Express News Service

New Delhi, February 24: A case of alleged assault and torture by a Delhi Police woman head constable has come to light in the New Delhi area. While the victim, a 12-year-old girl, has been rescued, the head constable is absconding.

According to the police, accused Rekha Kaul, 39, who stays in the Tilak Nagar police colony, is posted with the communication department at the police headquarters. ‘‘Rekha had brought the victim from Gwalior seven years ago and since then she was working at her place as a domestic help,’’ said Manoj Lall, DCP, New Delhi district.

Rekha, police said, was forcing the girl into prostitution. She was allegedly assaulted with hot iron rods and chilly powder thrown into her eyes. A child helpline and Salaam Balak Trust got a case registered.

‘‘We registered the case on February 20 under the Juvenile Justice Act,’’ Lall said. He added that medical examination had not revealed any sexual abuse. However, the police confirmed a case of child labour.

Rekha, who is divorced and has an eight-year-old daughter, has been absconding. No action has been taken by the police headquarters against her. The victim has been handed over to an NGO for counselling. There are over 20 injury marks on her body.

The accused, sources said, had been allotted a house at the Tilak Marg police colony out of turn and that she was well-connected in the force.

Source: http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=76998

Daily Trust (Abuja)

February 24, 2004

Posted to the web February 24, 2004

Kemi Ogedengbe

The Wife of the Vice President, Chief Amina Titi Atiku Abubakar, has said that there are about 16 million working children lured into labour through trafficking.

Speaking at a five day workshop on "Measures to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings in Benin, Nigeria and Togo," Mrs. Abubakar said that these three countries remain as major links in the operational activities of human traffickers.

She said that because of the enormous impact of trafficking in persons on the health, social, legal, political and economic life of a nation, concerted efforts should be made to stem the ugly tide before it goes out of control.

Besides, she said that one major casuality of human trafficking is our external image as a nation as the phenomenon tends to scare potential foreign investors and subject Nigerian travellers to embarrassment.

Mrs.. Abubakar noted that the heaviest cost of the result of the scourge of human trafficking and child labour is under development. "It is clear therefore that the trade is on ill-wind that does not blow anyone any good."

She commended the United Nations Office on drugs and crime for initiating the project aimed at improving the collection and analysis of data and imformation on trafficking in persons.

Mrs. Abubakar called on the participants to avail themselves the opportunity to seek further knowledge through training, saying that the outcome of the training workshop would serve as a data bank to tackle cases of illicit trafficking in persons.

Also, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Justice Minister, Chief Akin Olujimi (SAN) said that the present administration is fully committed to the fight against human trafficking, saying that no efforts would be spared to ensure that the culprits are brought to book.

He said that the workshop would provide participants the opportunity to share their experience with colleagues from other places and to acquire greater skills in dealing with the problem of trafficking in human beings.

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200402240421.html

By Divya Ramamurthi

Tuesday, Feb 24, 2004

CHENNAI, FEB. 23. A baseline survey of child labour in a few endemic blocks of all districts will soon be carried out as part of the INDUS project. This will be in addition to the child labour study carried out under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) last year.

The survey will probably supplement the SSA study findings. According to the SSA survey, there are more than 70,000 child labourers in the State. Boys account for 52 per cent of this workforce.

The Labour department recently issued a tender inviting organisations interested in carrying out the survey, says an official. But as the tender amounts quoted were very high, the department is now looking to governmental agencies.

The INDUS project will be functional in Tiruvallur, Tiruvannamalai, Namakkal, Virudhunagar and Kancheepuram districts by the beginning of April.

Transit schools

The districts are preparing to set up transit schools for rehabilitation of the child labourers. More than 80,000 of them will come under this project, jointly funded by the Governments of India and the United States with the International Labour Organisation as the executing agency. About 2,000 children, between 9 and 13 years, will be sent to the transit schools. Another 1,000 adolescent labourers will be given vocational training.

Voluntary organisations hope that the baseline study will help to identify child labourers missed out by the SSA survey. In Cuddalore and the Nilgiris, the statistics are `unbelievably low,' they said. Only 95 child labourers were reported in Cuddalore district and 164 in the Nilgiris.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2004/02/24/stories/2004022410520400.htm

SHARMILA MAITI

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2004 02:59:28 AM ]

Next time you visit the Park Circus area, after adjusting your olfactory organ to the stench tanneries are associated with, if you take a peek behind the high brick walls of a tannery, chances are that you might catch a glimpse of a group of children. Ranging from six to 16, they are working hard from dawn to dusk making shoes. Take, for example, Mintu Mondal (12), Sonu Khan (8) and Salim Akhtar (9). They work daily in one such tanneries for nine hours a day for a meagre Rs 10 daily wage. Sonu, the youngest, has developed white patches all over his hands. “It itches, but what to do? I’ll have to earn money,” he said.

The children who are engaged in these tanneries rinse, sink, conserve and dye hides with chemicals, apart from drying, pigmenting and measuring finished hides. Dr Jayanta Das, a city dermatologist, said, “These children are most susceptible to skin diseases like dermatitis, eczema, fungal infection etc because of over-exposure to corrosive chemicals. Bacterial contamination from the raw skin may lead to deadly diseases like anthracosis and tuberculosis. Even research reveal, these children develop a serious psychic problem.”

The irony is that the administration and civic authorities are aware of this. Javed Ahmed Khan, Trinamool councillor of Ward 66, said, “We’re aware of these illegal tanneries and child labourers. The labour unions, like INTUC and CITU are supporting these activities. So, it’s not easy to stop these. Also, it’s economic compulsion for these children. We can’t provide them with any alternative.” Said M.Rahman, a sub-inspector with Karaya thana , “These tanneries will be shifted to Bantala within a couple of months. But we haven’t received any written complaint regarding child labour employed here.”

Md. Amin, the state’s minister of labour said, “So far there has been no such report of child labour in the state. All workers in approved tanneries are above 14 years, not child labourers.” However, the inside story is something different.

Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow/507526.cms

Vanguard (Lagos)

February 19, 2004

Posted to the web February 19, 2004

Funmi Komolafe

The International Labour Organization (ILO), during its annual conference in 2002 declared June 12, Child Labour Day though its war against child labour began years before then with the creation of the a special unit; the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour ( IPEC).

The slogan " Indifference has a price. My future" developed by IPEC was designed to appeal to the conscience of all and sundry.

In Nigeria, the ILO and its partners have embarked on series of programmes aimed at eliminating child labour. Non- governmental organizations have also organized series of programmes yet the menace of child labour remains with us.

In this edition, we give you an update on the ILO's unrelenting efforts to eliminate child labour.

Early last week, the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour released a new report on child labour . The report stated that "child labour involves one in every six children in the world".

The situation is not however hopeless as IPEC indicates that child labour " can be eliminated and replaced by universal education by the year 2020 at an estimated cost of US $760billion.

The director-general of the ILO, Mr. Juan Somavia, who was present at the launch of the new report advised nations to adopt a good social policy. He said, " What's good social policy is also good economic policy".

Mr. Somavia empha sized: "Eliminating child labour will yield an enormous return on investment and a priceless impact on the lives of children and families".

The IPEC report also indicates that " some 246 million children are currently involved in child labour worldwide. Of these, 179 million -or one in every eight children worldwide ---- are exposed to the worst forms of child labour, which endanger their physical, mental or moral well-being".

Eliminating child labour is not just of social benefit but also of economic benefit says IPEC.

" Reaping the economic value of expanded education depends on countries ability to create new jobs, take advantage of higher levels of human capital and develop economic policies to stimulate growth".

In Nigeria, last year alone, there were reported cases of child trafficking involving more than 500 children. Several cases involving thousands of children are not known to the authorities. Child labour has been on the increase despite the Obasanjo government's universal basic education programme. The UBE itself cannot be said to be successful as majority of the people in the rural areas lack access to basic social facilities and therefore use children to augment their family income.

However, the efforts of the Non-governmental organizations paid off last year. The wife of the vice-president and founder of the Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF), Mrs. Titi Atiku Abubakar, sponsored a private bill on the elimination of child labour and got it passed into law. As a result, the government established the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking on Persons to create awareness on the implications of trafficking persons.

Perhaps the efforts would have paid off, if the Child Rights Bill had been passed into law.

Part 111 section 26 of the yet to be passed into law child rights bill states, "Prohibition of exploitative child labour- Forced, exploitative labour, lifting or moving heavy objects, work in industrial undertakings prohibited. Penalty on conviction is N50,000 fine or five years imprisonment or both. Where offender is a body corporate, penalty is N250,000 fine".

Section 28 also states, " Buying, selling, hiring or otherwise dealing in children for the purpose of hawking or begging for alms or prostitution, domestic or sexual labour etc. are prohibited. Penalty is 10 years imprisonment".

Despite the clear evidence of child labour on our roads, the federal legislature has not deemed it fit to pass the Child Rights bill into law.
Thousands of children are engaged in the informal sector in our country. Children are engaged as farm helps in the rural areas where they are paid a pittance for jobs done. In the cities, the middle class engages children as house-helps who are paid to do domestic chores and in most cases, they are denied formal education.

A report of the IPEC/ ILO on Child trafficking in West Africa revealed that " Calabar is a transit port for children to be sent to Gabon or Cameroon and also for children trafficked from Cameroon entering Nigeria".

Four states: "Akwa- Ibom, Abia, Rivers and Cross River have become the targets of modern child trafficking syndicates".

It noted that " Lagos, being the largest city in Nigeria is noted for children coming in from and going out to neighbouring countries like Benin, Togo, Ghana".

Since the release of this IPEC/ ILO report, over 500 children trafficked to Nigeria have been found by the police and returned to the Republic of Benin.

The IPEC/ ILO may have implemented several programmes aimed at eliminating child labour, more is expected from the federal and state governments which from all indications have not considered child labour a threat to the socio-economic development of Nigeria.
It is not uncommon for government officials to argue that there are no cases of child labour in Nigeria. So, there are no efforts being made to eliminate child labour in our society.

The issue is how prepared are the governments in Nigeria to expand education, create new jobs and take advantage of higher levels of human capital as suggested by Mr. Juan Somavia.

Our economic reform package is about higher cost of education, job losses etc. such that many Nigerian children are beginning to consider education a waste of time. They would rather trade than spend so many years in school and end up without jobs.
As a result, rather than eliminate child labour our policies are promoting child labour.

The new IPEC/ ILO report also places emphasis on children's health. The study states that "improvements in children's health, through the elimination of child labour, will bring tangible economic benefits".

The IPEC/ ILO study noted "eliminating child labour would be a generational investment and a sustained commitment to children, both today and tomorrow".

Let's hope our leaders are listening to the voices of children in labour " Indifference has a price: My future."

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200402190832.html

By Anita Pandey

Feb 18, 2004, 11:55

An 11-year-old girl is repeatedly raped in a Children's Home - a place that is supposed to provide her with security in the absence of parents and loved ones. (From The Kathmandu Post, 29 July 2003)

As a result of armed conflict, in the last six months of ceasefire, at least 11 children have been killed, two have been taken into custody and five have been injured. (The State of the Rights of the Child in Nepal, bi-annual National Report, Jan-June 2003, by Child Workers in Nepal)

In Nepal, over the past few years, children are paying a huge price for armed insurgency and social unrest. The childcare programmes in most of the 75 districts of Nepal are in disarray. Many schools in the interiors, where insurgents are active, have closed down; students have migrated to towns in search of education. Many have been forced to reconcile to a childhood without education.

In areas like Khalanga and Salyan, students go to school under heavy army protection. The playground is surrounded with gun-toting men. And this, despite the call for making "schools a zone of peace". A recent report by Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN), an organisation that works with children, says: "The maximum impact of the violence that stems from the Maoist insurgency has been borne by children who are struggling to survive in difficult circumstances, be it in the form of direct attack on life and limb in crossfiring, or being orphaned, or loss of siblings and friends, or break in education, or mental disturbance. Children have been the hardest hit".

