Lahore: At least three million children in Pakistan are engaged in labour and thousands others are languishing in jails due to a complicated prosecution process, according to the UNICEF.

"The cases of thousands of children are pending in courts for a long time due to the complex prosecution process," said UNICEF child protection specialist, Shamshad Qureshi.

He called for the simplification of the prosecution process.

Giving in to international pressure, Pakistan has banned child labour in hazardous professions like tanneries, scavenging, making of surgical instruments and glass bangles, coal mining and fishing. But on the ground, practically nothing is being done to implement the law, say experts.

According to a UNICEF report, children associated with hazardous professions are "extremely exposed" to terminal diseases. Hundreds of them have already contracted different diseases.

Children work in all operations related to leather tanning, mixing or application of pesticides and insecticides, sandblasting and other work involving exposure to free silica.

This work also exposes them to toxins and dangerous chemicals.

They are hired to work in the manufacturing and sale of fireworks, explosives, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and compressed natural gas (CNG), glass and metal furnaces, cloth printing and dyeing.

Children are also made to work in sewer pipelines, pits and storage tanks, stone crushing, lifting and carrying of heavy weights especially in the transport industry.

The reports reveal that children also work in hotels, carpet weaving, tobacco processing and manufacturing units, the wool industry, ship breaking and spice grinding sites, boiler houses and cinemas.

Child labour in the informal sector, like domestic help, small workshops, hotels and restaurants, are not usually considered as labour by the government.

Pakistan is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and is committed to child rights like survival, health, education and protection.

Though there are several other laws like the Factories Act 1934, West Pakistan Shops and Establishments Ordinance 1969, Employment of Children Act 1991, Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1992 and Punjab Compulsory Primary Education Act 1994, they are hardly being implemented, say child right activists.

http://www.zeenews.com/news573395.html

New Delhi, Oct 23 (IANS) Barely two weeks after a similar rescue mission, 15 child labourers from Bihar and West Bengal were rescued from zari sweatshops in the capital Friday by police and an NGO.

The children, boys in the age group seven to 14, were rescued from Kotla Mubarakpur in south Delhi, police said.
Trafficked from Sitamarhi and Begusarai districts of Bihar and Howrah district of West Bengal, the boys were brought to the city by middlemen almost a year back.

In almost all cases it was a familiar story – the middleman, a relative at times, promises the parents of the children a better future in Delhi. But once in the city, the kids become bonded labourers.

Qamil, a 10-year-old who was rescued, said: ‘An uncle came to my village and told my parents that he can take me to the city and send me to school so that I have a good future. My parents agreed and sent me with him.’

‘But once here, I was forced to work in the zari industry. There were many other boys like me. We all had to stay in a small, dingy room and work for 13-16 hours daily,’ he said.

If his work was not satisfactory, the factory owner beat him.

Rakesh Senger, national secretary of BBA (Bachpan Bachao Andolan), who led the raid and rescue operation with the police said this was the first time when all stakeholders – the district task force on elimination of child labour comprising the sub divisional magistrate, the child welfare committee, Delhi Police, labour department and NGOs – had come together for the mission.

Lallan Singh, the sub divisional magistrate, added: ‘The children worked from early in the morning till late at night and never received any wages for their work. After rescuing them, we have given the children release certificates under the Bonded Labour Law.’

‘This entitles them to a rehabilitation package of Rs.20,000 and availing of government schemes like Indira Awas Yojana, housing schemes and enrolment in government schools.’

On Oct 8, 35 bonded child labourers were rescued from zari workshops.

Warning on child abuse

AN international child trafficking expert has warned that the government needs to take urgent steps now to prevent child trafficking and sexual exploitation during the 2010 World Cup.

American law professor Susan Kreston, currently based at the University of Free State, says the government must pass the Human Trafficking Bill as soon as possible.

“Whereas 99 percent of the fans are coming here for good and valid purposes, one percent will use the World Cup as a shield, to go out looking for street children to exploit sexually,” Kreston said.

She was speaking in Cape Town on Friday at a panel discussion on child prostitution and the 2010 World Cup.

Kreston said it would be easier for paedophiles to get “lost in the confusion” of 500000 soccer fans descending on SA and advised parents to be on the lookout.

“Kids will be out of school and with many parents still at work, this will create a dynamic where things might not be noticed.”

She said school children should be made aware that “when people offer them work related to 2010 , they should not accept without telling their parents first”.

Preston said SA, with its booming conference and tourism industry, had become a popular destination for “child sex tourists” – who rape or abuse children and then fly back home.

