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