In the past six months, CWIN recorded 2,866 cases of child labour exploitation, child deaths and murder, missing children, violence, sexual abuse, trafficking, forced prostitution, children affected by armed conflict and children in conflict with the law.

Political unrest and the seven-year long insurgency have forced several children into hazardous work in Nepal. Many have also been pushed to work as labour in Indian homes and factories. According to CWIN, today in Nepal there are 127,000 children working in exploitative, abusive and hazardous conditions.

Several children, working in homes and eateries, get Rs 300 (lUS$=Rs75) a month and only two meals a day though they do the work of two adults. In 2003, CWIN rescued a 12-year-old boy who had steaming lentils poured over him by his angry woman employer. "Since 90 per cent of child labour is in the domestic sector, it remains invisible and doesn't show up in statistics," says Gauri Pradhan of CWIN. This group is considered the most vulnerable, even by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Children will continue to hanker for an enriching haven for years to come as the child rights issue is not on the agenda of policy makers. For two years now, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regularisation) Act 2000 has not been enforced. It needs to be published in the government gazette, Nepal Rajya Patra, before it can be enforced. But the Labour Ministry appears disinterested, with the minister having been changed thrice in the intervening period. The Women, Child and Social Welfare Ministry too finds its hands tied. While the new Act cannot be enforced, the Children Act of 1992 is redundant because the new one has superseded it! Recently, CWIN along with Centre to Assist and Protect Child

Rights of Nepal (CAPCRON), an alliance of child rights groups, filed a case with the Supreme Court challenging the dormancy of the promulgated Act and urging for a solution.

"The new Act is far more stringent and in tune with the times; it has increased coverage of children from 14 years to 16 years. It has broadened its reach and included many more industries and areas under the 'worst forms of child labour', including domestic work and children in the travel and tourism industry. Unfortunately, it is held up either for some amendrnents (which can be done only if the parliament is convened) or because the government is apprehensive of a backlash," says Ajay Singh Karki of Nepal RUGMARK Foundation. "The apathy of the powers that be has reduced years of work - for improvement in the conditions of deprived children - to a mere drop in the ocean," says Pradhan. Organisations that rescue children from exploiting employers are at a loss as there is no apparent course of legal action to be followed in the absence of the Act. "It is the onus of the establishment to carry out legal action for the protection of children, yet it is representatives of civil society who take the initiative," says Pradhan.

"The new Act should be brought on soon also because it relates to the ILO Convention 182, that has identified Nepal as one of the trial territories (the other two being El Salvador and Tanzania) for the time-bound programme," urges Karki. The target is to eliminate the worst forms of child labour by 2007 and children working in other areas by 2010 with education as the entrypoint. Street children, child labour and children in conflict with law (those that are in prison and detention homes) imply issues that are interlinked with and extend from strife.

Despite having ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC 1989) in 1990, the Nepalese government has failed to implement programmes that can pull children out of child labour. Children continue to be exploited economically, socially, physically, emotionally and sexually.

CWIN and other organisations have recently set up the South Asian regional secretariat for the Global March Against Child Labour. Part of the action will be to prepare for the working children's parliament to be held in 2004. This will be a unique opportunity to ensure that interventions designed to eliminate exploitative and hazardous child labour consider the child's perspective, and are sustainable and child centred.

Source: http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_7429.shtml

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2004 01:07:09 AM ]

NEW DELHI: A $40-million Indo-US venture involving the labour ministries of the two countries and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), aimed at eliminating child labour, was launched here on Monday.

The venture, called the "Indus Project", will target 80,000 children in 10 hazardous industries — cigarette-making, brassware, bricks, fireworks, footwear, bangles, locks, matches, stone quarries and silk.

The project will be implemented in 20 districts in four states — Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

This is the largest ever child labour programme being executed by the ILO at the country level, ILO executive director Kari Tapiola said. In addition, India has agreed to conduct a review of the existing child-labour elimination efforts in the carpet-making industry, US official sources said.

Union labour minister Sahib Singh, who inaugurated the programme, said, "The problem of child labour continues to be a challenge. We are committed to eradicating child labour in hazardous industries by the end of 2004 in Delhi and the rest of the country by 2007."

Asked what was the extent of child labour all over the country, he said there were around 10 million children aged below 14 involved in such activities. "It is a complex socio-economic problem, primarily arising out of the poverty of the families concerned and depended on the extent of their social backwardness and illiteracy. Therefore, the government's policy is to adopt a gradual and sequential approach to eliminate child labour," he said.

Labour secretary P D Shenoy said the right place for every child is the playground and schools and not work places. US deputy under secretary of labour Arnold Levine said the project called for coordinated effort at several levels.

The programme will be jointly funded by the US Department of Labour (USDOL) and India's labour ministry which will provide equal amounts of the total cost of the plan. ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) will be the executing agency.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/500459.cms

February 16, 2004
BY ELAINE L. CHAO

The tall, shy young boy came up to me and asked simply to shake my hand. He had been beaten so badly by employers that he had lost part of his hearing. Today he bravely endures the embarrassment of attending classes with children much younger and smaller than himself -- to get an education at the U.S. funded school for trafficked children in Kokrobite, a small village in Ghana.

I heard many stories like this one during my recent trip to Africa, where I launched U.S. backed projects to combat the worst forms of child labour. While there are many cultural and economic obstacles to eliminating the worst forms of child labour, there are also many Africans who recognize the time has come to put an end to these exploitive practices.

In West and Central Africa, trafficking in children is a perversion of the ancient custom of sending children away to live with better-off relatives in order to go to school or learn a trade. Today organized opportunists looking for a cheap, compliant labor force for domestic service, agriculture, mining and other industries convince parents to entrust children as young as 6 to them. The children work long hours for little or no pay and are provided with only the barest necessities of life.