Western Cape Street Children’s Forum director Paul Hooper said there were no state services to help the 250 “hardened street children” in Cape Town who are addicted to heavy drugs and are at risk of sexual exploitation.

Eric Harper of the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force (Sweat) said adult prostitutes had been reporting more children selling sex on the streets.

Public prosecutor Garry Titus said the “huge turnover of prosecutors and loss of skilled personnel” were obstacles for the NPA in cracking down on child trafficking syndicates .

The Department for Social Development’s Nomfundo Nabela said it was difficult for social workers to uncover child trafficking. “We sense child trafficking is hidden behind something else,” she said.

http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1081935

To see children's silhouettes at sunrise, bent as they chop canes with machetes, is to see the scale of poverty in Bolivia, where often every member of the family, no matter how young, has to work.

Fiser, 10, is one of Bolivia's many child labourers.

"I am not going to school any more. I left it this year when I started working here," he tells me.

His hands are covered in blisters and dark with a sticky dust after hours harvesting sugar cane.

Child labour is illegal in Bolivia, but it is estimated that almost a third of the country's children and adolescents (320,000) work in extreme conditions; in the mines, Brazil nut plantations and the sugar cane fields.

Boys like Fiser earn less than $5 a day during the six months or so that they work harvesting sugar cane, often from sunrise to sunset.

Such work is considered one of the worst forms of child labour by international bodies such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN children's agency, Unicef.
Ciro, 13, is typical. "I'd like to study or maybe work in something better, something lighter. But I work most of all for my family, my family is really poor so they have nothing and I need to help my six little brothers," he says.

"I wake up at four in the morning and come out to work until six in the afternoon, sometimes until eleven at night. The work is really, really hard."

Temporary migrants
Until recently, many farmers were moving away from sugar cane because they could get better, government-guaranteed prices for other crops, such as soya, rice and the local crop, coca - the raw material for cocaine.

But now, the price of raw sugar is hitting highs not seen for nearly three decades and farmers are switching back to sugar cane. Whole families are moving across Bolivia to work in the fields.

Sugar cane has a particular economic advantage: the harvest provides an income for a relatively extended period - roughly between April and November.

It is a way of making a living in Bermejo, a poverty-stricken area of south-eastern Bolivia on the border with Argentina.

Most of the heavy harvesting work is still done manually. Children aged between seven and 17 set crops alight to remove all unwanted foliage and then chop down the canes. Later, the top is cut off and the rest of the cane is stacked and loaded for transportation.

Luis, 13, started working three years ago.

"The work is hard, very hard, exhausting," he says. "The canes are heavy, cutting, chopping all day, last year I had a terrible back pain from work. I don't want to do this any more, but I have no choice."

About 60% of the sugar cane harvesters are temporary migrants from Bolivia's poorest areas. They live in shacks that are little more than mud huts, or under blue tarpaulins on the edge of the sugar cane plantations.

There is no hygiene; no privacy. As the local saying goes, they have "sweet canes but bitter lives".

"It is not a secret that children of all ages work in different conditions, in different sectors in this country," says Unicef's Bolivia representative Gordon Jonathan Lewis.

"As long as poverty exists, and the magnitude and the prevalence you have in a country like Bolivia, you will always have the need for children to contribute to households and local economies."

But in the sugar cane harvest, the exploitation of child workers can be extreme, Mr Lewis adds.

This view is echoed by Anastasio Rueda, a sugar cane trade union leader in Bermejo.
"Sometimes the boss takes advantage of them because they are young, and treats them badly. There are accidents. And of course there are children who do not want to come to work because the job is harsh, but some parents force them to," he says.

Forceful approach
Now, nearly 20 years after the Convention of the Rights of the Child was agreed, Unicef is trying a range of ways to tackle child labour.

One is a "Child Labour Free" stamp for certain Bolivian products, like sugar. Together with Unicef, Bolivia's government has drawn up a plan to reduce child labour by 2015.

"The plans exists, the public policies are in place, the legal framework is there but right now we really do need a much more forceful approach," Mr Lewis says.

Some parents would prefer their children to be at school rather than in the fields.

Unfortunately, money compels them to take their children into the fields with them.

That is the case for Fiser's mother, Angelica, who is working alongside him.

"He helps me a lot. He used to be at school but I need him to come to work with me, at least this year, then he can go back to school. Now we need the money so his little brothers can eat and go to school."

Angelica knows about the harsh reality of child labour herself as she has been toiling in the cane fields for a pittance since she was 10. She is now 44.

"Now he got used to work and he doesn't want to go back to school because he earns some petty cash and knows I need help," she says.

