Mr Anthony Dontoh, Eastern Regional Director of the Department of Children, has asked the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Government to roll-out programmes that would tackle the incident of child trafficking in the country.

He said children remained the nation’s future asset and that everything ought to be done to ensure that their educational needs were well-catered for by both the state and their families.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Koforidua on Wednesday on the state of children in the Eastern Region, Mr Dontoh identified child trafficking and labour as the greatest challenges to child development and called on the new government to take urgent measures to ameliorate the situation.

He said many children were being exploited on farms as child labourers when they were supposed to be in school, noting that the hiatus that develops as a result of their inability to acquire any skills could cause irreparable damage to their future aspirations.

Mr Dontoh said government must design a scheme that would enable the children to continue with their education, especially from the Junior High School (JHS) to the Senior High School (SHS).

He said this would prevent them from falling prey to self-centred businessmen who would lure them into their plantation to work for them for measly wages.

This would require that the state offered some stipend to pay for the school needs of such needy students, especially as they made the transition from the JHS to the SHS, he said.

Mr Dontoh said alternatively, the government could strengthen laboratory facilities at the JHS to enable pupils desirous of technical and vocational training to acquire some life long skills.

http://news.myjoyonline.com/news/200901/25098.asp

They sweep, they swab, they wash, they cook, they take care of our children and our pets, they look after our elderly. We see them every day. Yet they are invisible. Yes, millions of women, men and children — India’s large force of domest ic workers, or “servants” as most people call them — remain unseen, undervalued and denied rights that all workers deserve.

This is a subject to which we are forced to return every now and then. Sometimes it is a tragedy that forces us to think. Sometimes a positive development. In June 2006, when 10-year-old Sonu was sadistically tortured and killed by her employers in Mumbai, the invisible world of the domestic worker, and especially of the child worker, lay exposed in all its brutality. With the New Year, the possibility of changing the conditions of work and life of such people comes in the form of the Maharashtra Domestic Workers’ Welfare Board Bill that was passed by both houses of the legislature during the recently concluded winter session. Although the law has many shortcomings, it is important because it recognises the rights of these “invisible” workers.

Beyond legislation
Of course, laws alone cannot deal with a problem that constantly plays hide and seek. For decades, groups like the National Domestic Workers’ Movement have campaigned for recognition of domestic work as a form of labour. The diligence and persistence of such groups has resulted in some States initiating legislation. For instance, both Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have included domestic workers in the legal provisions for minimum wage. Tamil Nadu has included domestic work in the Manual Labour Act and in January 2007 set up the Domestic Workers’ Welfare Board. Kerala has taken some steps in this direction, as have Bihar and Rajasthan. The Central government has included domestic workers in provisions under the Unorganised Sector Workers’ Social Security Act that was passed in January last year. And now Maharashtra has passed its own law.

Most labour laws face the challenge of implementation but amongst the most difficult must surely be the ones linked to domestic work. To begin with, there are no clear statistics of the number of people working as paid labour in people’s homes. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), “A domestic worker is someone who carries out household work in a private household in return for wages.” The estimated number of domestic workers in India is 90 million but this is probably an underestimate as there has been no systematic study to document such workers throughout the country.

From the data that exists, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of domestic workers are women and girls. There has been considerable documentation of the abuse young girls, in particular, suffer at the hands of their employers. Sonu’s was not an exceptional story. It was just a reminder of what goes on behind many closed doors.

An estimated 20 per cent of domestic workers are children below 14 years of age. Under child labour laws, these children should not be employed. Yet those who do employ them, get around the law by claiming that they are “looking after” these children when in fact it is the children who look after them, usually with little or no pay. Such child workers slip between the cracks of labour laws as most laws cover workers over the age of 18. The Maharashtra law, for instance, addresses domestic workers between the ages of 18 and 60 who are now eligible to register themselves at district welfare boards. But what happens to those under 18?