As a result, many trafficked children have "lost their child's soul," as one psychologist told me at a school that rescues street children in Cotonou, Benin. Another social worker said trafficked children had to be taught how to play by the street children, who were actually healthier psychologically because they had taken the initiative and run away from abusive situations. Seeing the beautiful, smiling faces of these rescued children, it was difficult to believe that anyone would want to harm them.

Perhaps the most poignant experience of all, however, was in the Congo, where I met young men and women who had been forcibly recruited into militias as child soldiers. Nonprofit organizations working to eliminate child soldiers estimate that as many as 20,000 to 30,000 troops -- or 12percent -- of the armed militias in the Congo were composed of children, sometimes as young as 6 and 8.

I met two such boys -- now teenagers -- at a center in Kinshasa, where they had drawn huge posters on the wall of their experiences as child soldiers. They showed off their drawings of tanks, machine guns, bombs, grenades, explosions and dead bodies that took on a heartbreaking reality because they were actual depictions of how they had lived and what they had seen.

One picture caught my attention in particular: a drawing of two African lions sitting contentedly by a stream, while a decapitated human body floated past them in the water.

The human tragedy of child soldiers was even more apparent in the shattered lives of two young women I met who had been forcibly conscripted into Congo militias. They had been abducted from a Catholic boarding school when they were in the sixth grade. They described how they had been put on airplanes and taken to army camps to work as domestics and passed around as concubines for the soldiers. When their "units" were "decommissioned," they had been turned out on the streets -- along with their babies -- with no food, medicine or means of support.

They had come to the Red Cross, seeking medicine and help in learning a trade, so they could support themselves. Their plight is one of the reasons why this administration is demanding that the needs of young women pressed into service as child soldiers must be a priority of the militia demobilization program in the Congo.

What can we do to help these children, who have been forced into combat or trafficked? Here are some of the key steps this administration is taking, under the president's comprehensive strategy to eliminate trafficking in children and the worst forms of child labour:

• The U.S. Department of Labor works with international organizations to raise awareness about the exploitation of trafficked children among Africans themselves, and supports these organizations in their efforts to provide services to children removed from exploitive labor.

• This administration and its partners are strengthening local African school systems, so parents know there is another way for their children to advance within society. In many African countries, parents must pay for tuition, books, uniforms and school supplies even at "public" schools, which puts education out of reach for families.

• The Labor Department supports a massive international effort to decommission child soldiers and educate, rehabilitate and reintegrate these young men and women back into their communities.
But there is one more thing that must be done to eliminate -- in the words of President George W. Bush -- the special evil of child trafficking: Create effective legal deterrents against the exploitation of children.

Many of these children have seen the worst life has to offer at a very young age. Yet everywhere I went I was impressed by their courage and the dedication of the professionals who were trying to help them. We cannot give these children back their childhood, but we can help them have a future -- one step at a time.

Source: http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/echao16_20040216.htm

By Our Staff Reporter
Friday, Feb 13, 2004

ELURU, FEB. 12. The district Collector, Sanjay Jaju, on Friday said an action plan for elimination of child labour in the district headquarters town was under implementation.

He was speaking at a function after flagging off a rally organised by Sarva Siksha Abhiyan as part of building public awareness on the problem.

Four committees, comprising officials and non-officials, were constituted to oversee the implementation of the Child Labour (Prevention) Act in the town. The committees would periodically meet and review the situation, the Collector explained. He said the committee members would identify the child workers engaged in shops and establishments and take steps for their admission in school.

The Project Director, National Child Labour Project (NCLP), K.V. Ramana, said the incidence of child labour was relatively more in upland parts of the district. He said three special schools were functioning for child workers in the agency parts of the district. The Eluru Municipal Chairperson, M. Eswari, and the District Education Officer, P. Parvati, spoke.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2004/02/13/stories/2004021306020300.htm

New Vision (Kampala)
February 10, 2004
Posted to the web February 10, 2004
Emmy Olaki
Kampala

Masindi district has secured a grant of $516,000 (about sh1.2b) for a pilot project to eliminate child labour in tobacco growing.

The grant which was secured from an organisation Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco (ECLT) was received through British American Tobacco Uganda (BATU) for Masindi as a pilot district.

BATU is the largest processor and exporter of tobacco in Uganda, and a member of ECLT.

The project to be administered by ECLTU will see a fully furnished technical institute built in the district.

The Omukama of Bunyoro, Iguru Gafabusa laid the foundation stone for the school in Kyema.

"The components of this operation include identifying and withdrawing these children from tobacco gardens and providing them with alternatives to enable them lead successful lives through education and development of vocational skills," John Majara, the district chairman said.

Martin Gwoki, the head of the project's steering committee said the move is a response to concerns by stakeholders.

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200402100407.html

New Vision (Kampala)
February 10, 2004
Posted to the web February 10, 2004
James Oloch
Kampala

The Government has been called upon to enforce anti-child labour legislation to stop exploitation of children.

The call was made by Judith Lamunu of Platform for Labour for Action (PLA) during a recent seminar in Lira.

Lamunu said an estimated 2,000 children in Lira worked for food.

She said the NGO had rescued 350 children and prevented the recruitment of 200 others into domestic labour in the district.

"Children are more engaged in domestic work compared to people between 20 and 22 years," said Francis Ojok, another PLA official.

He said this was due to poverty, insecurity and HIV/AIDS in their homes.

Ojok said child workers risked sexual harassment and being infected with HIV/AIDS.

He said the Government should support the NGO's programmes.

The NGO aims at influencing children's rights and favourable labour legislation.

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200402100354.html

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

SYRDARYA, 9 Feb 2004 (IRIN) - With Uzbekistan's new cotton season approaching, there have been new calls for regulation of the widespread use of child labour in this key export sector. Despite some economic growth since independence in 1991, Uzbekistan remains agrarian, with cotton, as it was in Soviet days, by far the most important crop.

Demand for juvenile labour remains strong during harvesting campaigns. Whole villages and families are forced to work the land, as the output of the kolkhoz - the old Soviet word for collective farm - is tightly regulated. Families rely on the labour of their children, from five years old, to help out in hard times.