"But I tell him, even if it is a huge effort, he has to study so he doesn't end up like me, old and working in the sugar cane harvest. The children should have that opportunity. We are rotten already."

Ikea takes a hard line on the use of child labour by its suppliers and shows commitment that has impressed Unicef

It is an unlikely marriage. On one hand, there is Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund, a non-governmental behemoth with a $3 billion income and a presence in almost 200 countries; on the other there is Ikea, which sells flat-pack cupboards.

Yet for a decade a partnership has been flourishing between the two in an attempt to reduce child labour in the developing world — a corporate-charitable tag team formed amid concerns in the mid-1990s that child labour was being used by sub-contractors in Ikea’s supply chain of carpet manufacturers in India and Pakistan.

Such a discovery could tarnish a company’s reputation, but Marianne Barner, Ikea’s head of social responsibility, insists that such philanthropy is far from a PR exercise. “It is true that many of our customers are families with children and that we want children to be welcome in our stores,” she said. “And we want to make sure, as much as we ever can, that child labour doesn’t happen in our supply chain.

“But it is a far more complex problem and needs a long-term commitment to the root causes of child labour, such as adult literacy, lack of education, poverty and death in the family.”
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Anybody doubting Ikea’s sincerity or dedication to the cause should bear in mind that the Swedish retailer receives its strongest character reference from Unicef, which insists that it does not work with companies whose commitment to development is fleeting or motivated by self-interest.

Joanne Dunn, Unicef’s child protection officer, said: “If a company’s policy is to chuck some money at child labour and ask us to make it go away, then we don’t work with them. We have a strong brand at Unicef and are aware of the dangers of a bad association. If a company has no policies in place against child labour and simply responds in a reactive rather than strategic way, we tend to say ‘no’. We are not management consultants there to sort out a company’s suppliers.”

Ikea’s projects began 15 years ago in 500 villages, predominantly in India and Pakistan, that were most closely related to its own textiles supply chain. This year it was announced that Ikea was to commit $180 million (£113 million) between 2009 and 2013 to its partnership with Unicef, which in the new year will be extended to 5,000 villages throughout southern and South-East Asia, Africa and Central and Eastern Europe. For each of the slightly wacky soft toys sold in Ikea’s stores, €1 (92p) is contributed to the company’s social responsibility schemes, a project that has itself raised €16.7 million since 2003.

Times have been even tougher of late for child labourers and those trying to help them. The recession is pushing significant numbers of children into work as factories look to cut costs and increase production — and at the same time Western businesses, struggling for survival themselves, can be tempted to reduce the amount that they spend on humanitarian issues. Ms Barner said that the downturn had made charitable work more difficult, but added: “We’ve made a long-term strategy and commitment. We can’t go back on that.”

Addressing child labour is not a simple task: if a company identifies that sub-contractors within its supply chain are using children in such a way, the response must be sensitive to the economic situation of the child and to their background. To simply pluck them from their jobs and send them home could rob their family of vital income and significantly worsen the child’s situation.

Unicef and Ikea recognise that a compromise must be reached. At first, they suspend the sub-contractor from receiving any new contracts for a period of six months. The child must not be asked to perform dangerous tasks or to work long hours. Eventually, the aim is to replace the child in their role, preferably with a family member to guarantee the household’s income.

“We have to empower children and to do that we must empower women,” Ms Barner said. “Give them access to training and credit and they will spend it on the children. About 80,000 more children are going to school in the 500 villages we started in. We do mainly work in areas where we have business interests, but we have a bottom-up approach to really work with Unicef on these developmental and social projects.”

Ms Dunn added: “A lot of corporates are just crossing their fingers in the current climate with regard to child labour. But they can act as agents for social change. It takes a lot of guts, but they can lead the way.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article6870158.ece

A 27-year-old man has pleaded guilty to child trafficking before Mpulungu magistrates’ court.
Geoffrey Siwakwi of Chilila Island in Mpulungu has been charged with child trafficking contrary to the law.

Siwakwi was arrested for attempting to sell his 2-year-old girl for K30 million on Friday.
When the matter came for plea before Mpulungu magistrate Miyato Muyambango, Siwakwi, who looked humble in the dock admitted having attempted to sell his daughter to a Mpulungu businessman for K30 million.

He told the court that he wanted to go ahead with the transaction because he was in dire need of money which he wanted to use to travel to Lusaka so that he could begin a new life.

Siwakwi, however, told the court that he was sorry and regretted what he had attempted to do.

SOME five per cent of boys and up to 10 per cent of girlsin rich nations suffer from severe sexual abuse during childhood, the UN Children's Fund says.

