenhagen this month to warn world leaders about the global health threat to children from climate change. 

She said children are already suffering from treatable diseases and malnutrition in areas like southern Asia that has been hit by cyclones recently as well as drought-ridden parts of East Africa. 

"Climate change is the biggest global health threat to children in the 21st century," she said. 

"Without concerted effort, millions of children will be at increased risk from disease, under nutrition, water scarcity, disasters and the collapse of public services and infrastructure."

The charity warned that the global warming could cause the death of a quarter of a million children next year globally as a result of natural disasters causing an increase in injuries, water-borne diseases and starvation.

By 2030, the figure will almost double to 400,000 unless more is done to help poor countries adapt to a changing climate. 

The new report suggested that improvement of sanitation to stop the spread of diarrhoea during floods and food aid to stop famine during droughts is become very much necessary. According to the Save the Children over 900 million children in the next generation will be affected by water shortages and 160 million more children will be at risk of catching malaria - one of the biggest killers of children under five - as it spreads to new parts of the world. 

In the next 20 years 175 million children a year - equivalent to almost three times the population of Great Britain- will suffer the consequences of natural disasters like cyclones, droughts and floods. 

The report said, "Today, nearly nine million children die before their fifth birthdays due to a small number of preventable diseases, such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia."

"Climate change is set to worsen the conditions which contribute to the prevalence of these diseases, placing children at greater risk. The effects of climate change will reduce poor communities' access to clean water, reduce their ability to grow nutritious food, increase food price fluctuations and allow malaria mosquitoes to spread." 

"Because the effects of climate change on children are so significant, Save the Children has urged national governments and the international community to work together to forge a way forward." 

The report out forward some recommendations to reduce the affect of climate change poor countries.

The recommendations include: reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, immediately providing money and technical support by rich countries to help poor communities to adapt to the climate change that is already happening.

It said, "Child-centred disaster risk reduction (DRR) should be recognised as a corner stone of adaptation. Children who move independently as a result of climate change need to be protected by national and international policies and legislation. Services must be introduced with a specific provision for migrant children."

"Governments must sign up to a binding agreement in Copenhagen, December 2009, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, to keep global temperatures as far below 2ºC as possible."

New Delhi, Dec 4 (IANS) Enacting one law after the other will not eradicate bonded labour if there is no political will for it, National Human Rights Commission member Justice B.C. Patel said.

Pointing out that there are no vigilance committees to check bonded labour in many places, Patel said the district administration is lax when it comes to addressing the issue.

‘There is a growing tendency amongst the district level administrators not to give due priority to abolishing the bonded labour system. This has been resulting in frustration of the poor and many children are deprived of precious moments of their childhood because their parents are bonded labourers,’ Patel said.

‘Enactment of laws is not enough to stop bonded labour. The bureaucracy needs to be familiarised with the provisions of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act so that correct application of the law can be done and needless delays avoided,’ he added.

‘A committed political leadership, particularly at the district level, is required to eradicate bonded labour,’ Patel further said.

Vigilance committees at the grassroot level and regular inspections will go a long way in eradicating the problem, he opined.

A new child labour report in Makindye Division  indicates that over 12,000 children are engaged in illegal economic activity exposing them to child labour. 

The report conducted by Platform Labour Action (PLA), an NGO  that advocates for the rights of children, in conjunction with  the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, indicates that out of a population of 395,314  in Makindye Division, 45 per cent are bellow 15 years, of whom 12,700 are engaged in child labour. 

“We have just concluded a child exploitation survey in Makindye Division and our findings indicate that there are 12,700 children engaged in child labour. 

About 7,300 are females and 5,400 are males making seven per cent of the total population of children in the division,”  the Executive Director PLA,  Ms  Lilian  Mugerwa said at the launch of the report in Kampala last week.

Ms  Mugerwa said the children are employed as maids, collectors of scrap, used  bottles, plastics, food sellers, among others. She said children are preferred because they can easily be influenced and manipulated. 

Public warning
The Assistant Commissioner in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development,  Mr Godfrey Kiberu cautioned the public against  employing children. He urged the public to  protect the rights of children. “This is an alarming figure (12,700). We are losing future doctors and engineers when we do not send these children to school. I appeal to all stakeholders to act as ambassadors to protect children against child labour,” he said. The report recommends that the affected children be provided with quality education among other social services.

