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Over 30,500 rescued from child labour |
Officials
have rescued or prevented 30,530 children
from the worst forms of labour over the
last three years, an official of the Tanzanian
Ministry of Labour and Youth Development,
said on Wednesday.
"The
trend in the withdrawal of children from
worst forms of child labour, which is
widespread in Tanzania, is encouraging,"
Abubakar Rajabu, the permanent secretary
in the ministry told IRIN in the commercial
capital of Dar es Salaam.
He
was commenting on the Time Bound Programme
(TBP), being implemented in the country
since 2002, with the support of the International
Labour Organization (ILO).
The
project is aimed at reducing the number
of children employed in hazardous jobs
such as mining, agricultural plantations,
fishing, domestic work and commercial
sex.
The
number of Tanzanian children aged between
five and 17 years engaged in different
forms of labour was estimated at 717,677,
according to an ILO study conducted in
the country in 2003.
"Such
work in plantations, mining and commercial
sex effect children physically and psychologically,
because of fatigue and sense of despair,"
Rajabu said.
He
called on NGOs involved in the implementation
of the TBP programme to intensify their
efforts at changing lives of the affected
children.
Under
TBP, NGO officials, in collaboration with
government social workers, religious institutions
and parents, monitor children working
in difficult conditions and motivate them
to rejoin the families or join institutions
where they could be assisted to return
to school.
Rajabu
said the government would continue to
work out strategies to eliminate child
labour by meting out harsh penalties on
those found employing children. He added
that the government would periodically
review its child development policy.
However,
he said child labour was a symptom of
other serious concerns in the society,
such as poverty and HIV/AIDS.
"Some
parents look at children as part of the
bread-winning team in the family, while
some [children] run away from hardships
in their homes," he said.
He
added, "HIV/AIDS is also responsible
for child labour because it has generated
orphans, now estimated to be more than
one million."
Government
statistic put the number of people infected
with HIV in the country at between 8 percent
and 10 percent of the population. Tanzania
has a population of 36 million.
Rajabu
said a sustainable solution to the child
labour problem should include efforts
to reduce poverty and curb the spread
of HIV/AIDS.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46377&SelectRegion=
Great_Lakes&SelectCountry=TANZANIA
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Children 'starving' in new Iraq |
Increasing numbers of children in Iraq
do not have enough food to eat and more
than a quarter are chronically undernourished,
a UN report says.
Malnutrition rates in children under five
have almost doubled since the US-led intervention
- to nearly 8% by the end of last year,
it says.
The report was prepared for the annual
meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission
in Geneva.
It also expressed concern over North Korea
and Sudan's Darfur province.
UN specialist on hunger Jean Ziegler,
who prepared the report, blames the worsening
situation in Iraq on the war led by coalition
forces.
He was addressing a meeting of the 53-nation
commission, the top UN rights watchdog,
which is halfway through its annual six-week
session.
When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, about
4% of Iraqi children under five were going
hungry; now that figure has almost doubled
to 8%, his report says.
Governments must recognise their extra-territorial
obligations towards the right to food
and should not do anything that might
undermine access to it of people living
outside their borders, it says.
That point is aimed clearly at the US,
but Washington, which has sent a large
delegation to the Human Rights Commission,
declined to respond to the charges, says
the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.
Increasing hunger
Mr Ziegler also says he is very concerned
about the lack of food in North Korea,
where there are reports that UN food aid
is not being distributed fairly.
In Darfur, the continuing conflict has
prevented people from planting vital crops,
he says.
Overall, Mr Ziegler says, he is shocked
by the fact that hunger is actually increasing
worldwide.
Some 17,000 children die every day from
hunger-related diseases, the report claims,
which it says is a scandal in a world
which is richer than ever before.
"The silent daily massacre by hunger
is a form of murder," Mr Ziegler
said. "It must be battled and eliminated."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4395525.stm
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Ex-Child Soldiers Recruited for War |
The government of Côte d’Ivoire
has recruited hundreds of recently demobilized
combatants in Liberia, including scores
of children under 18, to fight alongside
Ivorian government forces, Human Rights
Watch said today.
Last week, witnesses interviewed in Liberia
by Human Rights Watch said that Ivorian
army officers and Liberian ex-commanders
have intensified their recruitment efforts
this month. Meanwhile, the Ivorian government
plans to begin peace talks with the northern-based
rebels in Pretoria on Sunday.
Child soldiers who had been demobilized
after Liberia’s brutal civil war,
ex-commanders and community leaders told
Human Rights Watch that children have
been crossing into Côte d’Ivoire
since October to fight with a pro-government
militia based around the western cocoa-belt
town of Guiglo.
“The Ivorian government is talking
peace while actively preparing for war
using foreign combatants, including demobilized
child soldiers from Liberia,” said
Peter Takirambudde, Africa director Human
Rights Watch. “These children endured
a horrendous civil war in Liberia. Now
they’re being manipulated into taking
up arms again in neighboring Côte
d’Ivoire.”
On April 3, South African President Thabo
Mbeki will meet with the parties to the
Ivorian conflict in Pretoria as part of
an African Union-led peace initiative.
“Mbeki needs to urge all parties
to stop recruiting or using children for
use in the Ivorian conflict,” Takirambudde
said.
The Liberian and Ivorian governments must
prosecute those involved in the recruitment
and use of child soldiers. Human Rights
Watch also called on the prosecutor of
the International Criminal Court, who
announced on January 20 that he would
send a team to Côte d’Ivoire
to lay the groundwork for a possible investigation
of war crimes, to include the recruitment
and use of child soldiers in the ICC’s
investigation. Under the statute of the
International Criminal Court, the recruitment
and use of children under the age of 15
is a war crime.
In mid-March, Human Rights Watch interviewed
13 Liberian ex-combatants, including four
mid-level commanders and eight children,
who consistently identified two Ivorian
military officers—one colonel and
one sergeant—whom they said coordinated
the recruitment of Liberian recruits on
behalf of the Ivorian government.
The interviewees said they were offered
financial compensation for going to fight
in Côte d’Ivoire and indeed
were offered money for each additional
“recruit” they brought with
them. They said money was paid to them
by Ivorian army officers once they arrived
to the Lima bases, and usually after their
“recruit” had spent some time
with the militia. Others were offered
clothing, jobs and lured by the opportunity
of ‘paying themselves’ through
looting.
The interviewees described crossing the
border into Côte d’Ivoire
in small groups, sometimes accompanied
by the Ivorian military sergeant, and
once in Côte d’Ivoire, being
housed in one of several bases in and
around the western towns of Guiglo, Bloléquin
and Toulepleu. Most identified the group
for which they were fighting in Côte
d’Ivoire as the ‘Lima Militia’
and said it is comprised primarily of
Liberians who during the recently ended
Liberian war fought with the Movement
for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL).
“I left Liberia to go fight in Côte
d’Ivoire in November 2004 and fought
for a full week,” said a 15-year-old
Liberian boy told Human Rights Watch.
“My commander and I just came back
a few days ago. We came to recruit more
boys and take them back for our operation.”
While in the bases, they described receiving
uniforms, weapons, logistics and training
from Ivorian military personnel. All of
them described seeing tens of Liberian
children—some recruited from inside
Liberia and others who they said had been
recruited from villages and refugee camps
in Côte d’Ivoire—inside
each of the militia bases.
Most of the Liberians interviewed had
disarmed in Liberia last year and subsequently
signed up for education or skills training
programs being administered by the U.N.-backed
Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation
and Reintegration (DDRR) Program. But
due to severe funding shortfalls in this
program, only a few education and skills-training
programs have opened up in regions along
the Ivorian border.
All combatants interviewed said they did
not understand why the programs and schools
had yet to open and cited their frustration
as having contributed to their decision
to join the Ivorian militia. The commanders
appeared to have exploited this and used
it as a tactic to encourage ex-combatants
to fight in Côte d’Ivoire.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/03/30/cotedi10404.htm
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Teenage girls from the country work for
a song in the city |
City
dwellers can spot the young maids fresh
from Chadian villages from afar - by their
ragged dusty clothes and unsophisticated
hair, and the way they shy from the cars
speeding up and down the streets.
Teenagers from far-off rural villages
are flocking increasingly to the capital
N'djamena nowadays to become domestic
workers, one of the most elusive forms
of child labour as it takes place behind
the closed doors of private homes.
"They're aged between 8 and 15, and
earn very little," Felicien Ntakiyimana,
who works on child protection for the
UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Chad, told
IRIN.
In the dim early hours the teenage girls
walk in clusters of 10 to 20 along the
big central thoroughfares of N'djamena,
the Avenue Charles de Gaulle and Avenue
Mobutu, on their way to work, often 8
to 10 km from the place where they sleep.
Chadians call them "bey", a
corruption of the old colonial word "boy"
used for the man servants who in those
times catered to their masters' every
whim.
In the vast central African desert nation
of more than 8 million people, the young
girls who come up from the countryside
in search of jobs are mostly aged between
12 and 15 and are easy prey for exploitative
employers.
"The conditions are very tough, they're
worked around the clock and exposed to
violence," Ntakiyimana added.
Marcelline Dande, 13, the only girl in
a family of nine children, said she came
up to N'djamena from the village of Peni
in southern Chad in January 2004 in the
hopes of staying with an aunt.
But after a week the aunt sent her back
to her home in the largely Christian and
animist south, where modern ways are increasingly
coming into conflict with conservative
values. It made the aunt angry to see
a young girl off on her own in the city,
even more so given she was the parents'
only daughter.
Marceelline ran away however and refused
to go home. "I joined up with a group
of girls from Man-Gueri, a village not
far from Peni. They helped me find a job
with a Muslim trader," she said.
"I haven't seen my aunt since."
She and the other seven girls she lives
with get up every morning as soon as the
rooster crows at around 4 and splash a
little water over their faces to wake
up before heading off for work.
They share a small room about three metres
by two, sleep on mats on the floor and
together pay out a monthly rent of 3,000
CFA francs (US $6).
They don't breakfast. Their one meal a
day comes at around three o'clock in the
afternoon at work - a bowl of rice or
millet cakes.
"I wash the dishes, do the laundry,
clean the rooms, sweep the yard, bathe
the children, fix breakfast, lunch, tea
and dinner. I finish around five or six
in the afternoon and get home around eight
p.m. very tired," Marcelline said.
Such slavery-like conditions have been
repeatedly decried by organisations such
as UNICEF or the International Labour
Organisation (ILO), which reckons that
nearly one third of the 48 million children
aged under 14 in sub-Saharan African are
child labourers.
So why did Marcelline and the others leave
the village?
Working to prepare for marriage
"All the girls my age want to come
to the city to buy the things they'll
need when they're married," she said.
"It's become a shame to stay behind
in the village until the day you marry.
And here you learn to speak Arab, which
is a foreign tongue in our villages,"
where people speak Sara.
In the big city the girls can find new
modern clothes in cotton and natural fabrics
instead of the old nylons and synthetics
found in the rural hinterland. And there
are shoes and aluminium cooking pans,
headscarves, earrings and "djalay
djalay" waist-beads worn to seduce
husbands.
Sarah Kondede, aged 15, is already married
but left her husband behind in the village
of Dononmanga so she could work for a
brief spell in the capital to earn a bit
of money. She lives in the suburb of Boutha
Al Bagaar, far away from the city centre
where she said she worked for butcher
Khalil Djallabi.
Her work consists of doing the dishes,
sweeping the yard, cutting the wood, making
tea and soup, doing the shopping and taking
the children to school. "I never
stop," she said. "As soon as
the boss's wife sees I've finished doing
something, she gives me something else
to do.
"If it takes too long she insults
me and calls me "abit", "noubay"
or "sakhrani" (which mean slave,
dirty slave or drunk in the local Arab
dialect).
Although a maid's workload and schedule
may be more or less identical from one
employer to the next, the pay varies,
as do the conditions.
Sexual harassment is one problem, said
Juliette Tore.
"One day, after three months of work
without being paid a cent, I was washing
the bedroom floor when the master came
in from behind, looked at me and touched
my bottom. He asked if his wife was about
to come home and I said I didn't know."
"This all happened two days before
the end of the month. He grabbed me and
pushed me onto the bed. I fought and one
of my fingers touched his eye. He twisted
my arm, hit me and chased me out the house
without paying my wages," said the
teenager, who is from the village of Bekessi.
Earning a pittance
Other girls, most of whom don't know how
to read and write, are accused of theft
or of trying to poison their employers,
and sacked.
"But they're all lies," said
Kondede. "All they want to do is
send us off without pay."
Their wages are among the lowest in Chad,
the world's 11th poorest nation where
two out of three citizens live below the
poverty line, according to the 2004 UN
Human Development Index.
Ntakiyimana said monthly pay averages
between 5,000 to 15,000 CFA francs (US
$10 to 30), but when the cost of broken
glasses or plates, or fines for being
late, are subtracted from the total "sometimes
you only earn 6,000 or 7,000 CFA francs",
said Kondede.
One employer of a teenage maid brushed
off all criticism, saying the girls were
being done a favour by working in big
N'djamena homes.
"If people don't discuss the offer
you make, what're you supposed to do as
an employer?' said Younous Abba, who lives
on 40 Metre Street, which is home to many
Arab traders.
"They don't even know how to clean
or prepare clothes. They're peasants.
We are giving them help," he added.
But one of the leaders of the Chad domestic
workers' association said the labour authorities
were at fault for failing to control wages
and labour contracts.
"The authorities don't check on the
domestic workers," said Kaguere Hamit.
"Nothing is inspected in this country,
including work contracts. The minimum
wage is 28,500 CFA francs (US $57) so
how can people hire workers for 10,000
or 15,000?"
The Chad government in fact has adopted
the International Labour Organisation
child labour convention to protect against
the exploitation of children. And, an
inter-ministerial committee currently
is working on a text to tackle the problem
of child domestic workers, officials said.
The lure of money in the big city also
exposes the youngsters to sexually transmitted
diseases.
"Many people believe the girls are
still healthy because they're 'ja min
khadi' (which means literally 'straight
from the village'), meaning that condoms
aren't required," said journalist
Diponbe Payebe of the weekly Le Temps.
And more and more often, at food and drink
stalls across the capital, men come looking
for a "ja min khadi'.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/1967a887091a65ea1240472194f32cde.htm
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Past Haunts Present and Children Pay the
Price |
As
tourists wander among the majestic Angkor
Wat stone ruins, they are sometimes serenaded
by haunting Cambodian music, played by
musicians who have lost one or both of
their legs and who now survive on donations.