Officially, Uzbek law discourages child labour. But the requirements of the national economy, continue to outweigh its obligations to international standards. Uzbekistan, despite its membership of the International Labour Organization (ILO), has ratified only one of twelve of its conventions banning child labour. In theory, Tashkent subscribes to norms and laws that are harsher than international standards but also are more general. But these laws are laxly enforced, and tend to run counter to strong traditions that have condoned the use of children in working life for generations.

An Uzbek interior ministry official who didn't want to be identified, told IRIN that the government was aware of international condemnation of its policy of utilising vast numbers of children to gather cotton, but said, right now, there was no viable alternative. "We are stuck with our history. Moscow made us the top cotton producer in the old USSR and until we can diversify our economic base we must produce and sell cotton like crazy. The harvest is hugely labour intensive, so we are forced to use kids."

The official added that the way forward, given the realities, was to ensure children were not exploited, worked under favourable conditions in cotton farms and that their education was not compromised by the long months of agricultural labour each year. "This is what the government is trying to achieve."

But such reforms appear along way off. When IRIN visited cotton fields last November in Syrdarya province, 100 km from the capital Tashkent, groups of children, working alongside adults, could be seen labouring in the freezing rain to bring in the remains of the harvest. One girl, cold and weather-beaten, looked up from shuffling in the mud picking the very last of the season's crop. "We are taken to the fields every year," Jamilia, a school student from Tashkent, said. "In summer we get going at first light, we have to study after classes to catch up. We have to pick at least seven kg of cotton a day. We do not receive any money for the 'white gold' we pick. They say the money is all spent on food and supplies."

IRIN also met a second year student from Namangan teachers training college who had been assigned to a cotton farm 220 km from the eastern city where she lives. She complained her left foot was injured, but that the supervisor on the cotton fields refused to allow her to see a doctor because she had picked so little cotton that day. The student said many of her friends suffered from influenza and other respiratory diseases as well as malnutrition, due to the poor diet on the cotton fields.

The UN children's agency UNICEF acknowledges the extent of the child labour problem in Uzbekistan's cotton industry. "UNICEF is working with the government on this issue and we hope to launch a campaign to coincide with the next cotton picking season to educate families and community leaders on the impact of cotton picking on the health and education of the children." Brenda Vigo, head of UNICEF in Uzbekistan, told IRIN.

A human rights groups in Samarkand, Uzbekistan's second city, said the most common violations of labour law included employing young people without contracts, taking on children without parental consent, having them work long, unregulated hours in dangerous circumstances and allowing no time off for education.

"We are working with local governments, mahallahs [community councils] and schools to lobby for the phasing out of child labour in cotton. Progress has been made. In Tashkent Oblast [province], for example, the government has effectively outlawed child labour," said Inkilob Yusupova, head of the Children's Fund of Uzbekistan, a local NGO.

But observers are sceptical that such initiatives will have much impact on humanising the industry. "We know the risks [associated with juvenile cotton picking]," a father of four told IRIN at a village near Syrdarya, capital of the province of the same name." But we are forced to give up our children for cotton each season, we have no choice, if we don't we starve," he added starkly.

Source:http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39385&
SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN

Monday February 9, 2004

A French group is helping to rescue Cambodian child scavengers from a garbage dump and provide them with education and vocational training, VIJAY JOSHI reports.

DRESSED in a starched white smock, Hen Horn flicked a saucepan of frying vegetables and breathed in the smoky aroma in the spotless kitchen of the Lotus Blanc restaurant.

Two years ago, Hen Horn was wading in garbage. Caked in grime from head to foot, inhaling the rancid stench of filth, he earned a living by scavenging in Cambodia’s biggest garbage dump for 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.

“It would be unbearably hot in the summer. But it was worse when it rained because there would be worms everywhere,” says Hen Horn, 18.

His life took a U-turn when he was rescued by a French volunteer group in 2001 from his foul existence at the Stung Mean Chey rubbish dump on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Like Hen Horn, about 3,600 scavenger children have been saved from the dump since 1996 by the group For the Smile of a Child and provided with schooling, vocational training, health care and, most importantly, a future.

“In my own small world, I am the happiest man now,” says Hen Horn, who is learning to be a chef at the Lotus Blanc, run by For the Smile of a Child. The haute cuisine restaurant, favoured by Western expatriates in Phnom Penh, also serves as a vocational training school for the group’s wards.

But for every lucky one like Hen Horn, hundreds more are still trapped in the dump. Most earn about 11,000 riel (RM11) a day, often to help their parents pay off loans taken to feed the family in times of drought or floods.

The site presents the raw face of poverty in Cambodia, one-third of whose 12 million people do not earn enough to eat two meals a day. The dump extends across an area of about 10 soccer fields, skylined by 6m-high hills of refuse that thicken the air with a nauseating stink of decay. The slippery ground is covered with a carpet of flies that rise up in black, buzzing clouds on being disturbed.

Hundreds of adults and children traverse the rotting waste, wearing torn galoshes, uncovering rubbish with steel hooks. Anything that can be recycled is picked up with bare hands and tossed into sacks for sale to middlemen – plastic shopping bags, drink cans, food tins, hypodermic syringes and even food leftovers sold as pig feed.

Every time a dump truck unloads its unsavoury cargo – 400 tons in all every day – children and adults rush to pick through before it is pushed by bulldozers into a pit where it is burned. Scrambling for scrap can be dangerous with trucks backing up and bulldozers moving in. At least four people have been crushed to death this year.

Hen Horn, the trainee chef, says his most vivid memory of the dump is “the pushing and shoving and everybody rushing to get whatever we could lay our hands on.”

“I promised myself I would never go back to the dump. I would tell my mother ‘don’t give up hope. I will find a way out’,” says Hen Horn.

Founded by a French couple in 1993, For the Smile of a Child – “Pour un Sourire d’Enfant” in French – employs 120 Cambodians, half of them teachers. The group’s work is only a small contribution in the fight on Cambodia’s pervasive poverty, which has led to one of the world’s highest rates of child labour.