Up to three times that proportion experience some form of sexual abuse in industrialised countries, a Unicef report on child protection adds, citing a study in the medical journal The Lancet.

"It is estimated that throughout the course of their childhood, five to 10 per cent of girls and up to five per cent of boys suffer penetrative sexual abuse," the Progress for Children report says.

One child in 10 is neglected or psychologically abused, about 80 per cent of the time by a parent or guardian.

Unicef warns that while the issue of physical and sexual abuse of children has gained prominence in recent years, insufficient attention has been paid to the harm done by neglect and emotional abuse and progress is "too slow".

Parents who abuse their children are often trapped in mental problems, alcohol or drug abuse, poverty, as well as their own experience of mistreatment in childhood, according to its report.

It underlines that not enough is known about the extent of abuse against children but the evidence suggests that it is extensive.

"The number of children exposed to violence, exploitation and abuse all over the world is profoundly disturbing," the report says.

The report also highlights the 150 million five to 14 year-olds who are believed to be locked in child labour, mainly as a result of poverty.

It says more than half the children in detention worldwide have not been tried or sentenced.

"Millions of children" are subject to trafficking, deprived of parental care or the basic conditions to obtain health care or reach school, further blighting societies and their future progress.

Bolivia will introduce a law to stop children from working under unsafe conditions.

The government has identified 10 areas of work, including chestnut collection in the Amazon, mines and sugarcane harvest, where child labour will be prohibited, Labour Minister Calixto Chipana said Monday.

He said the National Council of Economic Policy (CONAPE) is currently drafting the new rules.

The government would later on introduce new policies to allow children who are the sole earner of their families to work in safe environments where their rights are not violated, he added.

There’s been a tenfold increase in work-related injuries reported by children aged 12 to 14 in the past five years — a period that coincides with the Liberal government having turned British Columbia into the laxest child-labour jurisdiction in North America.

It’s not just the youngest workers whose injury rates are climbing. Statistics for all child labourers 15 years old and younger have been trending upward.

Since 2004, children have been legally able to work up to 20 hours a week during the school year and up to 35 hours a week when school is out. Children under 12 can work as well, but they need to have a permit from the B.C. Employment Standards Branch.

Employers can pay them less than older workers. It’s called a training wage.

And while the majority of injured kids work in the service industry, some of the injuries are in industries that you might not think could employ children — construction, oil and gas processing, wood and paper mills, and plastics production.

What the government did in 2004 was allow any child aged 12 to 14, with the consent of one parent, to work anywhere except underground mines and bars, doing almost anything except serving liquor and setting off explosives.

Just how many children 15 and younger are working is difficult to determine. Statistics Canada doesn’t collect data on them since B.C. is the only province with no restrictions on children under 16 working.

So First Call, a coalition of child and youth advocates, looked at injury statistics collected by WorkSafe BC.

That data showed that 42 children aged 12 to 14 were injured badly enough in 2008 that WorkSafe accepted their claims. In 2005, there were only four claims.

Of the injured, 56 per cent worked in the hospitality industry.

But eight per cent of the children worked in construction, eight per cent in agriculture, and four per cent in manufacturing including wood and paper products.

The picture changes slightly for injured 15-year-olds. Hospitality industry employees filed 46 per cent of the claims, while retail workers accounted for a third.

But 14 per cent of the claims were for kids working in construction or in the manufacture of everything from food and beverages to metals, minerals, paper, petroleum and plastics.

Although First Call was unable to conclusively determine whether the tenfold increase for the youngest workers also meant a tenfold increase in the total number of workers, the report’s author, Helesia Luke, noted the correlation between increased numbers of workers and increased injuries has been well documented by WorkSafe BC.

So, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that there are now 10 times as many kids working in B.C. as there were just five years ago.

However, Luke says the statistics could also mean that there are simply more injuries, which suggests that there may not be sufficient supervision of these young workers to keep them safe.

A 2005 survey of child labourers published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, for example, noted that nearly a quarter of the 12- to 14-year-olds said they were not supervised while working even though the regulations require the presence of adult supervision.

It’s troubling that B.C. children are being injured and even suffering possible lifelong disability or impairment when they are so young.

The B.C. government ignored the International Labor Organization’s minimum age standard that has been agreed to by 153 countries (Canada is not one of them) that children shouldn’t work until at least 15 or until after they have completed compulsory schooling.

The government didn’t consult child and youth advocates when it was considering lowering the standards to this bare minimum. They warned that it leaves children open to exploitation, injury and it may interfere with them finishing high school.