Visitors may also be approached by eager
children who sell postcards and guidebooks
and sometimes ask for one dollar bills.
The
amputees and ''working'' children are
an indication that Cambodia has ''a past
full of sadness'' and still needs to go
a long way to solve its problems, as the
country's Prime Minister Hun Sen said
Wednesday.
In
a lengthy and impassioned speech at the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)-
sponsored Seventh East Asia and Pacific
Ministerial Consultation on Children here,
Hun Sen declared that Cambodia had the
most ''child victims'' because of ''mistakes''
committed by political leaders.
Cambodia
is a country that is still haunted by
its past and its psychic wounds are still
raw. The best current estimate is that
1.7 million people died of starvation,
forced labor, disease or execution during
the Khmer Rouge era, from 1975 to 1979.
''After
the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia was left
with the most orphans in the world,''
Hun Sen told more than 200 officials,
development experts and members of private
aid groups at the opening of three days
of ministerial level talks on the plight
of children. Cambodia is the host of these
talks.
The
controversial prime minister, who was
initially a member of the Khmer Rouge
but then fought to liberate the country
from Pol Pot's rule, declared that it
had taken 29 years to solve the problems
created by military conflict.
But
he added Cambodia still faced problems
like child trafficking and sex tourism.
The
Cambodian government, however, is making
a concerted effort to fight both.
''The
Royal Government has introduced necessary
measures to prevent child trafficking
and is cracking down on businesses using
under-aged children as labourers,'' said
Hun Sen.
The
ministerial level talks, also known as
MINCON, is the only high-level meeting
of its type dedicated to children, and
it has been held every two years since
1991, a year after the World Summit for
Children. This year's focus is on disparity,
adolescence and survival.
''Evidence
indicates that inequities and disparities
are increasing in this region. The fruits
of growth have not been equally shared.
Many families are deprived of access to
basic social services that are fundamental
to the fulfillment of their rights,''
said Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's executive
director.
''Those
in the line of fire are most often adolescents
and young people, who form a growing segment
of the region's population and yet remain
among the most marginalized,'' she added.
''If
we want to tackle disparities and achieve
more equitable development, we have to
invest more in children. The region, for
example, spends much less per capita than
the global average on public health,''
Bellamy pointed out. ''I urge governments
to increase public spending in health
and education and to target these investments
to communities where disparities are high.''
Disparity
is being given special emphasis, and when
one compares indicators for Cambodia and
richer countries in the region one can
see why this issue, which UNICEF's Bellamy
has called the ''ugly underbelly of prosperity
in East Asia'', is so important. According
to United Nations statistics, 34 per cent
of Cambodia's population lives on less
than one dollar a day, compared with two
per cent for Thailand.
The
U.N. also says that Cambodia's mortality
rate for children under five years of
age is 140 for every 1,000 live births
in 2003, compared with 26 for every 1,000
in Thailand. And the life expectancy at
birth is 57 years for Cambodia, compared
with 69 for Thailand.
But
perhaps the biggest threat facing children
in Cambodia is that of political instability
and military conflict. Hun Sen said that
the effects of these were harder to deal
with than natural disasters, such as the
tsunami that devastated parts of Asia
three months ago.
''We
can solve the problems caused by tsunamis
in a few years, but it takes many years
to solve problems caused by war,'' the
prime minister declared, after expressing
his condolences to ''those governments
and their people who suffered from the
tsunami recently where many babies and
children lost their lives and also many
children were left without parents''.
In
Cambodia, the effects of conflict are
still felt every day.
According
to Rodney Hatfield, UNICEF's Cambodia
representative, more than 1,000 casualties
occur each year from landmines and unexploded
ordinance.
''This
figure goes up when there is an increase
in the price of scrap metal, as people
look for old bombs made of good quality
steel to sell,'' said Hatfield. ''There
are many such devices lying around as
half a million tons of bombs were dropped
on Cambodia by the United States.''
Despite
such grim statistics, Hatfield is optimistic
that real progress is being made to reduce
poverty and consequently improve the condition
of children in the country.
''If
we can't do something in Cambodia, I don't
know where we can,'' he said. ''There
is progress and there is potential for
progress. There is an awful lot to do,
but it's not hopeless.''
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27984
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Tsunami
children learn to cope |
It's late afternoon in the Tender Sprouts
orphanage at Puthukkudiyiruppu, in Tamil
Tiger-controlled north-eastern Sri Lanka.
A group of children hold hands as they
form a large circle in the playground,
swaying gently as they sing.
These sessions are part of an effort to
help these children forget that awful
December day, when the giant tsunami wave
swept through their orphanage located
at the time on the coast. "It's a
very important part of their day,"
says camp co-ordinator Ragini. Through
singing, dancing and play acting we try
to get them to be positive about their
present situation, and look on the bright
side."
Moving on
That may seem to be an impossible task
for these children, many of whom were
orphaned during the long years of civil
war between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri
Lankan government. And the recent upheaval
has not helped.
This is the third location the school
has been moved to - the earlier one was
a mental hospital in Kilinochchi, further
inland. But despite the trauma, counsellors
and teachers say the children have learnt
to cope and are moving on.
Krishantini is a bright-eyed 11-year-old,
who is currently in grade six. "I
enjoy my classes, particularly Tamil -
I love listening to stories," she
says shyly. Her friends say she is also
good at storytelling and often spends
nights relating them to other children.
But she refuses to talk about the tsunami
except to say she is scared of the sea.
Role-play
Romesh is one of several Jaffna University
drama students who have been roped in
to help the children get over their trauma
through role-play. "Our main effort
now is to get them to focus on normal,
everyday things. "Some of them still
have very dark memories - we don't repress
them but we don't always want them to
focus on them either," he says.
In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami,
aid workers and the church began the task
of helping children in the tsunami-affected
areas deal with their tragedy. "Irish
nurses and priests who had come here would
encourage the children to sing, dance
and draw," says Sister Hilda, principal
of Mullaitivu school. Since then, the
education department of the provincial
government has picked up the mantle of
helping the healing process.
"The main idea is to allow them to
express their emotions while giving them
hope," adds Sister Hilda.
Eager to learn
But there is also an attempt to bring
a sense of normality back to their lives.
In the Mullaitivu school, children pour
over their books as they prepare for their
annual examinations. Classes are held
in large tents, provided by Unicef, which
house several classes side by side. Lectures
in mathematics, geography and science
take place simultaneously.
Some of the classes spill outdoors, with
children grouped around a teacher under
the shade of a tree. "We make do
with what we have," says Dayanand,
who teaches science and mathematics. "They
are very keen to learn and to make up
for lost time."
But despite the reassuring routine of
school and playtime romps, it is not easy
to forget. "Many of the children
still cry at night or wake up with bad
dreams," says Tender Sprout camp
co-ordinator Ragini. For some like 14-year-old
Shantini, who lost both her sisters, the
memories have been pushed deep down.
"When someone asks me about my sisters,
I say they are staying with family somewhere
else," she says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4360573.stm
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Time Now for Universal Secondary Schooling?
|
A recent statement by the Kenyan government
that many students who graduated from
primary school last year will not find
places in the country's secondary schools
has generated widespread concern.
According
to Education, Science and Technology Minister
George Saitioti, 657,747 pupils sat for
the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education
last year - up from 587,961 in 2003. This
marked an increase of almost 12 percent
in the number of exam candidates - the
highest increase to be recorded during
the past decade.
Saitoti
says that more than half of those who
left primary school last year cannot be
accommodated at Kenya's 4,000 public secondary
schools (the country has 17,600 government-run
primary schools).
While
some primary school leavers will be able
to attend private secondary schools, the
fees these institutions charge are beyond
the reach of most parents - whose children
may be forced to abandon formal schooling.
When
it came to power at the end of 2002, the
National Rainbow Coalition government
introduced free primary education in Kenya.
This
policy shift was not without its problems.
Many classrooms were filled to overflowing,
with teachers obliged to conduct lessons
outdoors. Teacher to pupil ratios of one
to 80 - sometimes 90 - were recorded,
something that placed a severe burden
on the country's instructors.
Nonetheless,
about 1.7 million children who had previously
been excluded from the education system
were able to be enrolled in school.
Kenyan
officials are discovering now that in
addressing one educational need they have
created another.
It
is rapidly becoming clear that the policy
on basic schooling will have to be matched
by similar initiatives concerning secondary
education if the nation does not want
to be confronted with an even bigger number
of children who drop out after primary
school.
”It
is in our interest to see every Kenyan
child completing primary education and
getting a chance to get access to secondary
education,” Francis Ng'ang'a, secretary
general of the Kenya National Union of
Teachers, told IPS.
”But
secondary schools have remained few for
a long time. We need a strategy to increase
the number of such schools to correspond
with the increasing number of pupils,”
he added.
Ng'ang'a
believes that existing secondary schools
also have to give thought to taking on
more pupils where this is feasible.
In
addition, he says parents have an important
role to play when it comes to secondary
education: ”Parents too must join
in to help primary schools start their
own secondary wings so that when children
sit their final exams, they automatically
join their secondary school.”
This
view has been echoed by authorities.
”The
role of government is only to provide
teachers and instructional material...Communities
are to make sure classrooms are available,”
Anthony Kagwa, the publics relations officer
for the Ministry of Education, told IPS.
”Furthermore,
the government is encouraging the use
of church halls and community centres
as room to accommodate extra students,”
he added.
Even
with the best will in the world, however,
a great many communities may find it hard
to rise to the challenge of supplying
school facilities.
Government
statistics reveal a grim picture of poverty
in Kenya. With over half the population
living below the poverty line of a dollar
a day, most families have few resources
to spare for any activities beyond those
that meet their basic needs.
Part
of the solution to the secondary school
shortage may lie in having more pupils
attend polytechnics, which teach practical
skills rather than the academic curriculum
of traditional high schools.
However,
Ng'ang'a notes that polytechnics do not
enjoy the same prestige that secondary
schools do in Kenya - and that parents
are reluctant to send their children there
as a result.
”People
do not understand the need for skilled
labour courses offered here (at polytechnics)
like carpentry, masonry and tailoring
among others, which can earn (children)
income and enhance self-employment,”
he said, adding ”The problem is
that people have placed so much emphasis
on white-collar jobs.”
Shiphrah
Gichaga, national coordinator of the Kenyan
chapter of the Forum for African Women
Educationalists, also warns that many
polytechnics have been allowed to fall
into disrepair - and may not be up to
the task of welcoming vast numbers of
new pupils.
”These
facilities have been run down and need
to be upgraded,” she said. ”The
government also should provide them with
new curricula commensurate to the changing
education trends. Computer courses must
be part of the package.”
IPS
was not able to ascertain from education
officials how many polytechnics have been
established in Kenya.
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=27042
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Bill on panel to protect child rights gets
Cabinet nod |
NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet today approved
introduction of the Commission for the
Protection of Child Rights Bill, 2005,
in the current session of Parliament.
This fulfils India's obligation as a signatory
to the U.N. Convention on Child Rights.
Announcing this after the Union Cabinet
met here, the Information and Broadcasting
Minister, S. Jaipal Reddy, said the Commission
for the Protection of Child Rights would
be the statutory mechanism to oversee
and review the implementation of the National
Policy for Children. It will also recommend
remedial action in cases of violation
of child rights. This would result in
improving the survival rates, health,
nutrition, and education of children,
particularly girls, and equip them to
be economically productive adults who
could contribute to the nation, he said.
Also, the Cabinet Committee on Economic
Affairs (CCEA) approved the proposal for
extension of the World Bank-assisted Integrated
Child Development Services Project in
Andhra Pradesh as part of the Andhra Pradesh
Economic Restructuring (APER) Programme.
The CCEA also authorised the Department
of Women and Child Development to re-allocate
the savings, if any, in any component
of the Project to some other component
such as civil works, procurement of goods
and equipment, including weighing scales,
medicines, play materials and computers,
depending on the requirements. It was
also decided to enhance the project outlay
from Rs. 392.75 crores to Rs. 431.81 crores,
which also increases the Centre's contribution
to Rs. 86.36 crore from Rs. 79.25 crores.
These decisions would help to improve
the nutritional and health status of children
in the age group of 0-6 years, reduce
mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and
school dropout rate, leading to an overall
development of children. Besides, it will
enhance the capability of the mother to
look after the normal health and nutritional
needs of the child through proper nutrition
and health education.
http://www.centralchronicle.com/20050326/2603007.htm
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Child traffickers prey on tsunami victims |
Bhagyaraj has stopped waiting for authorities
to help rebuild his utensil kiosk that
was washed away by the Indian Ocean tsunami
three months ago.
Instead,
the hawker in the southern Indian state
of Tamil Nadu now waits for a middleman
who has promised to get his 14-year-old
daughter a job as a maid in a house in
the big city after another daughter, 16,
was taken away similarly this month.
"I
can't feed them here. The relief is irregular
and there is no sign of any help to rebuild
my shop," said the 46-year-old man,
who lost two other daughters to the giant
waves. "At least they will be fed
regularly in the city."
Bhagyaraj is not the only tsunami survivor
in the area sending away his children
to ease his burden.
Arul
Mani, a community activist, reels out
of instances of many more children who
have been sent away from Bhagyaraj's relief
camp in the town of Velankanni.
"Two
other girls, 13 and 14, have gone to work
as maids, one 14-year boy has gone to
a stone quarry, three boys were taken
to work in Bangalore, two went to aluminium
factories," he said.
Relief
volunteers say a few dozen children from
villages in Nagapattinam, India's worst
tsunami-hit district, have been lured
by labour contractors to work not just
as domestic help but also at garment factories,
stone quarries and utensil manufacturers.
Although
trafficking in children and the use of
child labour is known to be widely prevalent
in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where
Nagapattinam is located, the district
had been largely immune to the problem.
The
district's lucrative fishing industry
gave financial comfort to rural communities
to educate their children and not send
them away to work, the volunteers say.
But
the tsunami has changed that.
"I
am afraid we are on the verge of an explosion
in child trafficking and child labour
in Nagapattinam," said R. Somasundaram,
chairman of the Avvai Village Welfare
Society, a local voluntary group coordinating
relief and rehabilitation for over a dozen
global agencies.