About half the country’s four million children aged five to 17 are employed, mostly in farms and fields, according to government statistics. Others work in shops and factories, according to the government’s Cambodia Child Labour Survey in 2001. No figures are available on how many children work in hazardous places such as chemical factories or garbage dumps like Stung Mean Chey.

Chheoun Simorn, an undernourished 16-year-old girl who looks 12, has been scavenging there with her younger brother for the last year, starting at 6am and finishing with fading light at 6pm, earning about 15,000 riel (RM15) a day.

They are helping their father, a cycle rickshaw driver, pay off his debts. It is unlikely he will ever do so. Chheoun Simorn says he must pay 13,000 riel (RM11) every day, just in interest.

She breaks into sobs when asked why she works at the dump. “This is not a job I can talk about. I dare not tell my mother I don’t want to work here,” she says as she wipes away the tears, leaving a streak of black from her grimy hand on her cheek.

About 2km from the dump is the headquarters of For the Smile of a Child – a stark contrast of well manicured lawns, neat classrooms, white-tiled bathrooms and dining halls. Children who have worked at the dump at least one year are chosen for the programme, says Pin Sarapich, director of vocational training centre for the group.

Parents have to be persuaded to let their children go to school and, in return, they are given 17kg of rice per week, a donation from the United Nations’ World Food Programme, to compensate for the loss of the children’s income.

At school, the children eat two meals and two snacks a day. They get free education up to 12th grade and vocational training in the hotel business, beauty care, handicrafts or secretarial work.

But with a budget of US$1.07mil (RM3.9mil) last year – mostly from private French donations – the group cannot take any more children than the 300 to 400 it helps per year.

Pin Sarapich hopes that the former scavengers will inspire others to try to escape from the garbage dump. “The kids we help here will go on to help others by passing on their optimism, and the message that one should never give up,” says Pin. – AP

Source:http://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/2/9/features/7017595&sec=features

The benefits of eliminating child labour would be seven times greater than the costs, according to a new United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) report. Forcing children to continue working - a practice that affects one out of every six youngsters, or 246 million children - will cost $5.1 trillion from now until 2020. But if they receive an education instead, that figure drops to just $760 million - an amount that is more than offset by other social gains, the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) says in the study.

" What's good social policy is also good economic policy," said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. "Eliminating child labour will yield an enormous return on investment - and a priceless impact on the lives of children and families."

The study, entitled Investing in Every Child: An Economic Study of the Costs and Benefits of Eliminating Child Labour, is the first integrated analysis of the worldwide economic costs and benefits of eliminating child labour.

All regions of the world would experience large net gains from stopping child labour, the study says, "although the costs would almost certainly exceed returns in the early years." Net economic flows would turn dramatically positive, however, as the effects of improved education and health take hold. By 2020, costs would be far outweighed by the returns, leaving total annual benefits of around $60 billion.

In North Africa and the Middle East, the benefits would be the highest relative to the costs - 8.4 to 1. In Asia, the ratio would be 7.2 to 1 and in the countries with economies in transition, 5.9 to 1. In sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America the ratio would be 5.2 to 1 and 5.3 to 1, respectively.

The worldwide net economic benefits of the hypothetical programme would amount to 22.2 per cent of annual gross national income, the report says.

" Reaping the economic value of expanded education depends on countries' ability to create new jobs, take advantage of higher levels of human capital and develop economic policies to stimulate growth," the report says. "Yet even if the effect of education on future earnings was halved to 5 per cent, the study estimates that global benefits would still exceed $2 trillion."

Source: http://www.europaworld.org/week163/benefitsof7204.htm

Wa, Feb. 7, GNA- Chiefs and elders in the Upper West Region have appealed to the government to empower chiefs in the region to enforce laws against elopement, betrothal and child labour. They have pledged to embark on vigorous enrolment drive to get all children of school going age into school and take measures to retain them in school.

These were contained in a resolution signed by Ana Banawini Sando II, Paramount chief of Kaleo Traditional Area, Kuoro Kini-Buktie Liman IV, Paramount chief of Gwollu Traditional Area and Ana S.D. Gore II, Paramount chief of Dorimon Traditional Area.

The resolution was signed after a two-day workshop on-factors militating against education in the region.

The chiefs said they would identify and support poor and needy children to pursue their education.

The participants called on all stakeholders to institute annual best school, best teachers and best pupil awards at all levels to encourage them.

They appealed to the government to construct more feeder roads to open up communities to facilitate access to education. They also appealed to the government to make paramount chiefs members of District Education Oversight Committees to enable them to play their complementary and supervisory roles at the traditional levels.

The workshop was organised by Upper West Region House of Chiefs in collaboration with Northern Network for Education Development and sponsored by Commonwealth Education Fund. 7 Feb 04

Source:http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=51375

Friday 6 February 2004

Parents often appear to be the harshest taskmasters. Indian fathers still sometimes repay debts by committing their children to bonded labour. Pakistani parents occasionally maim their children

The cries of working children can be heard the world over. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that 90 million children between eight and fifteen years old work in the labour forces of developing countries; worldwide the figure is higher. They often labour under hazardous conditions, handling poisonous chemicals, inhaling noxious fumes, and hauling excessive weights. They are usually overworked, underfed, and underpaid — if they are paid at all.

Though many countries have enacted laws forbidding the use — and abuse — of children in the work force, optimism about the conditions faced by working children is unwarranted. That conclusion stems from an inescapable fact: the families of most working children depend on their labours to survive.

Because child labour means cheap labour, the young are often the most employable in developing and recession-plagued economies. The director of a medium-size textile enterprise in Bangladesh admits without hesitation that 70 per cent of his employees are between the ages of 13 and 17. “They provide the same productivity as adults,” he says, “but for a fraction of the cost.”

Children, of course, are unlikely to organise or complain to authorities when they are overworked and underpaid. They are not aware of their legal rights. It verges on slavery when children are locked up without proper lighting, food, and healthcare. But they don’t question long hours and dire working conditions. Instead, most are grateful to be working at all.
In Asia and the Pacific, children routinely work endless hours, sleep on factory floors and subsist on scanty rations. Young Indian factory workers who fail to follow instructions are sometimes branded with red-hot iron rods, and some teenage Thai prostitutes are disciplined by having acid thrown in their faces.