Vice-President John Dramani Mahama has requested the United States Department of Labour to remove Ghana's cocoa from its list of goods produced by child or forced labour.

Ghana's cocoa is among 122 products from 58 countries listed by the US Department of Labour on its Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 (TVPRA List).

The primary purpose of the TVPRA List is to raise public awareness about the incidence of child labour and forced labour in the production of goods in the countries listed and to promote efforts to eliminate such practices.

However, speaking at the opening session of the of the second meeting of the International Joint Working Group on Labour in Cocoa Farming in Accra on Wednesday, Vice-President Mahama said having cocoa TVPRA list could be a disincentive to efforts to eliminate the practice.

"This is unacceptable and serves to undermine the efforts that we are making to address the issue of the worst forms of child labour as well as a disincentive for other countries to embark on any comprehensive effort," Vice-President Mahama said.

The International Joint Working Group has been set up to provide strategic and action oriented forum for Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, the Global Chocolate industry and civil society organizations to jointly assess cocoa sector labour practices common to both countries as well as develop appropriate plans to guide and coordinate remediation activities.

Vice-President Mahama said government had put in place a sound and workable framework for eliminating all worst forms of child labour in the cocoa sector by a adopting a multi-sectoral approach and working with and through all concerned stakeholders.

He said remediation activities which started in 2008 in 11 districts and 122 communities had been scaled up to 47 districts and 525 communities this year with over 8,000 children as beneficiaries.

The country has also developed the Hazardous Child Labour Activity Framework, which defines dangerous and acceptable work activities and conditions.

Besides, the community-based Child Labour Monitoring System (CCLMS), which is both a remediation and a data collection tool to generate information on activities of children directly from the communities, had commenced operations.

Vice-President Mahama called for a collaborative effort from partners, including the Global Chocolate Industry, to do more to support government and the Ghana Cocoa Board to accelerate the remediation activities.

He said the citing of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire on the list stemmed from the inability of stakeholders in the cocoa industry to agree on common indicators and benchmarks for measuring the impact of child labour.

Vice-President Mahama urged the working group to help accelerate development in cocoa communities to reduce poverty and hazardous child labour in the cocoa production chain.

Mr. Jeff Morgan, Global Cocoa Industry representative on the Joint Working Group, said although cocoa from Ghana was not cited on the Executive Order, the placing on the TVRPA still raised a lot of concerns.

He said although much progress had been made, there was still need for more commitment from governments and stakeholders to overcome and eliminate the practice completely.

"We are not there yet but we hope to get there," Morgan said.

Mr. Jacob Prince Hayibor, Chairman, Parliamentary Select Committee on Employment, Social Welfare and State Enterprises, asked the Joint Working Group to explore avenues for more alternative livelihood programmes to enhance the income of Ghanaian cocoa farmers.

HYDERABAD: Officials of the Anti-Corruption Bureau are receiving unlikely visitors lately. People staying in upmarket residential pockets have been visiting ACB to complain about being arm-twisted by state officials to cough up a few thousands so that they are not booked for employing children as domestic helps. 

This, even as labour officials are claiming the unbelievable: child labour figures in the city have dropped from 65,000 in the year 2006 to a little over 3,000 now. If children out of school are also included, the figure would be 13,000, officials say. This means that the number of children rescued in the last three years stands at 52,000, which activists describe as a ‘mirage’ in a child labour-ridden city like Hyderabad. 

Activists and ACB officials are now posing a predictable question: if the number of children rescued is so high, the number of employers booked should possibly be in equal numbers. But here’s a look at the prosecutions: while in 2007, the number of employers prosecuted was 525, in 2008, the numbers slipped to 103. There have been 77 prosecutions in 2009, so far. The total number of employers convicted in the last three years is 118. 

The fine employers have to pay is Rs 20,000. But what has been collected under the child rehabilitation and welfare fund in the district collector’s office is Rs 13.8 lakh, which means that just about 69 employers have been fined so far or at least that is what these statistics sourced from the labour department add up to. 

“The fine figures do not remotely match up to the rescue figures,’’ says a source familiar with the rescue operations and data. In fact, he points out how legal action is most often not taken against the employers. “The children also return to the same places within a few days, or in some cases within a few hours of their rescue,’’ says the source. 