With
authorities busy providing relief, labour
contractors descended even on relief camps
and lured children away.
"Lots
of people came looking to employ us. I
went to work in a garment factory with
six others where we dyed clothes,"
said Gunashekar, 15, who lives in a camp
in Nagapattinam. "We missed our families
and came back after 10 days."
Trafficking
in children and child labour is illegal
in India. But it has flourished nevertheless.
Although
exact figures are not available, experts
say hundreds of thousands of children
are employed in manufacturing fireworks,
matchsticks, gem and diamond cutting,
carpet knotting, tanneries and stone quarries,
among others.
The
alarm in Nagapattinam comes as the United
States warned India this month that it
could face economic sanctions for not
doing enough to stop trafficking of women
and children, Indian newspaper reports
said last week.
Washington
is expected to decide in June whether
it should impose sanctions and vote against
loans to India from global financial institutions
under the US Victims of Trafficking and
Violence Protection Act, the reports said.
While
fishermen were most hurt by the tsunami
and received aid swiftly, non-fishing
communities were not high on the priority
list for relief and have been pushed to
the wall, Somasundaram said.
"These
people are practically starved,"
he said. "They say they are sending
their children to work for a few months
now but once they are gone there is no
coming back."
<http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1111914542445B225&set_id=>
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US threat fires India to target trafficking |
The Home Ministry plans a series of measures to check trafficking of women and children following a US warning that it will impose economic sanctions on India from June for its failure to do so.
Ministry sources said US Ambassador to India David Mulford met Home Minister Shivraj Patil over a week ago and conveyed to him that under the US's Victims of Trafficking and Violence Act, India's position could be downgraded for not doing enough to curb trafficking. If this happens, the US will be bound to vote against loans to India from international financial institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank.
The Centre seems keen on taking some tough measures to tackle the problem. Patil has convened a meeting of senior officials of the Home Ministry and the Department of Women and Child Welfare on March 28 in this regard.
The Home Ministry is also planning ask all states - especially Bihar, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra, where the problem is acute -- to initiate strict measures against trafficking.
"States where the problem is more acute will be asked to rope in voluntary agencies to launch programmes for rehabilitation for such victims," a senior ministry official said.
Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata - which are viewed as "big markets" for the flesh trade will be asked to launch special drives to check trafficking, particularly of minor girls.
New Delhi also plans to get security forces manning the porous Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bangladesh borders to step up the vigil since women from Nepal and Bangladesh are regularly smuggled into India and sold.
The ministry, which will send a detailed report to the US ambassador on the measures initiated to check human trafficking, will also monitor the use of funds received from US agencies in India for "training and sensitising" people on the issue.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1292350,0008.htm |
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Unwanted tourists |
FOR better and for worse, Honduras's Atlantic coast has long enjoyed a reputation as being at the raffish end of the Caribbean experience. After all, it is cheap and cheerful, a diver's paradise, and home to the famous black Garífuna culture. And for those same reasons, as well as for its hundreds of miles of often uninhabited coastline, it also attracts more than its fair share of smugglers, drug-traffickers and sundry other outlaws. Not for nothing did Paul Theroux set his novel of madness in the jungle, “The Mosquito Coast”, here.
But now the Honduran authorities want to get tough with at least one of the coast's more seedy afflictions, the trafficking and sexual exploitation of central American children. According to Honduras's deputy head of police, this is a “grave and delicate problem”, particularly around the tourist centres of Tela, La Ceiba and Roatan, frequented by Americans and Europeans. In the past, Honduras's mainly Catholic, conservative society has been reluctant to discuss the problem openly. But the abuse has grown so blatant that such wilful disregard is no longer possible.
Exactly how big the problem is, no one is quite sure, only that over the past couple of decades it has been getting worse and that western visitors are much to blame. In Tela, for instance, Jiovany Murillo, head of the local Tourist and Community Police, guesses that as many as 40% of the 120,000 annual visitors to the town could be sex tourists. Some may do nothing more than take supposedly innocent “holiday snaps” of children and women on the beach, and then post them on the internet, he says. But others do much worse. Honduras's Atlantic coast is a region of often extreme poverty, and this makes many children, often victims of sexual abuse in their own homes, easy prey for local child-trafficking gangs.
To break this cycle, and to puncture the climate of embarrassed silence, charities such as Save the Children and Casa Alianza, along with local government agencies have started running programmes to raise public awareness. But what is most needed, both they and the law enforcement agencies argue, is much tougher legislation of the kind used by Costa Rica since the mid-1990s. In Honduras, it is difficult to bring criminal charges against those suspected of child trafficking and exploitation, as distinct from physical abuse. Even when charges stick, the penalties are often light, ranging from small fines to just a few years in prison.
But this may soon change. Under proposed changes to the penal code now being considered by the Supreme Court, prosecutions would become easier and sanctions much tougher. Many are sceptical as to whether this will act as much of a deterrent to poor Hondurans, who see the sex-trade as an easy way to make money. But it could make those visiting westerners think again.
© The Economist , March 19 th -25 th 2005
From The Economist print edition
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Returning Sudan's stolen children |
Abouk Koul was just five years old when she was taken from her village in South Sudan and carried away to work as an unpaid domestic servant. "The Arab raiders came in the afternoon to our village and attacked," she said. "People ran but I was surrounded and taken on the back of a camel."
The Sudanese government and the United Nations call the thousands of people like Abouk "abductees", but southerners call them modern-day slaves.
Whether abductees or slaves, after the 20-year conflict between Sudan's Arab north and black African south formally ended three months ago, people like Abouk are being rescued and sent back home - if they can remember where that is. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Arab tribesmen raided ethnic Dinka villages in Bahr al-Ghazal state, snatching children from their homes and taking them back to the north.
Abouk was taken to an Arab home in Darfur where she was made to work taking care of cattle and cleaning the house. When she was 18, her master married her to one of his relatives and she has two half-Arab children Fatima and Khadija.
'Sugar-coated slavery'
A boy who says his name is Majok Zeman is sitting near Abouk. He is deeply mentally disturbed and can hardly speak. Through a broken voice, he says he was tortured and castrated by his Arab masters.
Both Majok and Abouk have been brought to the south by a Sudan government organisation called the Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC).
Abouk does not know anyone in the south, just the name of the village she came from. Majok knows nothing. He will have wait here for village elders to visit in the hope that one of them will recognise him.
The British-Kenyan Rift Valley Institute says more than 10,000 people like Majok and Abouk were taken from their homes. "It's sugar-coated slavery," says local administrator Bona Makuak Mawien. "What is it when you hijack someone and keep them somewhere or force them to marry or take a creed that is not their choice? All these abductions boil down to slavery."
'Liberated'
Campaigning groups such as Christian Solidarity International have called it slavery as well. Their attempt at solving the problem by buying back Dinkas for $50 each was criticised for encouraging corruption and even leading to more people being taken.
With the coming of peace, the raids have stopped and the government has tried to rectify the problem through CEAWC. Their idea was that officials would find abducted Dinkas, force their masters to surrender them and then truck them back south to their homes.
Having lived almost all their lives in the north, most of the returning Dinkas know nothing but the name of the village they came from. Some like Majok don't even know that. Others such as Yuma Amdan are not happy to be back.
Trucked back south a year ago, she speaks Arabic and precious little Dinka. Struggling to make ends meet brewing tea in the market, she is surrounded by the four children she had with the Arab man she was "liberated" from. "I haven't been able to find any relatives so I just stay here in the market," she said. "It's miserable. I live alone - no father, no husband. I would like to go back north but they won't let me - they say I belong here now."
'Dumped'
Yuma has been returned to one of the poorest places on earth. Life expectancy is just 42 and infrastructure non-existent. Initially, the United Nations supported the Khartoum government's policy of returning abducted people. But as the number of cases like Yuma's mounted, they asked the government to stop.
Manuel Aranda Da Silva, the head of the UN's humanitarian operations in Sudan, said support was withdrawn because some of the returns hadn't been voluntary and that they were being "dumped" in the south without any help to begin a new life. The return of more people like Abouk, Majok and Yuma has now been suspended until the end of April.
The UN, together with the Sudanese government, are taking a closer look at what to do now. Rectifying one of the great evils of Sudan's long civil war is proving to be almost as hard as stopping the fighting itself.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4371749.stm |
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UNICEF Applauds Armenian Ratification of CRC Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography |
President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan today signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, ratified by the National Assembly of Armenia on 28 February 2005.
“The commercial sexual exploitation of children is a horrific crime and an intolerable violation of child rights,” says Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative in Armenia. “The ratification of this Protocol is a major step forward in the campaign to protect the children of this country from sexual exploitation and abuse. With its ratification, Armenia joins a transnational partnership to tackle this global crime.”
The Protocol applies to children under the age of 18 and obliges ratifying countries to take measures to prevent, investigate and punish cases of sexual exploitation and sale of children and provide victims with proper counseling and rehabilitation.
“UNICEF estimates that over one million children worldwide enter the multi-billion dollar commercial sex trade every year, though accurate statistics are hard to come by given the clandestine nature of this industry, says Yett. “It is clear that this is a global scourge, affecting every country in the world, including Armenia.”
These exploited children are at increased risk of violence, drug abuse, and disease – including HIV/AIDS. The damage endures long after the violations; sexually exploited children suffer harm – sexual, physical and emotional – that can last a lifetime.
The Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on 25 May 2000. Armenia's ratification brings the total number of ratifying countries up to 88.
“We will continue to support the Government of Armenia in its efforts to build a protective environment for children, including the measures required as a result of this ratification,” says Yett. “The National Assembly is now considering the second Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which addresses the involvement of children in armed conflict. We urge its speedy ratification.”
http://i-newswire.com/pr11724.html |
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Change attitude toward children, urges Machel |
Having
the proper child rights resources in place
is not enough - child activists have to
change the value systems and attitudes
of people who deal with children, says
child rights activist and political icon
Graça Machel.
Machel,
the wife of Nelson Mandela, was speaking
at the opening of the fourth World Congress
on Family Law and Children's Rights, which
opened at the Cape Town International
Convention Centre on Sunday.
She
was chosen as a patron of the congress,
which invites about 1 000 lawyers, judges
and allied professionals from around the
world to present papers and discuss issues
related to child rights, child trafficking
and Aids orphans, to name a few.
The
three-day conference is held under the
auspices of the Board of the World Congress
on Family Law and Children's Rights.
It
plans to evaluate the progress and achievements
relating to the 15th anniversary of the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
and will explore the challenges ahead
in securing rights to children in the
21st Century.
There
are 2.2-billion children worldwide. But,
according to Machel's statistics, one
billion of those children are living in
poverty and 1.4m are dying annually because
of a lack of clean water and adequate
sanitation.
A
further 300 000 children become simply
weapons of war when they are used as child
soldiers in conflicts.
Machel
however, said that this generation had
"a lot to celebrate".
"Although
all indicators of social developments
show that Africa is the lowest in the
world there is a change coming about.
"We
have millions more children in schools
than ever before in history and more importantly,
we have learnt to listen to children."
But
she said that this meant that "this
generation" had an equally unprecedented
responsibility to respond to and respect
children's rights.
Machel
said that to create a turning point child
rights activists would have to move in
two directions.
The
legal and institutional changes, where
people are brought accountable for their
actions was one aspect.
But
more importantly, Machel said that activists
needed to change the way people related
to children.
"We
were dealing with governments that think
it is more important to invest in armaments
than in children," said Machel.
She
said that activists needed to be ruthless
with warlords and governments that abused
children.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=139&art_id=vn20050321103229608C235347
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EU considers ban on child labour products |
In
a move that could have major implications
for India, a member of the European Parliament
(EP) is proposing a ban on import of products
stemming from child labour to the 25-member
European Union. India is estimated to
have 40 million or about 16% of the total
child labourers in the world.
In
an interview to the agency, British member
of European Parliament Nirj Deva said
the proposal will be made to the Trade
and Development Committee of the EP. "We
will not allow into EU any product where
there is a Clear identified and unquestionable
link to child labour," said Mr Deva,
a British MEP of Sri Lankan/Indian origin.
Deva said his group, the European People’s
Party, the largest group in the European
Parliament, together with the International
Labour Organisation is trying to identify
the products to be blacklisted. The EP’s
Development Committee discussed the issue
of banning child labour in the world last
week in Brussels.
A number of international NGOs and labour
organisations participated in the one-day
meeting. According to Deva, there are
about 253 million child labourers in the
world. In India, he estimates there are
about 40 million and in China around 14
million. "These are huge figures.
The first principle in this issue is that
child’s right for education cannot
be negotiated," he said.
Shanta Sinha, of the M Venkatarangaiya
Foundation, an Andhra Pradesh-based NGO
founded in 1991, came from India to participate
in the meeting. She claimed her group
has been able to withdraw some 300,000
child labourers and put them into school.
"There are about 100 million children
in India who don’t go to school.
This is a huge problem," Sinha said.
"80 percent of the child labourers
are employed in the agriculture sector,"
said Sinha, who represents the campaign
"Stop Child Labour" in India.
"The EU is framing its own policy
on child labour. We are insisting that
there should be a link between abolishing
of child labour and education. Child labour,
education and human rights should be seen
as interlinked, it cannot be separated,"
she said.
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=85818
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Fighting the many heads of the child-trafficking
beast |
In Nigeria, child-trafficking is a multi-headed
beast. West Africa's regional powerhouse
attracts hoards of children from its own
impoverished rural areas as well as poorer
neighbouring countries and while some
are forced to work in Nigeria, itself,
others are shipped off overseas.
"Nigeria
is one of the most important and interesting
countries - if I can use that word in
this context - in regard to the problem
of child trafficking," said Andrea
Rossi, co-ordinator of the child trafficking
unit run by the United Nations Children's
Agency.
"It
is both a source country for children
and one of the major destinations and
transit points for trafficked children
in Africa," he told IRIN.
A
2003 study by the International Labour
Organisation and Nigeria's Federal Office
for Statistics found that at least 15
million children were engaged in child
labour in the country.
Trafficking
hit the headlines again earlier this month,
when police pulled over a truck en route
to the commerical capital, Lagos. The
vehicle was designed for transporting
fish but packed inside were 67 children,
aged between one and 14.
"These
children were stacked in an unventilated
container all the way from Niger State,"
Lagos police spokesman Ademola Adebayo
told reporters.