Laws are necessary but those relating to domestic workers can only be effective if there is a change of attitude in the people who employ them. Do employers of domestics even know what the minimum wage is? Do they care? How will they be penalised if they refuse to pay? Can domestic workers ever be strong enough to refuse to work in a labour surplus market like ours? Every day, changes in the economy and developmental policies are pushing more people into domestic work. With extended families being replaced by nuclear families, there is increasing demand for domestic workers. This ought to push up wages. But simultaneously, the increasing number of infrastructure projects and industries are displacing millions of people, particularly from tribal areas. These are the women, especially, who are now joining the growing force of domestic workers in our cities.
Ground realities

Slavery would be considered a harsh term by most Indians who employ domestic workers but the reality is that even today in many homes, the domestics — especially those who work full time — are often no better than slaves. They are usually in debt to their employers and work their whole lives to pay off the debt. Generations work to pay off the debt. And it never really ever gets paid off. They are on call 24 hours of the day, 365 days in the year. And they can never ever dream of freeing themselves from such bondage. How can laws intervene in such situations?

Ultimately, things can and will change only if those who employ domestics accept that these workers are first of all “workers” and not “servants”. That they are individuals with rights like any other person. That they should be paid a fair wage. That they deserve time off. That they too have families to care for. That they should not lose wages when they fall sick. That they are valued human beings without whom our lives would be impossible.

Such a change of attitude cannot be legislated.

IMPHAL, Jan 19: Labour and employment minister Ph Parijat Singh, said child labour exists mostly in the poor states and countries. Small children below 14 years of age come out in search of jobs because of their parents economic condition and are forced to do such type of jobs because of the situation, either willingly or unwillingly.

The minster was speaking on the occasion of a one-day orientation training programme of volunteers on `Elimination of child labour` held at the Kangla Hall in Imphal today. The programme was organized by the department of labour and employment, Manipur.

Ph Parijat Singh, labour and employment minister said on the occasion that child labour exists mostly in the poor states and countries. Small children below 14 years of age come out in search of jobs because of their parents economic condition and are forced to do such type of jobs because of the situation, either willingly or unwillingly.

It is said that India is a developing country, but this was not true to some extent, he said while finding the term underdeveloped more appropriate. The minister also cautioned that employing children below 14 years of age was illegal and against the law and said that if found employed the employers would be punishable under the law.

He observed that parents need to be aware that their children were in the growing stage and that they needed love and care, while asking parents not be force their children to odd jobs to earn for the family at such an early stage.

Instead, they should be sent to schools and given proper education so that they could look forward to a bright future, he said adding that it was the responsibility of the government to provide free education to children who lived under the poverty line.

AR Khan, commissioner of labour and employment said in his speech that in Manipur child labour was not rampant and that in 1997 a survey on child labour was conducted in all the districts of the state in compliance with the directions of the Supreme Court.

The survey covered 145 hazardous establishments and 2113 non- hazardous establishments and identified only 589 child labourers in the state, he disclosed while stating that the child labourers were mainly employed as helpers in hotels, families, for loading, as domestic workers and farm helpers.

The child labourers in the hotel were all removed since they were all employed in contravention of the age limit prescribed by the Manipur Shops and Establishments Act, 1972. Another survey was conducted in 2005 in the areas of Imphal Municipal Council by the department of labour and the survey identified only 233 child labourers employed in hotels, restaurants, workshops and domestic work, he said.

Since there was no rehabilitation package readily available the department of labour did not file FIRs in the first instance, he said maintaining that in the future FIRs would be filed immediately for prompt action.

The orientation programme was also attended by other officials of the department including NS Gokulmani, deputy labour commissioner, Manipur, guest of honour Saratkumar Sharma, joint director, social welfare and E Tomba Singh, senior labour inspector.

ISLAMABAD—International Labor Organization(ILO) will provide technical assistance to Balochistan Governmentfor planned development initiative 2009-2013 to promote overseas employment and end child labor.

Under the program, 50,000 Balochistan youth would be impartedexpertise in different traits in next five years to get jobsoverseas and address the child labor issue in the province.

Donglin Li, Country Director, ILO Pakistan with his delegationheld a meeting with Sardar Muhammad Aslam Khan Raisani, ChiefMinister of Balochistan to discuss this development initiative. 

The ILO delegation was visiting Quetta on the specialinvitation of the Chief Minister to initiate formal discussions for the design of a medium term programme and strategy to mobilize donorsupport. ILO will also provide technical support to Balochistan Government's planned "Development Partners Conference" to be organized in Islamabad later this year. The objective of this conference is to mobilize donor support for the Government of Balochistan's Development Initiative focusing on overseas youth employment and eradication of child labour. 