For thousands of South American, Caribbean, and African children rented out as maids and houseboys, there is no recourse when they are overworked, beaten, and raped. As an official of Kenya’s Child Welfare Society concedes, “There is little we can do to help when a child is ill-treated unless the case becomes known to us or to the police.”

Even when an employer is reasonable, working conditions may still prove dangerous. Children in Central America harvest crops sprayed with pesticides. Colombian children squeeze through the narrowest shafts of coalmines. Thai children toil in unventilated factories, working with glass heated to 1,500 degrees Celsius. Indian children inhale large doses of sulphur and potassium chlorate to fashion flammable powder into matches. Youthful glassmakers in Brazil breathe toxic silicone and arsenic fumes.

Sometimes the physical damage from such labours is permanent. Brazilian, Colombian, and Egyptian youngsters who work in brickyards often suffer irreparable spinal damage from carrying heavy loads. More generally, children who spend long hours in factories all over the world often enter their teens with permanently deformed limbs.

If they live that long. Thousands of children don’t. In India safety conditions are so neglected in many factories that numerous children have died in electrical fires and chemical explosions.
Laws exist to protect children from hazardous conditions in many occupations, but they are seldom enforced. The agricultural sector — the largest employer of children in both developing and industrialised countries — is particularly difficult to oversee. There is little that officials can do to monitor or modify the children’s workloads on large farms or small family enterprises.
In fact, parents often appear to be the harshest taskmasters. Indian fathers still sometimes repay debts by committing their children to bonded labour. Pakistani parents occasionally maim their children to make them beguiling beggars. Sadly, families are often the last to protest exploitation of their children.

The ILO contends that children suffer greatly when they are forced to perform as ‘small adults’. “The child’s creativeness and ability to transcend reality are blunted,” states one ILO report, “and his whole mental world is impoverished.” The young worker does not learn how to play, or how to read and write; worse, he smokes and, in the Caribbean, he drinks cane rum to keep going, as he doesn’t have enough to eat.

In 1973, an ILO convention called for a worldwide minimum working age of 15. In ten years, only 27 of the ILO’s 150 member nations ratified that convention. Several more countries have laws that set the minimum work age between 12 and 16, but the ILO cautions that few countries “have what could be considered a comprehensive prohibition of dangerous work for young children,” and that even fewer have “measures to protect young persons from moral degradation.”

Since laws are not the answer to child labour, many experts propose compulsory education as a means to curb it. But education laws have proved elusive too. In practically all impoverished societies, parents place wages above education. As a result, the percentage of dropouts is rising at an alarming rate. A recent study by UNESCO shows that in developing countries up to 60 per cent of children do not complete primary school.

Relief agencies agree that the total abolition of child labour is an unrealistic goal. So, for millions of such children, the future holds little promise or hope. Working children are entitled to something better, regardless of whether they know it. —DT-PS

Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri, Emeritus Professor at India’s University Grants Commission, is a former Professor of international relations at Oxford University and Research Coordinator at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_6-2-2004_pg3_4

Feb 5th 2004
From The Economist print edition

Child labour is reviled. There is much debate as to how it can be reduced

OF ALL the alleged sins of globalisation, child labour has been among the most scorned. Few people in rich countries (though not all, see article) like to think that their cheap clothes, toys and handbags have been made by workers who ought to be in schools or playgrounds. This dismay is usually genuine, but it has also been exploited by anti-globalisation activists to popularise their cause. Anti-globalisers have been joined recently by some of America's Democratic presidential candidates, who have cited child labour as a reason why America should reconsider its free-trade agreements with poor countries. The idea that these countries might be exploiting children is more disturbing than the highly debatable claim that poor labour standards for adults in the third world are unfair. Moral indignation has been used to advocate wrong-headed economic policies.

One of the more credible critics of child labour, and the leader in the fight to enforce bans on the practice, has been the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a United Nations agency. Until recently, its argument has also rested mostly on moral grounds. Although it seems wrong for children to toil for others' economic gain, one in six of the world's children between the ages of 5 and 17 work—and the proportion is higher in the poorer parts of Asia and Africa. In a new report*, the ILO has bolstered its moral case with an economic one, arguing that child labour is economically unjustified as well.

On the ILO's analysis, the cost of ending child labour, by creating enough school places and replacing the lost income that children provide to their families, would be around $760 billion over the next 20 years, only about 7% of America's annual GDP. But the benefits, says the ILO, might be as much as seven times as large, when the gains of increased human capital, better health and fewer lives lost due to work accidents are considered. The agency seems to have felt the need to buttress its moral case with this economic analysis because most mainstream economists have long argued (as does this newspaper) that using child labour is the best of a set of very bad choices.

Child labour, of course, is as old as human history. Until relatively recently, parents viewed children as economically useful and, especially in farm-based economies, had them milking cows or sowing seeds as soon as they were old enough to do so. Most people in rich countries, probably feel less troubled about children working on farms than in factories. Child labour was mostly outlawed in now-rich countries more than a century ago.

Should rich countries attempt to enforce a ban in poorer countries as well? On the face of it, no. The fact that parents choose to send their children to work suggests, at the very least, that the alternatives are even less attractive—not a pleasant suburban school, but the grinding toil of subsistence farming, joining a militia or prostitution. In economic terms, child labour is merely the symptom of that greater disease called poverty.

Experience in rich countries seems to back that up. Child labour was more common everywhere in the 19th century when today's rich countries were poorer. Political pressures to end it only became reality, economists argue, when families could afford to forgo the income provided by their working children.

Cause or effect?