A
middle-aged woman accompanying the driver
told police that the parents had given
her their children so they could work
as domestic servants in the economic capital,
Lagos.
The
same week, immigration authorities stopped
another truck, carrying 52 Togolese children
to work in Nigeria.
As
Africa's biggest oil producer, Nigeria
is relatively better off than many of
its West African neighbours. Since the
1970s its cities have attracted economic
migrants from impoverished rural areas
at home and abroad and child traffickers
have followed suit.
Boys
and girls from Benin, Togo, Mali, Burkina
Faso and Ghana have found themselves in
Africa's most populous nation, providing
cheap and in many cases free labour in
Nigeria's homes, markets and quarries.
"While
the challenge of women and children being
trafficked to Europe remains in the limelight,
a big problem is the children being used
as domestic help in big cities and towns
within Nigeria," said Robert Limlim,
head of UNICEF's child protection programme
in Nigeria.
"The recent cases illustrate both
the magnitude of child trafficking in
Nigeria and the efforts that are being
made to combat this illicit trade,"
UNICEF said.
Tougher
laws
The
operating environment is getting tougher
for child traffickers in Nigeria. In 2003,
President Olusegun Obasanjo brought in
comprehensive legislation to combat the
problem and established a National Agency
on Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) to
enforce it.
NAPTIP
spokesman, Orakwue Arinze, says the new
laws have provided a fresh impetus to
the child-trafficking battle, with more
interceptions, arrest and prosecution
of traffickers. The agency has also set
up six centres to help resettle rescued
children.
But
mentalities also need to change.
According
to a 2004 UNICEF study released in February,
a third of children trafficked from within
Nigeria ended up in forced labour and
another third become domestic workers.
"Nigerians
tend to prefer to employ Nigerian children
because they can trace where they come
from in case of any theft of household
property," Limlim told IRIN.
And,
says social worker Oluchi Azubogu, a continuing
tradition of giving children to extended
family members makes it easy for traffickers
to seduce children and their parents.
"An
extended family system where children
are traditionally given to relations or
people from the same home town to live
with or work in tutelage appears to have
worked in favour of the traffickers,"
Azubogu said.
He
agrees that the legislation has helped
in the fight against child trafficking
but says the underlying causes, like a
lack of education and poverty, must also
be tackled.
"The
government can't fight child trafficking
successfully unless widespread poverty
is reduced and all children are given
a basic education," he told IRIN.
"Then the baits with which these
children are taken away will be neutralised."
But
while Nigeria attracts traffickers wanting
to pedal child labour, not all the children
end up staying there.
"There
is a high demand for cheap, commercial
African labour in other countries. Nigeria
is a transit centre for this racket. There's
a lot of money flowing through here,"
Limlim said.
Nigeria's
geographical proximity to Cameroon and
Gabon, two other relatively wealthy African
countries, has established it as a major
transit centre. Most children are transported
by road or boat as surveillance and monitoring
is seen as less thorough.
Further
afield, UNICEF has documented numerous
cases of girls from Nigeria being sold
into prostitution in Italy.
Though
most children are trafficked as cheap
labour, there have been cases that hint
at more sinister motivations.
A
police raid on an orphanage in Lagos in
February following a tip-off that the
place had connections with a child trafficking
ring, led to the discovery of charred
baby-bones on the rubbish dump. Detectives
are now working on a theory the orphanage
may have been involved in the sale of
human body parts, possibly for use in
rituals.
The
owner of the orphanage lured teenagers
with unwanted pregnancies to her orphanage
to give birth, police said. The babies
were then sold to buyers for 250,000 naira
(US$1,800) each.
In
2001, a torso of a young boy traced to
Nigeria was found floating in the River
Thames in London. Subsequent investigations
led to the arrest of a child trafficking
ring for body parts used in the occult
or 'Juju'.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/c65491f583abde10b0d500ac3d00dbd7.htm
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Zimbabwe's forgotten children |
As the world focuses on the upcoming Zimbabwean elections, UNICEF today released startling new statistics which call for politicians and donors to defend children as rigorously as they defend democracy.
Despite the world's fourth worst rate of HIV/AIDS and the highest rise in child mortality of any nation, Zimbabweans receive just a fraction of donor funding compared to other countries in their region.
“The world must differentiate between the politics and the people of Zimbabwe,” said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy, speaking in Johannesburg. “Every day children in Zimbabwe are dying of HIV/AIDS, every day children are becoming infected, orphaned, and forced to leave school to care for sick parents. The global generosity towards tsunami victims was inspiring, but it has dried up for Zimbabwean children who are facing a deadly crisis every day of their lives.”
This massive disparity in aid comes despite the fact that:
- The under-five mortality rate has risen 50% since 1990 (now 1 death for every 8 births)
- One hundred babies become HIV-positive every day in Zimbabwe
- One in five Zimbabwean children are now orphans (1 million from HIV/AIDS)
- A child dies every 15 minutes due to HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe
- 160,000 children will experience the death of a parent in 2005
In 2004-5 Zimbabwe received little or no HIV/AIDS funding support from the main donor initiatives.
In southern Africa, the area most devastated by HIV/AIDS, the average annual donor-spending-per-HIV-infected-person among these three initiatives is US $74. In Zimbabwe the figure is just $4.
In Zambia, a country with slightly lower HIV rates than Zimbabwe, donors give US $187 per HIV-positive person; in Namibia $101, in Uganda $319, and in Eritrea $802.
Overall donor support for Zimbabwe is also far lower than any other country in the region. The World Bank estimates that Zimbabweans receive US $14 per capita, from both official development assistance (ODA) and official aid from the World Bank, the IMF, other international organizations and from individual nation donors. This is less than one-quarter of what Namibians ($68) receive, and around 12 percent of those in neighbouring Mozambique ($111).
Progress Nonetheless
Despite the dearth in funds, Zimbabwe is making inroads in the fight against HIV/AIDS and rising child mortality. UNICEF, in concert with the rest of the UN family, is providing community support to counseling and psychosocial support for 100,000 orphaned children, and has provided assistance in achieving a national measles coverage of 95 per cent.
This progress has occurred thanks to critical and direct support from the UK's Department for International Development, the European Commission, and the Norwegian, Dutch, Japanese and German Governments. Other actors are working hard across Zimbabwe to address the needs of children.
But much more would be done with greater funding. Despite the current political climate, Zimbabwe is one of but a few countries with a National Plan of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs) adopted by government. This plan is costed and includes a clear monitoring and evaluation plan. UNICEF is responsible for overall UN coordination of the OVC response, and is supporting implementation across Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is the only country in Africa which has instituted a three percent tax levy to mobilize domestic resources for fighting HIV/AIDS.
“Some 110 Zimbabweans under the age of 15 will become infected with HIV/AIDS today,” said Bellamy. “Another 110 will be infected tomorrow, 110 more the day after that. Yet despite these horrendous numbers Zimbabweans have the determination and the education to defeat HIV/AIDS and other causes of child mortality. But to do so they need international help.”
http://www.unicef.org/media/media_25617.html |
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Vietnamese Agent Orange girl to judge world prize
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A 14-year-old Vietnamese Agent Orange victim has been invited to sit on the jury for this year World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child (WCPRC).
Thai Thi Nga from central Nghe An province will join 12 other children from countries all over the world to decide who will receive this year's prize.
The jury members are all experts on the rights of the child via their own experiences as debt-slaves, child soldiers, street children and refugees or because they have had their rights violated in some way.
The jury also includes children who have long fought for child rights. The jury represents children all around the world that have had similar experiences.
Nga's father was a victim to Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide that the U.S. army sprayed all over Vietnam during the war, and the disease was passed down to Nga and her sister. As a result, Nga has chromosome disorders and spots all over her face and body.
This year's three final candidates for the WCPRC are the 20 mothers of St. Rita , Kenya; Ana María Marañon de Bohorquez of Bolivia; and Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel of South Africa and Mozambique.
The 20 mothers of St. Rita are nominated for their voluntary commitment to help children living in the villages around Kisumu, Kenya who have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.
Ana María Marañon de Bohorquez is nominated for her many years of selfless work with street children in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Mandela and his wife Graça Machel are nominated for speaking out against the violation of children's rights in South Africa and Mozambique. The couple both run organizations that promote the rights of the child and help children in need. Nelson Mandela is also being recognized for his lifelong struggle to free the children of South Africa from apartheid.
http://www.thanhniennews.com/education/?catid=4&newsid=5633 |
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Children Dying as Hunger Stalks Brazil's Indians |
Geria's ribs bulge from her emaciated body, but she is alive and luckier than the dozens of Indian children who are starving to death each month on Brazil's federal reservations.
The 20-month-old Kaiowa Indian girl weighed just 11 pounds -- about average for a 3-month-old -- when federal workers took her a month ago to a feeding clinic near the farming town of Dourados in Mato Grosso do Sul state.
Other Indian children in this area known as Brazil's bread basket were not so lucky. At least 14 have died this year on the Dourados reservation, the latest on Thursday.
Called "Brazil's Somalia" and "a concentration camp" by press and politicians, its overcrowded villages are a symbol of Indian poverty in this modernizing country of 180 million, where 40 percent of adults are now overweight.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faces pressure to overhaul failing Indian agencies to achieve his promise of wiping out malnutrition, which affects about a third of Brazilians, by 2006.
For Indians, who live on 318 reserves ranging from vast Amazon tracts to the 12-square-mile reserve near Dourados, the causes of malnutrition can be overcrowding, the breakdown of families and the absence of federal government -- which under Brazil's constitution is responsible for the welfare of Indians who are officially wards of the state.
Infant mortality is up to six times the national average in some tribes in Brazil's interior, although there are almost no infant deaths among more affluent coastal Indians.
As cultural traditions disappear among Dourados' 11,500 Guarani, Kaiowa and Terena Indians, alcoholism and depression often take their place.
"The reservation breeds malnutrition," said Tiburcio Fernandes, as he knelt by his 6-month-old daughter's grave.
He buried Kelly three weeks ago among the corn, manioc and okra plants behind his brick shack in the village of Bororo.
Kelly's problems began when her mother went hungry and ran out of breast milk. She had five other children to support.
Fernandes, 49, delayed taking Kelly to the nearby clinic. Many Indians first use holymen's prayers. They distrust the over-crowded local hospital. Several Indian children went there with diarrhea in February and died of infections.
Sacks of commercial seeds and fertilizer from the government are stacked in his house. He does not know how to use them and there is no one to advise him. Government tractors to plant them broke down last year.
BLAME GAME
Lula rushed food and benefits to Mato Grosso do Sul after February press reports of malnutrition. Health agency Funasa delivered firewood so Indians could cook handouts.
"Indian children are dying in the same ways as they did 40 years ago," says Marilia Troquez, who runs the Dourados feeding clinic. "Everyone is trying to avoid being blamed for this."
Indians in Brazil's interior were confined to reservations last century. Their territories were turned into farms which are now driving vigorous economic growth with boom crops like soy. Some moved to slums near cities like Sao Paulo where they still suffer malnutrition.
A rise in Brazil's Indian population from 400,000 in the late 1980s to over 700,000 in more than 200 tribes now due to better medical care has put pressure on reservations. There were an estimated 5 million Indians when Europeans fist landed in 1500.
More land is one solution and some Mato Grosso do Sul Indians have seized farms at gunpoint.
Dourados' ranchers fear Indians could claim their properties as ancestral lands -- as is their right under Brazil's constitution -- if they can prove it in court.
Some locals still call Indians "bugres," or savages. But there are signs centuries of fear are fading. Dourados' Unigran university grants over 60 Indian scholarships a year and is building a reservation child care and literacy center.
"The Indians' problems are only going to be resolved when whites change their views," said Jairo de Osti, head of Dourados' chamber of commerce.
Among the Indians themselves, there are huge wealth divisions and unequal land distribution. Some families own nearly 100 acres. Fernandes has 1.2 acre (0.5 hectare).
Many illegally rent land to farmers rather than grow food.
"You could spend millions in there, and put in 100 tractors and it would do nothing without land redistribution and trained people," says Israel Bernardo, local director of the government agency responsible for Indian affairs.
Fernandes' 15-year-old daughter Sulene drops her head when asked about school. She married 16 months ago and has a baby. She sees her husband three days every two months when he gets back from the sugarcane plantation where most men work for about $4 a day. Many become alcoholics, some contract tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases.
Luciano Arevalo, a leader of the Bororo village says his people have to wean themselves off government dependence.
"Our old ways are finished," said Arevalo. "We need to help ourselves ."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050315/lf_nm/brazil_indians_dc_1
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European Training Programme on Children
Trafficking to Take Place in Albania |
ECPAT Netherlands and the Children's
Human Rights Centre in Albania will host
the European Training Programme on trafficking
in children for sexual purposes. The Training
will be held on March 18-19, 2005.
The meeting that will take place in Tirana
and Durres, aims to strengthen the capacities
of Governments and NGO's in Western and
Eastern European countries to cope with
child trafficking issues. The programme
is financially supported by the European
Commission’s AGIS program, the Oak
Foundation and the Body shop Foundation.
Trafficking in minors for sexual exploitation
in Europe is a problem that needs more
attention from all authorities and the
civil society in Eastern and Western Europe.
The project "Joint East-West multi
stakeholder training programme on trafficking
in children for sexual purposes"
is the third stage of the programme to
combat trafficking in children for sexual
purposes in Europe of the ECPAT Europe
Law Enforcement Group. Research in eight
receiving and eight sending countries
showed that among different stakeholders
there is a lack of recognition of and
attention for child victims of trafficking
for sexual purposes and the special protection
and care they need.
The Project's objective is to enhance
knowledge, awareness and expertise and
to improve the operational skills of various
stakeholders in order to protect children
from trafficking for sexual purposes in
Western and Eastern Europe, to recognise
child victims of trafficking, to address
their specific needs on a child rights
basis and to improve prosecution of traffickers.
Partly based on already existing good
practices, a training manual and programme
will be developed (in English, Russian
and various other local languages) on
the (inter)national legal context of the
problem of trafficking in children for
sexual purposes and it's implementation
in law enforcement, child protection and
care at national and local level.
The manual and training will be used
by different stakeholders who have a role
and responsibility in combating the trafficking
of children.
http://see.oneworld.net/article/view/107734/1/3187
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The Impact of Child Labour On HIV/Aids |
| JANE
Banda (not real name) of Rufunsa district
on the eastern part of Lusaka, has never
known happiness since her parents died over
a decade ago.