In past, ILO has been working with the close collaboration of the provincial labour department, other government agencies, employers and workers organizations, and other development partners in the fields of occupational safety and health in the mining industry, institutional capacity development, non-formal education to rehabilitate child laborers and interventions related to emergency response. 

ILO has also helped train poor women in selected trades, has carried out Leadership Training Programmes for women, trade unions leaders, sensitized Provincial Parliamentarians on the women employment concerns and provided research grants to University students to carry out research. 

The Organization has also recently launched a new national programme "Combating Abusive Child Labour-II", funded by the European Commission (Euro 5 million). This national programme will be implemented in Balochistan, besides other provinces and it will adopt a three-pronged strategy. 

Having a main thrust at the locallevel where working children and especially those in worst forms, will be identified and provided alternative opportunities of education and vocational training. 

Moreover, their families will be linked to the social safety nets, credit providers and health services. The second component aims to build government capacity at district, provincial and federal levels to keep child labour on priority agenda and eventually expand to other parts of the country. The final component will facilitate building of a dynamic knowledge base to create awareness for ensuring a favorable climate to support efforts at addressing child labour.

SINGAPORE (AFP) — Asia must act quickly to prevent millions of children dropping out of school to go to work as the global economic crisis worsens, a rights expert has warned.

June Kane, an independent adviser to the United Nations and national governments on child rights, told AFP the crisis was a chance for authorities in the region to tackle child labour by giving parents incentives to keep minors in education.

But she warned that authorities in Asia -- the biggest employer of the world's estimated 218 million child workers -- must act now to provide help to parents who might otherwise be forced to send their children out to work.

"I think this crisis gives us a real opportunity to tackle child labour and to stop more children going into child labour," said Kane in an interview on the sidelines of a UN conference about the impact of the global economic crisis on children.

"We can respond to the economic crisis, particularly amongst the poor and vulnerable families, by giving them incentives to send their children to school, whether they are cash incentives or feeding programmes."

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines child workers as those under 15.
While many of these children work in the agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors, some are lured into slavery and prostitution, while others are recruited into armed groups, Kane said.

Protecting vulnerable children during economic crises was a major theme at the two-day Singapore conference sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

UNICEF's top official in East Asia and the Pacific, Anupama Rao Singh, said the global recession could significantly raise infant mortality and malnutrition rates, and appealed to Asian governments not to cut back on social spending.

While research showing a direct link between economic crises and a rise in child labour remains scant, Kane said governments should implement measures now to curb any potential impact.

Only a "couple of million dollars" are needed to finance such incentives, Kane said, comparing this with the eight trillion dollars used by major economies to bail out ailing banks at the heart of the global financial crisis.

"Let's not think that automatically more children are going to go to work. We have an opportunity to actually stop that from happening."

Experts say child labour thrives in underground economies because employers can get away with paying underage workers less than their adult counterparts, and they are often hard to detect because they are illegal.

Consumer activism in the world's major economies, however, has helped check the problem as shoppers refuse to buy products made using child labour, Kane said.
She cautioned against "knee-jerk" reactions by governments to focus aid automatically on the poor, saying that middle class families were also affected by the current crisis.

LOME, 12 January 2009 (IRIN) - Even after Togo criminalised child trafficking in 2005, every year thousands of children leave the country undetected under precarious conditions, according to the government. 

The government’s National Commission for the Reception and Reinsertion of Trafficked Children, set up in 2002, reported about 500 children rescued per year from neighbouring countries as victims of trafficking in 2007 and 2008. Before the law’s passage, the commission reported on average more than 800 repatriated children each year from 2002 to 2004. 

The anti-trafficking law has decreased the number of child migrants, but the numbers do not tell the entire story, said commission secretary Marceline Galley Abgessi Koda. “We have no standard data collection for children intercepted and turned back at the border…We estimate 10 times more children being led out than what we are recording.” 

Human rights organisations estimate hundreds of thousands of children are still recruited or transported within and outside of Togo annually, sometimes through force and false promises. 

The government commission does not track children trafficked within Togo. 

