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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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=>

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.

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

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.

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.”

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

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

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

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.”

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.

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

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

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.

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