Although she is now 18 years old, her frail,
malnourished body could be mistaken for
that of a 13-year-old because of the poverty
that she has endured for many years.
For a person who survives on pumpkins -when
they are in season - as main meals, it is
not hard to imagine the pain that she puts
up with every day of her life.
"Since my parents died, I have lived
with my uncle. We don't have enough food
to eat and many times we survive on pumpkins
both for our lunch and supper.
"Sometimes, we look for piece work
from some families within the village that
are economically better than us who pay
us in form of small amounts of mealie meal
to enable us prepare nshima," she testified
to M-Films Productions.
Jane dropped out of school just after her
parents died because there was nobody else
left to pay her school fees, or to buy her
school uniforms and their school requirements.
Her testimony is similar with those given
by a number of other orphans interviewed
by M-Films Production. They all represented
seemingly undying hardships that have been
known to accompany deaths of bread winners
in almost all the communities in Zambia.
Like the other orphans, and despite her
advanced age, Jane still fondles a secret
desire to return to school so that she could
possibly fulfil her dreams of a reasonably
better life. However, it has remained just
that - a dream.
Still holed up in the same poor environment,
and with nobody to look up to for financial
support since all her relatives are financially
unsound, Jane's life has stagnated.
The only possible development that she could
expect soon is marriage, most likely a forced
one by relatives who would like to get rid
of "a burden."
Almost all the orphans gave touching accounts
of the mistreatment they receive from their
deceased parents' relatives who feel inconvenienced
to have them in their homes.
"I have been told several times by
my guardians to go back to my parents' home
because I am just a bother to them. They
usually tell me that they are just doing
me a favour," said one.
Many orphans have suffered humiliating treatment
at the hands of relatives. For some unlucky
ones, they have become sex objects for people
who are supposed to be their protectors,
exposing them to many risks of contracting
sexually transmitted diseases.
Others have been forced to look for employment
at early ages because that is the only thing
they could do to support themselves and,
in a growing trend, other family members.
Since they are not supported by good education
and, worse still, they are usually in poor
environments, many orphans could only find
cheap quality employment.
ILO-IPEC chief technical advisor, Brigitte
Poulsen observes that traditional care system
have collapsed in the face of many deaths
associated with HIV/AIDS.
She says extended families that were previously
receptive to orphans and such needy children
are overstretched, leaving the children
to fend for themselves.
There is a direct link between child labour
and diseases such as HIV/AIDS owing to circumstances
surrounding especially orphans.
"But poverty should never be used as
an excuse to tolerate child labour, "argues
Ms. Zerina Geloo, a Media Institute of Southern
Africa-Zambia chapter board member.
She regrets that some people who are supposed
to protect the children are now the abusers.
Ms Geloo observes that laws to protect children
do exist in Zambia, except that enforcement
has been lacking.
However, there are some non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) such as Young Women's
Christian Association (YWCA) that have been
working to restore lives of vulnerable children.
Among other activities, the YWCA has been
removing children from child labour and
integrating them into informal schools with
the help of the Ministry of Education.
For children who have been out of school
for a long time, the association has been
placing them in transit education classes
while those above school age are being offered
vocational training in carpentry and tailoring
to equip them with life supporting skills.
The YWCA is determined to change the role
of children from that of providers for their
families -through threatening to grow out
of proportion is by empowering parents economically.
Parents in selected localities are being
equipped with basic business management
knowledge and later given small loans to
enable them take up the responsibility of
caring for their children, therefore discouraging
child labour.
With such efforts as the YWCA's, it is hoped
that child labour would be reduced to manageable
levels, and with time eradicated. Consequently,
the impact of HIV/AIDS on child labour would
also become diluted
Also important is that the ILO Convention
number 182 on the worst forms of child labour
requires ratifying states to take immediate
and effective measures to prohibit and eliminate
the worst forms of child labour as a matter
of urgency.
As the types of hazardous works involving
children vary from country to country, the
convention stipulates that individual governments,
in consultation with workers' and employers'
groups, must determine which occupation
process or work conditions are forbidden
to children less than 18 years of age.
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Brazil cracks down on child prostitution |
Fun seekers descending on Rio for perhaps
the most carefree, gloves- off celebration
in the world are being greeted with a sobering
message this year: Illegal sex can get you
10 years in prison.
Seeking to crack down on an epidemic of
child prostitution, the Brazilian government
is targeting Carnival, the annual pre-Lenten
festival during which the illicit trade
reaches its zenith. The celebration begins
today.
Across the country, local officials and
workers with UNICEF are putting up posters
and handing out flyers at airports and popular
Carnival locales warning adult tourists
that they could spend four to 10 years in
prison if they have sex with anyone younger
than 18.
After Thailand, Brazil has the second-largest
number of underage prostitutes in the world,
about 500,000, according to UNICEF. President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to make
fighting sexual exploitation of children
one of his top priorities after taking office
in 2003, addressing the issue in his first
Cabinet meeting.
Child prostitution is partly the product
of rampant unemployment and grinding deprivation
that continue to afflict this country of
184 million people, despite the economic
growth of recent years. About 40 million
people live in extreme poverty, according
to official surveys.
"The government can do whatever its
wants (to combat underage) prostitution,
but we still need more jobs and money,"
said a Rio prostitute who identified herself
only as Carla and who claimed to be 28 but
wears braces and looks much younger.
In Rio, the campaign against child prostitution
is led by the ministry of tourism, which
has outlined a code of ethics for hotels
and tourist guide services that is geared
especially to Carnival.
"There will be a real mobilization
to combat this problem," said Sidney
Alves, coordinator of the ministry's program.
Alves has sent guidelines to nightclubs,
hotels, restaurants, taxi companies and
tourist agencies instructing them, on penalty
of losing their operating licenses, not
to show tourists where to find underage
prostitutes and also to report suspicious
activities to the authorities.
But the authorities have a tough task in
front of them.
Clad in miniskirts and skimpy tops, young
prostitutes strut in front of middle-aged
American and European tourists along renowned
Copacabana Beach. "I need the money,"
Jasmine, who insisted she was 18, said as
she sought customers outside a nightclub
called Help.
In interviews with hotel employees along
Copacabana Beach, almost a dozen employees
said they would not report tourists with
an underage prostitute for fear of losing
their jobs.
Celeo Furtado, manager of the Itahy restaurant
in the famed Ipanema Beach neighborhood,
conceded that law enforcement is "complicated"
during Carnival, when tens of thousands
of tourists converge on this tropical seaside
city, many them looking for sexual encounters.
"Some businesses rely on prostitutes
and their customers for revenue," he
said.
UNICEF Child Protection Officer Alison Sutton
lauded Brazil for being "reasonably
well mobilized" in combating child
prostitution, but she criticized a lack
of coordination at the federal level, red
tape and, most important, a lack of enforcement.
"That's one of the sad difficulties
in Brazil," she said. "You have
good laws, but when it comes to implementation,
you have a serious problem with impunity."
But there have been some successes.
In October, authorities broke up a sex tourist
ring in the northeastern city of Fortaleza
allegedly run by a German businessman who
reportedly used the Internet to offer sex
tours for Europeans. Fortaleza police arrested
11 people who were operating or frequenting
a brothel that offered customers sex with
16- and 17-year-old girls.
Also last year, Brazil's Congress ordered
the investigation of 200 suspects named
in a congressional report for having sex
with children and adolescents. Although
the suspects were not named publicly, the
list reportedly included politicians, clergy
and business leaders.
UNICEF is offering seminars for Brazilian
police in how to identify underage prostitutes,
most of whom use forged identity cards.
And three capitals in the extremely poor
northeastern part of the country -- Fortaleza,
Recife and Salvador -- have set up special
courts to deal with child prostitution.
Child prostitution is particularly prevalent
in the northeast.
Nationwide, 315 halfway houses have been
set up offering refuge, counseling and job
training to homeless youngsters -- for whom
prostitution is an enticing alternative
to poverty -- until social service agencies
can find them permanent housing.
Despite such inroads, activists working
to end child prostitution agree that they
have a long way to go.
"Ten years ago, it was totally taboo
to even discuss the subject," said
Sutton of UNICEF. "Today, we're making
progress ... slowly but surely."
http://www.ecpat.net/eng/Ecpat_inter/IRC/newsdesk_articles.asp?SCID=1576
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South Africa Linked in the Global Human
Trafficking |
| Human
trafficking, particularly of women and children,
in South Africa is not slowing down while
the country’s government has not yet
implemented legislation recognising this
vicious flesh trade as a crime.
With
legislation, activists like Vanessa Anthony,
a researcher and counsellor with child rights
non-governmental organisation, Molo Songololo,
can see justice for the victims she deals
with.
Anthony
says it recently ‘’took eight
years to jail a man who kidnapped, gang-raped
and exploited girls as young as 13’’.
‘’The
situation is not getting better,’’
she says. She should know, after having
worked with sexually abused children for
the past ten years.
’’There
are many cases, and more research needs
to be done. There is an attempt from government
to help. They have said that they do want
to implement legislation. We are also creating
the awareness about this issue and other
organisations are also responding to that,’’
Anthony says.
The
South African government has signed and
ratified international charters such as
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
and the African Charter on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child. It has also ratified
the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and
Punish Trafficking in Persons, which defines
trafficking as ‘’the recruitment,
transportation, transfer, harbouring or
receipt of persons, by means of threat or
use of force for the purpose of exploitation’’.
Exploitation,
according to this protocol, includes ‘’prostitution,
forced labour or services, slavery or the
removal of organs’’.
These
international documents bind signatories
to an agreement to outlaw and prevent trafficking,
a path that South Africa seems to be wobbling
along. And yet South Africa is well-linked
in the global human trafficking game. It
is a country where illegally bought and
sold human beings are recruited, held and
also passed on to other countries.
Sexual
abuse is a global corporation with a non-stop
demand and South Africa, according to research,
is a major player. It is a country of origin,
transit and destination for human trafficking.
In
2003 the U.S. State Department reported
that at least 700,000 people worldwide,
mostly women and children, are trafficked
across borders annually. Up to four million
people have also become human cargo in an
industry netting around 20 billion dollars
for its frontrunners.
Meanwhile,
a 2003 UNICEF study found that children
are trafficked at twice the rate of women
globally. Molo Songololo also found that
trafficked children are often sold by their
parents and, like women, they are recruited
into the sex industry with false promises
of employment, education and also marriage.
The NGO estimates that there are up to 38,000
child prostitutes in South Africa and 25
percent of the country’s street children
engage in survival sex.
Molo
Songololo’s chief researcher Karin
Koen says children in Cape Town, South Africa,
also ‘’had historically been
trafficked as domestic workers’’.
She says that there have been reports children
from neighbouring Lesotho have been trafficked
for labour by farmers in South Africa’s
Free State province.
In
2003 a research study by the International
Organisation for Migration (IOM) also found
that South Africa is a main destination
for trafficked women and children.
’’Victims
come from Angola, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho,
Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland,
Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Extra-regional
victims are from Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria,
Senegal and Uganda. Others are from Thailand,
Taiwan, China and Russia,’’
found the IOM.
Other
southern African transit countries revealed
are Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania,
Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Traffickers
operating in South Africa include Nigerian
networks, Chinese triads, Russian and Bulgarian
mafia and various groups of organised criminal
syndicates. Victims trafficked in South
Africa often end up in Europe and Asia.
And those reaching South Africa come from
as diverse countries as the Czech Republic,
Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Britain, Russia,
China, Thailand and various African states.
Local
organisations such as Molo Songololo hope
that anti-trafficking legislation in South
Africa could scare off perpetrators and
clients demanding sex with trafficked women
and children.
A
recent audit of the governments of southern
Africa found that measures taken to eliminate
violence against women and children were
‘’patchy’’. The
audit, conducted by the Gender and Media
Southern Africa Network in late 2004, found
that ‘’laws, services and resources
are patchy to new threats like sex trafficking’’.
In
South Africa, traffickers can so far only
be tried and sentenced under laws relating
to sexual offences, such as the Child Care
Act which outlaws sex with a child. The
country's Immigration Act also criminalises
trafficking while another law is the Sexual
Offences Act, currently under review by
the government in an attempt to include
legislation and penalties relating to trafficking.
Legislation
dealing directly with trafficking could
mean that perpetrators are dealt with swiftly.
In 2004 the government-affiliated South
African Law Commission put forward an ‘Issue
Paper’ to criminalise human trafficking.
It recommended protocols to ‘’prevent,
suppress and punish trafficking in persons,
especially women and children’’.
The document has been received by the Justice
and Constitutional Development department
which has to authorise and rubber-stamp
it.
Organisations
agree though that laws are not enough as
there are other factors hindering efforts
to combat trafficking. Researchers say these
include ‘’a low level of legislative
knowledge on the victim’s behalf,
victim’s fears, scarce resources,
corruption and complicity as well as poor
inter-country information sharing’’.
Poverty
is also a major contributing factor. Anthony
says that poverty has played a key role
in the exploitation, coupled with an increasing
demand for sex with children.
Anthony
currently heads up a project to free young
women trapped in prostitution in Atlantis,
an area in Cape Town where prostitution,
poverty, drug abuse and alcoholism is rife.
She has found that girls are trafficked,
sometimes as young as four, into the sex
work industry.
Foreigners
trafficked into South Africa are being assisted
through organisations like the IOM though.
As they most likely do not speak any of
the country’s eleven official languages,
including English, the IOM has set up a
24-hour toll-free helpline (0800-555-999).
The line has an automated voice in English
which prompts a number of foreign languages.
An IOM helpline counsellor is also available
to offer trauma counselling telephonically
as well as referrals to assistance centres.
A
fast-track progress report on South Africa’s
efforts to eradicate human trafficking would
indicate an effort from a government that
acknowledges the crime but has not yet legally
committed itself to deal with the problem.
So
for now, it seems, it is mostly the job
of non-governmental organisations to put
an end to the violence of sexual violations.
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27772
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‘17,122 children sexually abused in
last five years’ |
The government’s negligence in
enforcing child rights was the main reason
behind 17,122 reported cases of physical
and sexual abuse of children and the disappearance
of 4,346 children across the country during
the last five years.