In recent years, a few economists, like the ILO, have questioned this argument. Perhaps, they suggest, some countries keep themselves poor by allowing child labour. On this view, poverty is not the cause but the result of child labour. There are two ways in which it might be. First, starting work at the age of 12 means that children miss out on education and the skills that might have landed them better jobs in the future. Thus, allowing child labour prevents countries from investing in what economists call human capital, keeping their workers mired in low-skilled jobs. Second, employing children can depress wages for adults. On this view (which was also once used to keep women out of the workforce), the more children that work, the fewer and worse-paid are the jobs for adults.

Until recently, much of this debate was theoretical. But a new paper** from Eric Edmonds, a professor at Dartmouth College in America, seems to rebut these claims—and to support the conventional wisdom that poverty, not child labour, is the real problem. Mr Edmonds scrutinises data between 1993 and 1997 for over 3,000 families in Vietnam, a country that has traditionally put more children to work than most. Over this period, Vietnam's GDP per head grew at an average rate of 6.5% a year, thanks to a series of reforms introduced after the end of the cold war. Strikingly, the number of children in the workforce fell by 28%. By looking at the behaviour of individual households, Mr Edmonds estimates that families' rising wealth was responsible for four-fifths of this fall.

Perhaps the ILO is right that ending child labour would cost $760 billion, but that as children are better educated they would eventually improve the lot of everyone in the economy—though where the money would come from, and how to ensure that it would be well spent, is unclear. Arguably, however, the ILO and others rightly concerned about child labour are looking at the wrong target. It will start to disappear, and faster, if poor countries pursue general policies that help them to grow more quickly, such as cutting tariffs and opening up more to foreign investment. Rather than forever sermonising, rich countries could do more to help eradicate child labour by themselves dropping trade barriers to imports from poor countries.

Source: http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2405051

AFP [ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2004 07:01:37 AM ]

GENEVA : Ending child labour and sending all children to school by 2020 would generate $5.11 trillion for poor countries - some seven times the cost of such a scheme, a study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said.

Initially, governments and families would pay a price for ending the practice, which involves one in every six children or 246 million of the world's minors, according to the study released late on Tuesday.

After 16 years, however, they would reap annual benefits of $60 billion, it argued.

"What's good social policy is also good economic policy," the ILO's director general, Juan Somavia, said in a statement.

"Eliminating child labour will yield an enormous return on investment - and a priceless impact on the lives of children and families," he said.

The study - the first of its kind - found that globally the economic benefits of ending child labour in developing and transitional economies compared with the cost came to a ratio of 6.7-to-one.

"The cost up front is considerable but not insurmountable," said Frans Roeselaers, director of the ILO's international programme on the elimination of child labour, which conducted the three-year study.

"The benefits are astronomical," he told a news conference in Geneva held to launch the report, "Investing in every child, an economic study of the costs and benefits of eliminating child labour".

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/473479.cms

GENEVA, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Ending child labour around the world is not just a moral imperative, it makes sense economically, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Wednesday.

In a new study, the United Nations agency estimated that ensuring all children under the age 14 stayed in school rather than went out to work would bring accumulated economic benefits worth $5,000 billion by 2020.

This was almost seven times the some $760 billion cost of implementing the policy, although at the outset costs would outweigh benefits, it added.

"What is good social policy is also good economic policy. Eliminating child labour will yield an enormous return on investment," said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia.

According to the ILO, some 246 million children between the ages of five and 17, or one in six in the world, work and about 75 percent of them have hazardous jobs.

The costs of ending child labour in developing countries and the transitional economies of the former Soviet Union included the building of more schools, the training of teachers and income lost by households.

The benefits came largely from the forecast higher earning power of children who had completed their education as well as some savings in health spending.

Universal education until 14 would boost future earnings by 11 percent, assuming the countries were able to generate jobs for a more highly qualified future labour force, the ILO said.

But even if the forecast gains were cut by half to five percent, the economic benefit would still be around $2,000 billion, it added.

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03420237.htm

Tuesday, February 3, 2004

UNI New Delhi Feb 2: The Indian carpet industry, with a large and lucrative overseas market, is witnessing a decline in the use of child labour, primarily because of “social labelling” and non-tariff barriers imposed on them, says a recent study commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).The study has found, at least in the case of India the social labelling has worked by forcing the manufactures to cut down the use of child labour to avoid their produce being rejected or labelled adversely.

The total value of carpet exports for 2002-03 is provisionally placed at $ 532.96 million as per carpet export promotion council. Apart from this the industry employed about 1,30,000 children in 2003 according to the ILO figure and not to mention a very large section of population of artisans, weavers, manufactures and traders.

Social labelling was introduced in the 1990s for eliminating the use of exploitative child labour and improving the working condition for the weaving community by exerting pressure on the exporters/ suppliers to enforce fair conditions in the industry.

A significant conclusion that can be drawn from the findings of the study is that an intervention at the economic level, linking trade with prohibition of child labour has yielded results, which simple legal safeguards like the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulations) Act, 1986 had failed to achieve.

The industrial units, particularly those relying heavily on exports to American and European markets, will definitely welcome the study as in the recent years the exports had slumped following legislative measures as well as severe international and domestic criticism of the use of child labour.

The study, released recently as a book Child Labour in Carpet Industry: Impact of Social Labelling in India by the Delhi based Institute for Human Development, was commissioned by ILO as part of a global study on impact of social labelling on child labour.

When the issue of restrictions and labelling of carpets first surfaced in a big way in early 1990s it sparked off a high pitched debate. The arguments ranged from nationalistic overtures against the “imperial trade laws of the West” to calls for weighing options between sustenance and “blindly pursuing the demand by civil right groups.”

But the success, as it appears in the decline in numbers in the study, cannot be taken at the face value and any sweeping judgment would be premature.

The study for instance, points out “though there appears to be a decline in the incidence of child labour, the divergent techniques adopted for the estimation of child labour renders it difficult to come to a definite conclusion on this decline.”

It adds, “there is thus a controversy surrounding the reliability of statistics and the divergent estimates on child labour in carpet industry.” There has also been a decline in the Indian carpet exports as it has been replaced by Iran and Pakistan as the major exporters of carpets.

Source: http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=news&Story_ID=020320