Gaps in law 

Border police have been trained to enforce the law, said Koda. But representatives from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and CARE International in Togo said border officials are turning back unaccompanied children who are simply trying to cross the border of their own will and who are not victims of trafficking. 
CARE’s director in Togo, Phillipe Kodko Yodo, said the 2005 law has not defined rules for when unaccompanied children can leave the country. “The law does not specify what paperwork is needed, so border officials indiscriminately turn back children.” 

The 2005 law states that a child not accompanied by a biological parent or a guardian must have a “special authorisation whose parameters will be set by a Council of Ministers decree.” CARE’s Yodo said that as of 12 January, he knew of no such decree under discussion by the government. 

Children who are migrating in order to work are often incorrectly lumped in with trafficking victims, said Lawunmi Ogunleye, a deputy director of the non-profit Terre des Hommes in Nigeria. “The children who come to work in the [stone] quarries [of] Abeokuta, Nigeria do so for economic purposes and most of the time it is a voluntary movement. They come through people who are known to them – their brother, uncle, cousin [and] neighbours.” 

The organisation’s regional advisor in West Africa, Olivier Feneyrol, told IRIN as long as working conditions are relatively better outside of Togo than within, child migration will continue regardless of laws. 

Togo’s government signed an agreement in 1996 with Ghana, Benin and Nigeria to repatriate children found working in a neighbouring country. 

Nevertheless, markets in Benin, cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, farms in Nigeria, and households in the capital Lomé continue to be among the most commonly reported places that take Togo’s youngest workers, according to children interviewed by NGOs upon their return to Togo. 

Smuggler 

Inoussa Bouberi from the central Togo village of Yelivo told IRIN he recruited children to work overseas for 17 years, stopping in 2004. “I wasn’t paid regularly. People think we stole from the kids, but we were swindled. I regret it now. The children who stayed behind and learned a useful trade are better off.” 

More on Bouberi’s years trafficking, click here. 

Since 2002 more than 400 human-traffickers have been convicted in West Africa, including about 20 in Togo, according to a forthcoming UN report on trafficking in the region. 

SINGAPORE - Asia must act quickly to prevent millions of children dropping out of school to go to work as the global economic crisis worsens, a rights expert has warned.
June Kane, an independent adviser to the United Nations and national governments on child rights, told Agence France-Presse the crisis was a chance for authorities in the region to tackle child labor by giving parents incentives to keep minors in education.
But she warned that authorities in Asia -- the biggest employer of the world's estimated 218 million child workers -- must act now to provide help to parents who might otherwise be forced to send their children out to work.

"I think this crisis gives us a real opportunity to tackle child labor and to stop more children going into child labor," said Kane in an interview on the sidelines of a UN conference about the impact of the global economic crisis on children.

"We can respond to the economic crisis, particularly amongst the poor and vulnerable families, by giving them incentives to send their children to school, whether they are cash incentives or feeding programs."

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines child workers as those under 15.
While many of these children work in the agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors, some are lured into slavery and prostitution, while others are recruited into armed groups, Kane said.

Protecting vulnerable children during economic crises was a major theme at the two-day Singapore conference sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

UNICEF's top official in East Asia and the Pacific, Anupama Rao Singh, said the global recession could significantly raise infant mortality and malnutrition rates, and appealed to Asian governments not to cut back on social spending.

While research showing a direct link between economic crises and a rise in child labor remains scant, Kane said governments should implement measures now to curb any potential impact.

Only a "couple of million dollars" are needed to finance such incentives, Kane said, comparing this with the eight trillion dollars used by major economies to bail out ailing banks at the heart of the global financial crisis.

"Let's not think that automatically more children are going to go to work. We have an opportunity to actually stop that from happening."

Experts say child labor thrives in underground economies because employers can get away with paying underage workers less than their adult counterparts, and they are often hard to detect because they are illegal.

Consumer activism in the world's major economies, however, has helped check the problem as shoppers refuse to buy products made using child labor, Kane said.
She cautioned against "knee-jerk" reactions by governments to focus aid automatically on the poor, saying that middle class families were also affected by the current crisis.

Ranchi, Jan. 6: A National Commission for Women (NCW) member, Manju Hembrom, has decided to visit child trafficking hotbeds in the state and conduct a series of workshops. The visits will be part of a campaign undertaken by the commission called Chalo Gaon Ki Or.