Madadgar, a joint project of the Lawyers
for Human Rights and Legal Aid and United
Nations Children’s Fund, revealed
the figures in its reports.
The report revealed that the year 2004,
which was officially marked the “year
of children”, commenced with the
cold-blooded murder of two girls, eight-year-old
Sassi and six-year-old Hajira in Karachi.
Madadgar President Zia Ahmed Awan told
reporters that Pakistan had signed various
international conventions on child rights
but the situation had worsened instead
of improving.
According to the data complied by Madadgar,
2,755 children were murdered across Pakistan.
As many as 1,431 minor girls were raped
and there were 1300 cases of sodomy, in
which 100 boys were murdered.
During the last five years, 4,346 cases
of missing children were reported across
the country out of which 1,127 cases happened
in Karachi alone. Some 4,088 children
were kidnapped. Seventy-nine children
were trafficked form Karachi, whereas
266 children were trafficked from the
rest of the country.
According to the research, most children
were suffering abuse at the hands of their
close relatives, including parents, siblings,
uncles, acquaintances and teachers, both
of conventional schools and seminaries.
In most of the cases the perpetrators
escaped because of inefficient investigation
systems, rampant corruption and non-availability
of channels or avenues to redress gross
human rights violations.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_16-3-2005_pg7_28
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Children
Dropping Out of School Are a Threat –
Poulsen |
IT is a threat to the
nation when children drop out of school
and enter the labour force, International
Labour Organisation chief technical advisor
Birgitte Poulsen said yesterday.
And acting labour minister Mutale Nalumango
said poverty and HIV/AIDS had contributed
to the increase in child labour in Zambia.
At the parliamentary workshop on child
labour, Poulsen said if nations were to
prosper in a globalised world, there was
a need for a healthy and educated labour
force.
"When children drop out from education
to prematurely enter the labour force,
in dangerous, lowly paid, low skilled
occupations, it is not only a threat to
the individual child but also to the development
of the entire nation in today's globalised
world economy," Poulsen said.
She called on members of parliament to
ensure that adequate resources were allocated
for the education of all children, including
those who had withdrawn from labour.
Poulsen also said there was a need to
ensure that teachers and other education
staff were well educated and received
adequate pay and other incentives to make
the learning environment conducive.
Poulsen called for an attack on the root
of child labour through the eradication
of poverty.
"Poverty produces child labourers,
but child labour also produces poverty
and this vicious cycle must be broken,"
Poulsen said.
"By ensuring decent work for adults,
parents and guardians are given the means
to care for their children, thereby ensuring
that they stay in education and not in
labour," Poulsen observed.
She urged policy makers to ensure that
the National Employment Policy was fully
implemented for the benefit of the nation.
And at the same function, acting labour
minister Mutale Nalumango said many children
were forced to work to supplement their
parents' income.
She said child labour was serious as it
was inhibiting children from proper physical,
emotional and intellectual development.
And Children in Need chairperson Chris
Lifasi said it was saddening that employers
continued to find it cheaper to employ
children.
He said it was worrying that the law was
lenient on perpetrators of child labour.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503150626.html
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| |
|
Child Kidnapping Alarming in the South
|
|
Government
officials and human rights activists have
been alarmed at the increasing number of
child kidnappings in the southern Kandahar
province after several kidnapped children
were allegedly killed when their parents
failed to meet ransom demands.
Thousands of people rallied in Kandahar
on Sunday calling for action to arrest and
prosecute the kidnappers.
"We are deeply concerned about an increase
in child kidnapping in the southern region,"
Shamsuddin Tanweer, the head of child rights
in the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission
(AIHRC) southern region office, told IRIN
in Kandahar. According to local media reports
in Kandahar, one child is kidnapped per
week in the region on average. There are
fears that the actual number of kidnappings
is higher, as many parents do not report
the disappearance of their children, fearing
reprisals.
Sunday's protest turned violent when protesters
tried to approach the governor's residence
and stoned police who tried to prevent them
doing so.
"At least five Afghan policemen and
one protester were injured when the demonstrators
became violent," Gen. Mohammad Salim
Ihsas, chief of security in the province,
told IRIN. Protesters threw stones, but
when they tried to climb over police vehicles
to approach the governor's residence police
fired into the air, Ihsas added.
Protesters IRIN interviewed were angry no
measures had been taken against child abductions
in the Kandahar region. "They kidnap
our children and send us their body parts
and we are just watching it," an unidentified
protester told IRIN. He said the kidnappers
demanded large amounts of money and sent
the chopped fingers of a kidnapped child
to show they were serious. "No child
has so far been returned," he noted.
Child kidnapping is still a serious issue
in many parts of Afghanistan. According
to officials at the interior ministry in
Kabul, at least 200 children were kidnapped
during 2004. The problem existed in the
northern province of Mazar-e Sharif, the
northeastern province of Kunduz, Takhar
and Badakhshan and now it is becoming an
issue in the south, government officials
said in Kabul after Sunday's protest.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai also expressed
serious concern on the issue of child kidnapping
on Tuesday as he addressed a gathering on
International Women's Day.
The president said terrorists and anti-government
elements were behind these acts. Karzai
assigned Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad
Jalali to Kandahar to look into the issue
closely. "One horrible method that
terrorists have used is to kidnap our children
from the streets. This is a heinous crime
and it is the government's responsibility
to fight this crime and ensure the safety
of its people," said Karzai.
The UN's children's agency UNICEF said it
was also working to eradicate the problem.
"UNICEF shares the concerns of ordinary
Afghan people at every reported case of
child abduction, kidnapping or trafficking,"
Edward Carwardine, a UNICEF spokesman, told
IRIN in the capital Kabul.
Recognising that much work remains to be
done in fostering the rule of law in Afghanistan,
and in introducing the necessary legal protection
for children, UNICEF is working closely
with the government and other partners as
part of a National Plan of Action to combat
child trafficking, he added.
A recent Afghanistan national human development
report recognised that children made up
the most vulnerable sector of society. The
report noted that 20 percent of children
die before the age of five and that more
than 300,000 children may have perished
during the conflict.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/23ae92fe5b0656ee3789cfcdd0698593.htm
|
| |
|
Malawi's
tobacco tenants "suffer horrible abuses"
|
| Tobacco
contributes 70 percent of Malawi's foreign
exchange earnings. However, a report on
the 'Living and Working Conditions of Tobacco
Tenants and Other Workers' has revealed
that this benefit to the nation rides on
the back of horrific living conditions experienced
by estate tenants. The report reveals child
labour and sexual harassment.
Women largely bear the brunt of these violations
and indignities, and the report says they
are subjected to various abuses ranging
from mental, sexual and physical abuses
from landlords or supervisors.
-
The majority of [the tenants] are reported
to have been physically assaulted by their
own husbands, supervisors and even the landlords
themselves, says the report compiled by
the Centre for Social Concern, a project
of the Missionaries of Africa, the so-called
'White fathers'. "They also admitted
to having been forced into sexual acts with
their supervisors in either exchange for
food or some money or favours from their
bosses," the report continues.
The
report was launched in Malawi's capital
Lilongwe on Thursday. It adds: "Others
reported to have been sexually harassed
and even raped by their masters."
The
general consensus, according to the report,
is that child labour is prevalent in Malawi's
tobacco estates, as the study, "established
and verified that children spend all their
time with the parents helping with tobacco
production."
-
Only the children under five are spared.
In some instances, even some under-fives
reported to having done some work related
to tobacco production, said the report continuing:
"Children above nine years are heavily
involved in tasks like clearing fields,
making nursery beds and watering nurseries
and transporting tobacco."
As
regards remuneration, the report says, the
estate workers and tobacco tenants in particular
are given credit in return for their labour.
Food rations are also received on credit
and even money is borrowed from the landlords
or other sources on the estates. In case
of illness like recurring malaria, they
are given a half tablet of paracetamol (Panado)
as medication.
Out
of 785 tobacco workers interviewed in the
report, 55.5 percent admitted to have received
agricultural inputs, farm implements and
foodstuffs on credit from landlords while
36.1 percent declined to having received
anything from the landlord.
In
an interview with 'The Chronicle', the architects
of the report, Father Jos Kuppens and the
Director and Economist, Hastings Kafundu,
said: "There should be a law to which
tenants can refer to and say 'this is my
right'."
-
There should be written contracts between
the landlord and the tenants, emphasised
Mr Kuppens. He said the report mainly focussed
on the plight of the tenants as they are
the worst disadvantaged. "As a church
group, we always look at the options for
the poor." He also indicated that poor
pricing on the auction floors generally
influences the conditions of the tenants
on the farms.
According
to the Secretary General for Tenants and
Allied Worker Union of Malawi (TOTAWUM),
Raphael Sandram, one tenant was poisoned
by his landlord because of the quality of
the leaf he had grown. "The man, at
the moment, is admitted at Mzuzu Hospital"
in northern Malawi, he said. Mr Sandram
admitted that some tenants also steal from
their landlords because of a lack of money
and the extreme poverty they are exposed
to.
The
report has therefore recommended that the
draft Tenancy Labour Bill of 1995 prepared
by the Ministry of Labour be tabled in the
next sitting of Parliament. The bill stipulates
that written contracts be entered into between
the tenants and landlords covering things
like transportation of tenants, food provision
and accommodation and fair loan payments.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/15855
|
| |
|
Three more Kushtia bidi factories sign accord
|
Owners
of three more Bidi factories in the district
have joined hands with the ILO and three
local NGOs with a noble mission-to eliminate
child labour from hazardous jobs in tobacco
industry.
The factories are Monmohon Bidi Factory,
Kalam Bidi Factory and Sonali Bidi Factory.
Their owners signed agreements with officials
of ILO and three NGOs-SETU, BTUK and PIPASA--that
they would no more employ child labour in
their factories. The agreements were signed
recently in Kushtia town in presence of
district administration officials, university
teachers and the local elite.
The signing ceremony was followed by a seminar
on Elimination of Worst Form of Child Labour:
our Role".
Kushtia Additional Deputy Commissioner Mahatb
Uddin Jamadar, ILO's Chief Technical Advisor
Suwjeeba Fonseka, Consultant Keth Fisher,
Sector Coordinator AT Siddique, SETU Executive
Director MA Kader, BTUK Assistant Programme
Coordinator Ahsanul Haq, PIPASA Executive
Director Samayal Choudhury, Dr. AHM Zehadul
Karim of Rajshahi University, Prof Dr. Julfikar
Ali and Dr. Rezaul Karim of Islamic University,
Dr. Amredranath Biswas and Abdul Gafur attended
the programmes.
Earlier, 881 children were taken out of
the hazardous jobs in these three factories.
With this, eight Bidi factories have so
far signed agreements not to employ child
labour.
The five factories which signed agreements
earlier are Akiz, Naisr, N Jaman, Banani
and Monsur Bidi factories.
A total of 1733 children were taken out
of the five factories--354 from Akiz Didi
Factory, 426 from, Naisr, 254 from N Zaman,
328 from Banani and 53 from Monsur Bidi
factory.
ILO sponsored the programme styled PEWFCL
(Preventing and Eliminating Worst Forms
of Child Labour) in Bangladesh in 2001 to
take out child labour from Bidi factories
and to arrange their education and vocational
training.
The three NGOs are implementing the programme,
funded by the US Department of Labour (USDOL).
According to a survey by SETU and BTUK,
at least 5000 children were working in the
eight Bidi factories.
SETU has taken 1459 children out of the
factories and 896 of them have been enrolled
at schools after orientation at 28 pre-school
centers run by ILO in the district.
The rest aged between 13-17 were provided
with income generating activities including
tailoring, paper bag making, nursery raising,
electrical work and other technical jobs
after short training.
The first agreement between SETU Monsur
Bidi Factory, a big tobacco factory in the
district, was signed on May 9 last year.
Owners of Akiz, Naisr, N Jaman and Banani
factories signed agreement on February 14
this year.
SETU also disbursed Tk 29 lakh among 497
poor parents as soft loan so that they are
not forced to send their children to tobacco
factories again.
The NGO started the programme in 2001 and
was joined by the two others in 2003.
http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/03/12/d50312070167.htm
|
| |
|
King
& Queen of Spain condemn child labour |
|
Press Release: International Labour Organisation
GENEVA (ILO NEWS) – His Majesty the
King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, today described
the extent of child labour as "appalling",
and called for it to be vigorously combated
as part of the effort to give a "human
dimension" to the process of globalization.
Their Majesties King Juan Carlos I and Queen
Sofia visited the International Labour Organization
(ILO) to commemorate the 10th anniversary
of Spain's cooperation with the ILO International
Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour
(IPEC).
"More than 240 million children worldwide
work daily instead of attending school.
This is indeed an appalling figure",
said the King during a speech given at a
Special Session attended by government,
employer and worker representatives.
The King and Queen of Spain, accompanied
by the Spanish Foreign Minister, Miguel
Angel Moratinos, were welcomed by the Director-General
of the ILO, Juan Somavia, with whom they
met privately. The Chairman of the Governing
Body of the ILO, Philippe Séguin,
chaired today's Special Session.
"Work carried out by school-age children
should be vigorously condemned and combated,
not only because it adversely affects children's
health and education, but, above all, because
it violates their most basic rights, to
dignity and to freedom", said the King.
He went on to say that "poverty, which
is at the root of child labour, transforms
child labour into actual forced labour".
King Juan Carlos I recalled that Spain was
a founder Member of the ILO, the oldest
organization in the United Nations system,
and that his country had signed a Memorandum
of Understanding with the ILO in 1995 to
support IPEC in its efforts to eliminate
child labour, particularly in Latin America.
"We want to contribute, through programmes
such as the one we are commemorating today,
to making economic globalization a positive
social force for all the peoples of the
world", the King of Spain told the
ILO.
"Our
aim is to ensure that the process of globalization
does not become entrenched in economics
and finance. We hope that it will also have
a human dimension", he added, declaring
that in a just society "there is no
room for child labour, or forced labour,
or labour carried out without adequate safety
measures and health regulations. Neither,
of course, can there be room for labour
which discriminates against workers for
reasons of sex, race, creed or nationality".
The Director-General of the ILO said that
Spanish cooperation with IPEC had allowed
more than 100,000 children who were victims
of the worst forms of child labour to have
access to education. "More than 35,000
families have been helped to increase their
level of income, and not to depend for subsistence
on work done by their children", he
added.