There are three rescue teams comprising a set of labour inspectors, members of partner NGOs and other officials. Sources say that it is this rung of officials who allow employers to go scot-free by “settling’’ the matter there. “Once the raids are conducted, officials are blackmailing employers. We have received complaints from people who have been asked to pay Rs 40,000 to Rs 50,000 to settle the case,’’ says an ACB official. 

However, E Gangadhar, assistant labour commissioner and project director of the National Child Labour Programme doesn’t see anything amiss. He does admit that the department has indeed received a couple of complaints of this nature, but these have been addressed. “We took action immediately and changed the rescue team (after receiving the complaints),’’ Gangadhar says, adding in one case an inquiry was conducted and a driver was suspended. 

Regarding the poor prosecution figures, he says that most employers flash fake certificates stating that the child they have employed is over 14 years of age.

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- Contemporary forms of slavery remain a "grave and unresolved problem" across all continents, UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon warned on Wednesday, calling for greater efforts to address poverty and social inequalities which leave people vulnerable to enslavement.

In a message marking the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, observed annually on Dec. 2, Ban said that the list of new and old forms of slavery is "shockingly long."

That list includes debt bondage, serfdom, forced labor, child labor and servitude, trafficking of persons and human organs, sexual slavery, forced marriage, the exploitation of prostitutes and the use of child soldiers.

"The majority who suffer are the poor and socially excluded groups such as minorities and migrants," said Ban. "The overlapping factors of poverty, class and race create structural problems and cycles of marginalization that are hard to break."

The secretary-general noted that gender inequalities, lack of education, desperation for work and demand for cheap labor also trap people in a life of subjugation, a vulnerability the global economic and financial crises threaten to heighten.

"Combating slavery means not only its direct prohibition by law but also fighting against poverty, illiteracy, economic and social disparities, gender discrimination and violence against women and children," Ban said.

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery recalls the date of the adoption, by the General Assembly, of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others on Dec. 2, 1949.

As the world’s media focuses its attention on the Fifa World Cup 2010 Final Draw in Cape Town on December 4, few will be aware of the impact the tournament may have on the lives of vulnerable women and children targeted by trafficking syndicates.

National Trafficking Awareness Day, which takes place two days before the draw, on December 2, hopes to raise some awareness about the global problem.

“The huge influx of people over this period will drive demand. Of equal concern is the amount of school age children who will be trafficked during this time. We have already come across cases of children going missing in schools and we expect this to escalate over the 2010 period,” said Natalie Bulling, coordinator for Red Light Human Trafficking, an initiative started with the intention of combating and creating awareness about the disturbing prevalence of human trafficking in Southern Africa.

Concerns have been raised by Red Light and other organisations operating in this field, that more than 100 000 people could be trafficked into the country during the World Cup.

Currently South Africa has no legislation to cover human trafficking; as a result, a lot of cases slip through the radar. “The absence of legislation has impacted on the data-collection, investigation and prosecution of people involved with in-country and cross border trafficking,” said Julayga Alfred, Director of Activists Networking against the Exploitation of Child Domestic Workers (Anex CDW).

A global report on trafficking has identified South Africa as source, transit and destination country for the trafficking of women, men and children. The Trafficking in Person’s (TIP) report has put South Africa on the Tier Two Watch list, for the fourth consecutive year for its failure to show increasing efforts to address trafficking. More than 175 countries are included in the report, the most comprehensive worldwide research on the efforts of governments to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons. Ranging from Tier One to Three, the Tier Two Watch list places South Africa in a danger zone in terms of compliance with laws to prevent trafficking.

Director of child rights organisation Molo Songololo, Patric Solomons, said children have been identified as the most vulnerable during the World Cup.

“The vulnerable status of children places them at particular risk of being exploited by their elders in the hope of economic gain. Pull factors specifically related to the 2010 Fifa World Cup are mostly linked to poorer communities’ perceptions regarding the socio-economic benefits of the event,” said Solomons.

The United Nations estimates that child trafficking generates $US7 to $10 billion annually for traffickers, citing trafficking in persons as the second most lucrative crime around the world next to the drug trade. Solomons said the importance of large-scale awareness campaigns during the World Cup, which is expected to generate more than $4-billion, the highest revenue in World Cup history, is of the utmost importance. - West Cape News