“The child trafficking issue has assumed an alarming proportion, but the state government lacks the will to end this menace. That’s why the NCW has decided to rope in rural boys and girls to battle the menace,” Hembrom said.

She was in the city today to attend a round table conference on trafficking and immoral trafficking prevention act organised in association with NCW, Action Against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Shakti Vahini.

“This issue largely concerns the state social welfare department, but I was very surprised that some officials didn’t even have the courtesy to attend the conference that focused on an immediate plan of action to tackle child trafficking,” she said.

“We have decided to go ahead with our plans to organise workshops in Simdega, Gumla, Lohardaga, Khunti, Sahebganj. Many minor girls are trafficked to the metros from these places,” she said.

She said the state should also have a Nari Niketan on the lines of other trafficking-prone states such as Delhi and Haryana do.

According to Action Against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children, the trafficking figures in the state increased from 20 per cent to 67 per cent in last five years.

The story of an Egyptian girl once enslaved in Orange County and the marking of Human Trafficking Awareness Day are reminders that the awful trade in human life has again surfaced.
The story of Shyima Hall, who was brought to this country as a slave at age 10 and forced to work from dawn to midnight in the home of a wealthy Egyptian family living in Irvine, has been told around the world. According to news reports, the child ironed clothes, mopped floors, made beds and groomed the family's hair. She slept in the garage. She did not attend school or have any days off.

Now 19, Shyima had been leased to Amal and Nasser Ibrahim by her mother when they lived in Egypt. She was to work for $45 a week, for 10 years. Her enslavement ended in April 2002 after an anonymous call to Orange County's Department of Child Support Services prompted an investigation. But Shyima's story and its unusual setting -- a gated community in Irvine, far from the plantations once associated with slavery in this country -- has refocused attention on a subject long believed to have been relegated to the dustbin of the business of buying and selling and indenturing human beings has, of course, been updated. Now it's done with phony documents and computer records and false identities. But it's still the slave trade. The Department of Justice estimates that 14,000 to 17,000 people are brought into the United States as slaves each year, mostly to metropolitan and border regions, including Southern California. Locally, victims most often are brought from Mexico, El Salvador or South Korea. The sex trade remains the driving force of international human trafficking, but slave labor is a significant component.

A sad event takes place Monday; Jan. 11 is the second annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day, established in 2007 by the U.S. Senate. Even more depressing is the fact that this issue is reemerging two centuries after the United States formally ended its participation in the slave trade.

In 1808, the U.S. followed in the footsteps of the British, who had taken the same action a year earlier. Britain's rejection of human smugglingwas, initially, far more genuine than that of the United States. Britain committed its Royal Navy to the extermination of the odious trade and launched a 52-year war on those who engaged in it. The slavers, deemed pirates by the British and therefore subject to execution, did what smugglers do: They fought back and adapted, turning to faster ships, including American-built clippers.

For its part, the United States did almost no enforcement.The president who signed the legislation outlawing America's slave trade, Thomas Jefferson, personified the country's deeply conflicted feelings toward "the peculiar institution," abhorring the traffic in human beings and yet building wealth from their forced labor. Eventually the United States sent its Navy to help the British, but it would remain torn on the larger subject of slavery until President Lincoln, during the Civil War, first ended it in the rebellious states and then abolished it altogether.

Today, we are once again confronted with its inhumanity on our shores. Thankfully, no discord exists about whether to strike at the practice today. The U.S. government is making a serious effort to combat the slave trade, particularly the sexual exploitation of children; last year, then-Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales opened a human trafficking prosecution unit within the Department of Justice to assist investigations and prosecutions across the country. That is welcome, but not enough.

We know what to do because we did it 200 years ago: We must focus our attention on interdiction and halt trafficking at our borders. Unlike those of bygone days, modern victims often enter the country under false pretenses, passed off as the children or relatives of the adults who in reality have purchased them. This is no longer a race between the fastest ships and canniest crews but a challenge at our embassies, consulates and customs areas. We also must remember that fighting slavery internationally is in our best interest -- because the world eventually comes to the U.S., bringing its practices with it.