Mr. Somavia said that there was still a
long way to go in eliminating child labour.
"We must continue our work so that
the girls and boys of today will be the
women and men who have decent work tomorrow."
Decent work is "a widespread demand"
said the ILO Director-General, adding that
"this strong democratic demand can
be seen in all countries".
The Governing Body Chairman, Mr. Séguin,
said he viewed the presence of the King
and Queen at the ILO as a testament to their
awareness of "the human and rational
vision embodied by the ILO, the values it
defends, and its desire to meet the challenges
of creating a social dimension to globalization".
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0503/S00168.htm
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| |
|
LTTE
continuing child recruitment |
|
Adapted from “Setback for Tigers”
V.S. SAMBANDAN
in Colombo
Much to the LTTE's discomfort, Kofi Annan's
report to the Security Council in February
on the LTTE's recruitment of child soldiers
provided another clear indication that the
separatist conflict could occupy the attention
of major international organisations. The
indictment through the Secretary-General's
fifth report on Children and Armed Conflict
comes at a time when the LTTE has been inching
towards international acceptance and recognition.
Instead of gaining international support,
the LTTE has painted itself into a cul-de-sac.
Going by Kofi Annan's recommendations (he
has not minced words) to the Security Council,
it appears that the LTTE could face international
sanctions. Commenting on the Sri Lankan
situation, the Secretary-General has said:
"The LTTE has often carried out recruitment
by force, abducting children while on their
way to school or during religious festivities,
and beating families and teachers who resisted
the seizure of the children."
The ground situation in the island has changed
quite drastically since the May 1998 visit
of Olara A. Ottunu, the U.N. Secretary-General's
Special Representative for Children and
Armed Conflict. Ottunu was the then senior-most
international diplomat to have met the LTTE
leadership in areas under its control. After
the visit, he stated in Colombo: "The
LTTE leadership, as of today, undertook
not to use children below the age of 18
years in combat. They further undertook
not to recruit children below the age of
17 years." A mood of optimism prevailed
when the LTTE's political wing leader, S.P.
Tamilchelvan, and chief ideologue, Anton
S. Balasingham, made the commitment to the
U.N. official. Time, however, has proved
otherwise.
In 1998, Colombo and the Tigers were embroiled
in a bitter battle, but they declared a
two-day ceasefire to mark Ottunu's visit.
Thereafter, the LTTE gained major battlefield
victories and consolidated itself militarily
- the biggest victory being the capture
of the Elephant Pass military garrison in
April 2000. Two years later, in February
2002, fighting stopped formally as the government
and the LTTE signed a ceasefire agreement.
In July 2003, the LTTE agreed on an "Action
Plan for Children Affected by War",
in which it agreed to halt the recruitment
of children and to release all children
within its ranks. Annan's report is sceptical
about the progress made since then. "Despite
some progress" achieved by the Action
Plan, the report said, "the LTTE has
continued to use and recruit children".
In 2004, six years after Ottunu's visit,
"more than 1,000 cases of new recruitment
and re-recruitment were reported to the
UNICEF [United Nations Children's Fund]."
The regional pattern of recruitment - "a
high percentage of them girls" - has
also remained unchanged, according to Annan's
report. "Re-recruitment was particularly
high in the eastern part of the country."
Since 2001, the report said, "there
have been more than 4,700 cases of child
recruitment, some as young as 11".
Of those recruited since 2001, "more
than 2,900 children had returned or been
released to their families", and "at
least 500 children have run away from the
LTTE", leaving about 1,300 children
still unaccounted for, and by implication
serving in the ranks of the Tigers.
Annan recommended that the Security Council
take "targeted and concrete measures"
against parties named by him, including
the LTTE, where "insufficient or no
progress has been made". The measures
suggested by him include the imposition
of travel restrictions on leaders and their
exclusion from any governance structures
and amnesty provisions, the imposition of
arms embargo, a ban on military assistance
and restriction on the flow of financial
resources to the parties concerned.
These recommendations, if accepted by the
Security Council and applied to the LTTE,
would cause a major setback to the rebel
group. According to current indications,
a spell of international lobbying by the
Tigers appears to be on the cards.
THE significance of the U.N. report and
the recommended ban is that they strike
at the very root of what the LTTE has been
working on for a long time - parity with
the Sri Lankan state, legitimacy and acceptance.
When the peace talks commenced in September
2002, LTTE's chief negotiator, Balasingham,
made it clear that the rebels wanted legitimacy
and acceptance. To a large extent, the lack
of progress made on these fronts was one
of the reasons for the LTTE unilaterally
pulling out of the peace negotiations in
March 2003.
The LTTE's unilateral "suspension"
of talks was triggered by Washington's decision
not to invite the rebels to a preparatory
donors' seminar as it was described as a
"terrorist organisation". Subsequent
positions by the LTTE - including, the demand
for a "politico-administrative"
interim administration - have only reiterated
the point that the Tigers are unwilling
to yield on their basic positions.
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2205/stories/20050311000205700.htm
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| |
|
Still
with us |
| A
botched release of slaves in Niger points
up an ugly truth: bondage is alive and well
around the world. SLAVERY
is like polio. Most westerners associate
it with earlier, darker times in human history.
Its eradication is a sign of human progress.
And yet despite these perceptions slavery,
like polio, has not in fact been eradicated.
The fact of modern slavery was brought home
again this week by the story of a botched
manumission in Niger.
Anti-Slavery International, a London-based
human rights group, estimates that 43,000
slaves are held in Niger, which the United
Nations reckons to be the second-least-developed
country in the world. Slaves in the landlocked
west African country form a stigmatised,
closed class. Even freed slaves carry the
taint of their hereditary status, and their
former masters or parents’ masters
may claim some or all of their income, property
and dowries.
In 2003, Niger finally got around to amending
its laws to make slave ownership punishable
with up to 30 years in prison. (The practice
was outlawed with Niger’s independence
from France in 1960, but carried no penalty.)
Facing jail, a chieftain in western Niger
offered to free the 7,000 slaves held by
him and his clansmen in a public ceremony,
due to take place on Saturday March 5th.
But in the week leading up to the event,
Niger’s government came to fear that
a massive release of slaves would draw unwelcome
attention to slavery’s existence in
the country. The government declared that
slavery does not exist in Niger, the ceremony
was cancelled and the slaves left as slaves.
Far from avoiding a public embarrassment,
Niger has multiplied its worldwide shame.
Niger is far from alone. Its class-based
form of slavery exists in neighbouring Chad,
Mali and Mauritania, too. In Mauritania,
estimates SOS Esclaves, another anti-slavery
campaigner, 40% of the population are slaves
or ex-slaves, who suffer the same stigma
and lack of rights as their brethren in
Niger. In Sudan, too, slavery is widespread.
Some 14,000 people were abducted and forced
into slavery during the country’s
two-decade-long civil war between the Arab-run
government in Khartoum and blacks in the
south. Most of these were women and children
forced into domestic work and herding. Many
children of abductees, fathered by the slaves’
masters, in turn become slaves. Around 12,000
Sudanese remain in bondage. And according
to a recent UN report, abduction and slavery
have been extended to Darfur in western
Sudan, where a separate conflict rages.
Beyond chattel
Most people associate “slavery”
with the transatlantic chattel slave trade
that ended in the 19th century as the United
States and later Brazil, the biggest recipients
of black African slaves, abolished first
the trade and then the practice of slavery
itself. But slavery persisted, so much so
that the UN made 2004 the snappily-titled
International Year to Commemorate the Struggle
against Slavery and its Abolition. December
2nd 2004 was designated the International
Day for the Abolition of Slavery, to commemorate
the adoption of a 1949 convention against
human trafficking. But that convention is
still widely flouted.
The form of slavery that perhaps affects
the greatest number of people is bonded
labour, which is particularly rife in India,
Pakistan and Nepal. Desperate workers are
given a loan for as little as the cost of
medication for a child, and are forced to
work to repay the loan and “interest”.
But no clear contract is offered—the
unfortunate bonded labourer often winds
up working years to repay such loans, and
the bond is even often passed on to children
after the original labourer’s death.
Because of the apparently voluntary nature
of the bondage, many do not see it as slavery.
But the labourer is often so desperate for
a loan, without other sources of credit,
that there is little real choice involved.
And once bonded, the threat of violence
and the limitations on personal freedom
involved make the practice in effect no
different from chattel slavery.
Many other slavery-type practices remain
widespread, despite having been forbidden
by UN conventions. These include forced
marriage, wife-transfer, child marriage
and the sale of children for labour. In
Brazil, forced labourers clear Amazonian
jungle at gunpoint. In western Europe, prostitutes
from the former Soviet block are forced
to work without any choice of which or how
many clients they sleep with, and with the
threat or use of force curtailing their
freedom. And in the United States, Free
the Slaves, another anti-slavery group,
found illegal forced labour in at least
90 cities, involving over 19,000 people.
The CIA has estimated the number of slaves
in America at 50,000. Chinese, Mexicans,
Vietnamese and others work against their
will in the sex trade, domestic service,
farms and sweatshops.
In America and Europe, there is at least
some hope of recourse to the authorities.
India and Pakistan have banned debt bondage
but struggle to enforce the law. Sudan is
a criminal state actively encouraging rampaging
militias. And Niger has been a rickety democracy
for just over five years, unable even to
admit its problem, much less tackle it.
Like many things that should have been stamped
out a long time ago, slavery, it seems,
is alive and well.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3737154
|
| |
|
Acehnese
Children To Be Trained In Practical Skills |
By Mohd Nasir Yusoff
JAKARTA,
March 9 (Bernama) -- Children in Aceh which
was devastated by the Dec 26 tsunami will
be given practical skills training to enable
them find suitable employment under a programme
jointly organised by the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) and Aceh Provincial Department
of Manpower.
Some
190 children between the ages of 15 and
17 and living in the camps for displaced
persons in the province have been identified
to undergo the 12-day programmes at the
Aceh Vocational Training Centre in Banda
Aceh.
"For
the next eight weeks, groups of older children
will receive basic training in either furniture
making, sewing or embroidery or computer
skills, each for 12 days," ILO and
the department said in a joint press statement
faxed to Bernama, here Wednesday.
The
training in non-exploitative and non-hazardous
work, according to ILO-Programme for the
Elimination of Child Labour, responded to
concerns that children in the province could
become victims of trafficking or might be
employed in dangerous and unsuitable work
in the reconstruction process of Aceh.
"We
are pleased to be able to use our experience
and facilities to support this training
programme for young people. By investing
in training and building the skills of the
younger generation we are building the future
of Aceh," the head of Aceh Manpower
Department, HA Manan Ganto, said in the
statement.
ILO
chief of technical adviser for the child
labour project, Patrick Quinn said that
efforts to prevent child labour in Aceh
needed to be given priority and that the
children be helped to avoid being dropouts
before completing basic schooling.
"Many
of these children are in a vulnerable situation
and open to exploitation. This training
aims to provide older children with practical
skills that can help them find suitable
employment," he added.
The
programme will be implemented in partnership
with government agencies, employers, trade
unions and non-governmental organisations.
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news_lite.php?id=123133
|
| |
|
Niger
rapped over slavery denial |
Human
rights groups have criticised Niger after
it cancelled a special ceremony to free
about 7,000 slaves. The event was dropped
at short notice after the government backtracked
and said slavery did not exist in Niger.
Anti Slavery International urged the Niger
government to accept slavery was a "serious
problem" and ensure slaves were made
aware of their new rights.
At least 43,000 people
are thought to live in subjugation across
Niger, which officially banned slavery in
May 2003. Representatives of slaves, the
government and human rights groups were
due to attend the event at In Ates, near
the border with Mali.
Timidria, Niger's anti
slave organisation, is reporting that government
intimidation prevented slaves from attending
the ceremony. Anti Slavery International
said it has received reports about senior
government officials warning slave masters
not to release their slaves officially. "It is very worrying to hear the Niger
government is now declaring that slavery
does not exist and of its intimidation of
the population," said David Ould, deputy
director of Anti Slavery International.
Acting under pressure,
Niger's parliament made slavery punishable
by up to 30 years in prison in May 2003. "The enactment of legislation that
criminalises and penalises slavery does
not automatically mean it has been eliminated,"
said Mr Ould. "It is vital the Niger
government acknowledges that slavery is
a serious problem throughout the country
and ensures that those in slavery are made
fully aware of the new law and released."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4327497.stm |
| |
|
Human
Trafficking: 62 Victims Rescued in Seme,
Nigeria |
| Albert
Akpor
NO
FEWER than 62 persons suspected to be victims
of human trafficking and child labour were
intercepted yesterday by men of the Nigeria
Immigration Services at the Seme borders.
The
persons who were between ages 8 and 42 were
allegedly being trafficked to Gabon and
Central Africa via Calabar for forced labour
and prostitution.
The
Immigration Public Relations Officer at
the border, Mr. Patrick Uchendu, a Deputy
Superintendent of Immigration who disclosed
this to Saturday Vanguard said the arrest
which was effected by men of the Anti Human
Traffick Unit of the Service followed a
tip off.
According
to him, the victims and their suspected
traffickers were nabbed at Gbaji in Badagry,
preparatory for movement to their various
destinations.
About
10 persons identified as brains behind the
trafficking are currently undergoing interrogations.
He
explained that the suspects who were made
up of 6 Togolese, 3 Beninoise and 1 Nigerian
would be transferred to the appropriate
departments for punishment.
The
Nigerian, he added, would be handed over
to the National Agency for the Prohibition
of Trafficking in Persons while the foreigners
would be repatriated.
The
Seme border image maker of the Service further
gave a break down of the 62 victims as comprising
52 females and 10 males. He said the new
Comptroller of Seme Border Mr. Mudrik Ogidan,
a Deputy Comptroller of Immigration (DCI)
had in his maiden speech warned that his
administration would deal decisively with
traffickers in human and prohibitive goods.
"Let
me use this opportunity to say that the
Comptroller upon resumption read the riot
act to traffickers and related criminals
using the Seme borders as entry and exit
route promising them that it will no longer
be business as usual.
He
also warned parents and guardians to pay
more attention to the well being of their
children with a view to discouraging them
from the temptation of being lured into
such inhuman business for monetary compensation."
http://allafrica.com/stories/200503070332.html
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US
companies to certify Pak firms over child,
bonded labour |
By Sajid Chaudhry
ISLAMABAD:
The government has approved a plan to do
away with the Western concerns over employing
child labour, bonded labour and other such
menaces in the local industry and 250 exporting
units have been chosen to comply with the
US standardization, it is learnt.
Sources
said that the government is all set to initiate
the Rs 116.182 million project, enabling
250 major export oriented industrial units
to be compatible with the certification
of the US Social Security Department.
“The
government to this effect will adopt global
‘Social Accountability 8000’
standards in 250 major export industrial
units across the country,” they said.
US
Social Security Department has licensed
8 to 10 American firms, which would visit
the designated 250 industrial units and
subsequently issue a certification of Social
Accountability 8000 compliance.
The
American firms would examine conditions
of child labour, forced labour, health and
safety, compensation, working hours, gender
discrimination, discipline, free association
and collective bargaining and after satisfying
themselves they would certify the local
industries as a social responsible industries.
The
certification will be for a certain period
and the certification firms will continue
to monitor the industries for improvement
in the conditions for workers.
The
sources said that the government would provide
the financial assistance and share the costs
of inspection fee with the industries
In
this regards, a Rs 116.182 million Social
Accountability 8000 standards project is
being launched across the country to make
the local export industries compliant of
the social issues so that under the globalisation
regime the exports from Pakistan could be
ensured to EU and US markets.
This
project will help Pakistan get rid of the
stigma of child labour, forced labour, discrimination
with workers, and levelled by the western
media. Under the new trade regime such accusations
could hamper exports from Pakistan in the
changing international trade environment.
A
special cell for SA 8000 project will be
set up in ministry of commerce for implementation
and supervision of the project. The special
cell will organize intensive awareness programme
all over the country.
A
project steering committee will be formed
in ministry of commerce, which will decide
the amount as well as phasing of payment
of cost sharing money to each eligible firm.
Each eligible firm will be paid either 50%
of both cost of consultancy and certification
or Rs. 200,000/- for consultancy and Rs.200,000/-
for certification whichever is less
The
ultimate objective of SA 8000 standard is
the welfare of workers, elimination of worker’s
exploitation and ensuring better living
working conditions for them. With certification
of the companies in this standard, the growing
concern of western media about the conditions
of our worker will be taken care of. SA
8000 is based on the principles of international
human rights norms as delineated in ILO
Conventions, the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child and the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. SA 8000 address the following
nine core issues: The project has been referred
to Economic Affairs Division for inclusion
in National Indicative Programme 2006 (NIP
2006) of European Union for financial assistance.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_2-3-2005_pg5_2
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Tough
decisions on tsunami orphans |
By Sunil Raman
BBC News, Tamil Nadu
Around
200 children were orphaned and many more
lost one parent when December's tsunami
struck the district of Nagappattinam in
Tamil Nadu state, the worst-affected region
in India.
The local administration has handled scores
of queries from individuals and organisations
wanting to adopt the children. But fears
of human trafficking have made the government
tread with caution. The emphasis now is
on rehabilitating these children in the
local communities.
Suryakala, a district social welfare officer
in Nagappattinam, says many children they
talked to preferred to remain here rather
than move out of the area. The local administration
has asked those interested in adoption to
send in applications. But they are in no
hurry to move these children out.
Diversion
The fury of the tsunami's waves has left
a deep scar on most of these children. If
some lost their parents, many others were
witness to the devastation and have been
trying to cope with the trauma. Spending
time with other children in their age-group
provides them with a diversion for a while.
But only for a while.
A day-care centre run by a local church
in Nagappattinam has around 40 children
who have lost one of their parents. Rosemary,
a local teacher, says: "These children
are traumatised. Some have become irritable
and disinterested." Poongkulali plays
in the centre's over-two-year-olds group,
where her mother drops her every morning.
Ask her about the tsunami and tears well
in her eyes. "There was water everywhere...
my father is no more," she says. A
few more questions and she looked dazed.
Mrs Ratham is another teacher who is trying
to help children get over the trauma of
the tsunami. "We make the children
spend more time playing and singing so as
to divert their attention from the tragedy.
It has been difficult to get the children
to concentrate even on playing," she
says. "Leave them for a while and they
leave the play area to huddle in a corner."
Lobbying hard
Around 60 children have been put up in an
orphanage run by the Zion Church in Nagappattinam.
Parvathi lost her parents but has returned
to the school to take her examinations.
She visits her relatives once a month and
says she prefers to stay in Nagappattinam.
Local charities and social activists have
lobbied hard with the government not to
"give away" these children for
adoption.
Aftab, a young activist, says he learned
a lot from the aftermath of the Gujarat
earthquake in 2000. He says that in the
past two months there have been several
instances of representatives of organisations
trying to "forcibly" take away
orphans. "The local community objected
and expressed its willingness to take care
of such children," says Aftab. "None
of these children want to be moved out,"
he says.
The local administration, Aftab says, is
still not clear about what it wants to do
with them. He has met representatives of
different villages who back the idea not
to move them out. "Why should these
children be sent to orphanages and homes
far from here?" he asks.
Efforts by individuals like Aftab seem to
have had an impact. The local administrator's
office has decided against any hasty decision.
One official summed up the dilemma faced
by the government: "The issue of children
is a delicate matter in any community...
one wrong step and we will invite the wrath
of the people."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4312453.stm
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Child
poverty on the rise in more than half of
OECD countries: UNICEF |
|
PARIS (AFP) - The number
of children living in poverty has risen
in 17 out of 24 OECD industrialized member
states since the early 1990s according to
a study released by the UN children's agency
UNICEF.
Its finding "suggests that between
40 to 50 million children may be growing
up in poverty in some of the world's wealthiest
countries," the agency said in a statement.
Children have a much better chance of escaping
poverty if they live in Denmark or Norway,
where the rate is less than three percent.
"In contrast, the United States and
Mexico have child poverty rates of more
than 20 percent," the study found.
The United States is nonetheless one of
four countries, along with Australia, Norway
and the United Kingdom, where "there
has been a significant decrease since the
early 1990s."
"Among these, the UK has significantly
reduced its exceptionally high child poverty
rate but Norway is the only country where
child poverty can be described as 'very
low and continuing to fall'," UNICEF
said.
It added that "three forces -- social
trends, labour market conditions and government
policies -- are the key determinants of
child poverty rates."
Comparing typical trade-offs that governments
must make, they study noted that France's
broad-based tax and benefit system did not
favor a particular age group, whereas the
British system focused on young children,
particularly those from low-income families.
"Nonetheless, the child poverty rate
in the United Kingdom is double that of
France," which according to UNICEF
suggested that low income parents in Britain
"receive a very high proportion of
their income from government and a lower
proportion from paid employment".
"This points to a central dilemma:
highly targeted social expenditures focus
limited government resources on those most
in need, but may lead to beneficiaries having
less incentive to move from welfare to work."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050301/bs
_afp/oecdeconomypoverty_050301194506
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UNICEF
chief defends "feminism" in aiding
children |
Source: Reuters
IBy
Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The outgoing
director of the U.N. Children's Fund fired
back on Monday at critics accusing her of
"radical feminism," saying if
women were not strong, their children would
be in jeopardy. Carol Bellamy, a lawyer
and former Peace Corps director under the
Clinton administration, has been attacked
by conservatives for furthering sex education
for young people and endorsing access to
emergency contraceptives for refugees.
Even the British medical journal, The Lancet,
has criticized her for allegedly sacrificing
UNICEF campaigns for child survival to a
radical rights-based agenda. "Women
are central to UNICEF's mission in that
their well-being directly impacts families
and children," Bellamy told a news
conference during a 10-year review session
of the landmark world conference on women
in Beijing. "If women are not strong,
then families are not strong. If families
are not strong, children are in jeopardy,"
she said. "For this I have on occasion
been called a radical feminist. I have been
accused of singling out girls and women
for preferential treatment," Bellamy
said.
Bellamy leaves UNICEF, which has a term
limit, after 10 years as executive director
and will be replaced this spring by Ann
Veneman, the former U.S. agriculture secretary.
The agency has 7,000 staff in 150 countries.
Bellamy emphasized her advocacy on behalf
of women and girls in war zones, saying
the trauma of rape received far too little
attention.
Since 1990, women and children constitute
most of the deaths in war zones. Boys were
brutalized and forced to become soldiers,
while too many women and girls were too
ashamed to complain, she said. "In
situations of armed conflict, girls and
women are routinely raped, trafficked, used
in prostitution, held by armed groups in
sexual slavery, mutilated and forced to
carry pregnancies," she said. "And
we have barely begun to talk about it."
"When labels like 'radical feminism'
are tossed about disparagingly, the end
result is that people become reluctant to
speak out against discrimination for fear
of being accused of promoting special interests,"
Bellamy said. She said that during her travels
in Congo, Eastern Europe and Sudan, she
listened to girls and women express fear
in talking about rape.
"It is time that we stopped being
afraid of talking about the realities of
what it means to be a woman or a girl caught
up in armed conflict today," Bellamy
said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N28312657.htm
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US
Court Bans Juvenile Executions |
The
US Supreme Court has abolished the death
penalty for those who commit murder when
under the age of 18.
The court was divided on the issue, but
voted 5-4 that the death penalty for criminals
aged 16 and 17 should be declared unconstitutional.
The decision affects not only those convicted
in future, but about 70 prisoners already
on death row for offences committed before
they were 18.
Anti-capital punishment campaigners claimed
the decision as a victory. "Now the
US can proudly remove its name from the
embarrassing list of human rights violators
- that includes China, Iran, and Pakistan
- that still execute juvenile offenders,"
said William Schulz, executive director
of Amnesty International USA.
'No deterrent'
The highest US court upheld an earlier
ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court,
which banned the execution of people convicted
of crimes they committed before turning
18. The Missouri court said putting minors
to death was a violation of the US constitution,
which outlaws "cruel and unusual"
punishment.
| |
JUVENILE
EXECUTION |
 |
- 19
states allow execution - only
six have carried it out
- 227
juveniles sentenced to death since
1976
- 22
of them executed - 13 in Texas
- More
than 3,400 people on death row
in total
|
That
ruling overturned the death sentence given
to Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when
he kidnapped a neighbour, tied her up
and threw her from a bridge to her death.
Simmons's attorney, Seth Waxman, said
the death penalty did not deter minors,
since "they weigh risks differently"
to adults. There are 19 states where capital
punishment for juveniles is allowed.
But Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy,
who voted for the ban, noted that even
in these states the ultimate sanction
was not often carried out. He said the
trend was to abolish the practice. "Our
society views juveniles... as categorically
less culpable than the average criminal,"
he wrote. "The age of 18 is the point
where society draws the line for many
purposes between childhood and adulthood.
It is, we conclude, the age at which the
line for death eligibility ought to rest."
One of the court's dissenting judges,
Sandra Day O'Connor, argued that: "Chronological
age is not an unfailing measure of psychological
development, and common experience suggests
that many 17-year-olds are more mature
than the average young 'adult'."
Tuesday's ruling follows several others
that have limited the use of capital punishment.
In 1988, it was ruled that offenders who
were younger than 16 when they committed
their crimes could not be executed. In
2002, the court banned the killing of
offenders with mental disabilities. Former
US President Jimmy Carter and many foreign
governments, including those of the European
Union, were among those who had called
on the US to end the juvenile death penalty.
Judge Kennedy said: "It is proper
that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight
of international opinion against the juvenile
death penalty, resting in large part on
the understanding that the instability
and emotional imbalance of young people
may often be a factor in the crime.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4308881.stm
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‘Bonded
labour touches the figure of 1m in Pakistan’ |
Staff Report
LAHORE:
The Society for the Protection of the
Rights of the Child (SPARC) has said that
according to the recent researches conducted
in collaboration with International Labour
Organisation (ILO) the number of bonded
labour in brick kilns was almost one million
in Pakistan.
The
SPARC officials addressing a press conference
on “Bonded labour and formation
of vigilance committees in Punjab”,
which held at Lahore Press Club Lahore
on Friday added that according a research,
supported by ILO, the total estimated
number of people in debt bondage in 2000
was 1.8 million across Pakistan.
Jawad
Aslam, the provincial coordinator SPARC
told the press conference “A further
6.8 million people are subjected to compulsory
labour for the landlord on their farm
or house (beggar),” he said, adding,
“There are incidences of debt bondage
in brick kilns, carpet weaving, mining,
glass and fishing industries.” He
added that it was estimated that there
could be as many as one million brick
kilns workers in bonded labour across
the 4,000 brick kilns in Pakistan.
In
early 2000 the then Chief Executive Pakistan,
President Pervez Musharraf publicly committed
his regime to substantively address issues
of relief, rehabilitation, and abolition
of child and bonded labour. The federal
cabinet approved the National Policy and
Action Plan in September 2001.
Annual
fund of Rs 100 million has also been constituted
for the rehabilitation and welfare of
freed bonded labourers. “One reason
for the dismal pace of progress appears
to be continued provincial reluctance
to acknowledge the widespread existence
of, and hence obligation to deal with,
bonded labour as a special problem independent
of mass poverty,” he added.
Aslam
asked the Punjab chief minister to issue
notification of the formation of the vigilance
committees in districts under the Bonded
Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1992 and
Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Rules,
1995.
SPARC
officials also aspired to fight bonded
labour, particularly the existence of
child bonded labour in the Punjab province,
through the mobilisation of concerned
government departments and civil society
for the effective implementation of national
and international laws and conventions,
like the Bonded Labour System (Abolition)
Act of 1992, Employment of Children Act
of 1991 and the International Labour Organisation
Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention
No 182.
The
Bonded Labour Act calls upon the state
to establish multilateral district vigilance
committees headed by district nazims and
consisting of elected representatives,
district administration, bar associations,
the press, recognised social workers and
labour departments of federal and provincial
governments.
The
vigilance committees are mandated to advise
the district administration on matters
relating to the effective implementation
of the law, including the rehabilitation
of the freed bonded labourers. The vigilance
committees in Punjab are not operational
till date, thus the law has not been implemented
effectively yet.
He
said it was ironic that four-year tenure
of Local Governments System was about
to end and not a single district nazim
so far has constituted the vigilance committees
in the Punjab province. He said, however,
NWFP government took initiative in this
connection. He said SPARC also had concerns
on keeping bonded labour under the Home
Department in Punjab and it should be
dealt by the Labour Department instead
as in other provinces.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_26-2-2005_pg7_15
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