By Yadira Ferrer
BOGOTA, Aug. 21 (IPS) -- Colombia's civil
war affects 17.5 percent of the country's children, says the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and fighting between rival groups
in the decades-long civil war claimed the lives of 460 children last
year alone.
Most recently, six children died after being
shot on Aug. 15 during a school field trip in a rural area of the
northwestern department of Antioquia. Army soldiers engaged in a
counter-insurgent operation apparently confused the children with
members of a leftist guerrilla group.
Marcela, 6, wanted to learn to skate. Paula,
8, liked to run through the coffee plantation her parents farmed.
Gustavo, 9, said he would grow up to be a mathematician.
The three were buried on Aug. 17 in the town
of Pueblo Rica.
That same day, two girls died in the
northern department of Sucre when a bomb exploded, presumably
detonated by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
These tragedies underscore the vulnerability
of Colombia's children, said Ana Bernal, director of the Network of
Initiatives for Peace, an umbrella for 30 non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that are seeking a political solution to the
country's civil war.
"It is not possible, nor is it
acceptable, to continue seeing what we are seeing on television news
every day," Bernal told IPS, "girls and boys injured by
grenades, children killed in the cross-fire or involved in the war
and carrying weapons."
The armed groups "must promise to not
include minors among their ranks and to immediately halt armed
confrontations in any location where they may endanger the life of a
child," she added.
Giovanni Arias, Colombian director of the
international NGO Dos Mundos (Two Worlds), stressed that it is not
enough the army has acknowledged that the six deaths in Antioquia
could be due to human error. He demanded that government forces make
a humanitarian commitment to protect children.
Beatriz Linares, a children's rights
advocate, said it is "wrong" that the civilian population
not involved in the conflict, and especially children, "continue
to fall into the cross-fire of violence."
According to the army, in the first half of
this year, 20 children died and 30 were injured as a result of
confrontations between government troops and insurgent forces.
A UNICEF report indicates that nearly 6,000
children can be found among the ranks of the leftist guerrillas and
the right-wing paramilitary squads, and that other minors participate
in the conflict indirectly, serving as spies, messengers or decoys.
Another study, by the Colombia-based
Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), states that
1.9 million people (4 percent of the country's population) have been
forced to leave their homes since 1985 because of the armed conflict,
and that nearly 1.1 million were children.
CODHES reports that the civil war fighting
caused the forced displacement of 272,000 people in 1999 alone, of
which 176,800 were children. The minors who have quit attending
school because of the conflict number more than a million.
"First it was the guerrilla force that
made us leave because we had a relative in the army. We went to a
farm in Turbo (in the northwest). Then paramilitaries arrived there
and we had to leave again," a girl, whose name is withheld for
safety reasons, told CODHES. She now lives in Ciudad Bolívar,
one of the poorest areas in southern Bogota.
"What I miss most is seeing my friends,
and my grandma, and not being able to go down to the river or gather
fruit on the patio of the house we had there," said the girl,
who believes the guerrilla and paramilitary forces are one and the same.
CODHES criticizes "the paramilitaries,
the guerrilla groups and the government forces, which deliberately
promote displacement and attack children."
The organization's director, Jorge Rojas,
said forced displacement destroys the "imagination and
surroundings" of children, and "creates tension that
fragments the family and the social fabric, negatively impacting
quality of life and psycho- social behavior."
UNICEF, in a statement released on Aug. 17,
demanded "respect for and the exercise of all rights consecrated
in the International Convention on the Rights of the Child,"
which include the right to life and the right to adequate conditions
for physical and mental development.
Analysts agree that these rights and those
established by Colombia's Code for Minors have become "dead
letter" in the areas where the armed conflict is occurring.
They also criticise the army brass for
"their hurried statements" on Aug. 15, when officials
asserted that the children's deaths in Antioquia were the result of
being caught in the cross-fire between soldiers and the insurgent
National Liberation Army (ELN).
According to the victims' families, there
was no fighting, nor were there any guerrillas in the area, when the
army shot the six children in the group of 50.
Another UNICEF study, titled "The
Psycho-Affective Recovery of Children in Zones of Conflict,"
shows that 17.5 percent of Colombia's child population has been
affected by the armed conflict.
The national Ombudsman has gathered data
from interviews with children who participate directly in the civil war.
Of the minors surveyed, "18 percent
confessed to having killed at least once, 60 percent had witnessed
killings, 78 percent had seen mutilated bodies, 25 percent had seen
kidnappings, 40 percent had fired a weapon against another person,
and 28 percent had been injured."
END
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War-Affected
Youth Subject Of Major Global Comference
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 21 (IPS) -- The U.N.
Children's Fund (UNICEF), together with the Canadian government, is
co-sponsoring an international conference to discuss issues facing
children affected by war.
The conference, described as possibly the
largest gathering ever of governments, experts, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and young people from around the world, is
designed to galvanize the international community to fulfil
commitments to protect and assist children traumatized by war.
Scheduled to take place in Winnipeg, Canada,
Sept. 10-17, the conference is expected to come up with an action
plan to be carried forward to the U.N. Special Session on Children in
New York next year.
Gracha Machel, former First Lady of South
Africa and author of a major 1996 U.N. study on children and armed
conflict, will chair the conference. Among the participants will be
children from several war-affected countries, including Angola, Burma
and Cambodia.
Underlying the importance of the upcoming
conference, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy says that during
the 1990s, armed conflicts, humanitarian emergencies and natural
disasters have engulfed hundreds and thousands of the world's children.
Children have been displaced within their
own countries or made refugees in the wake of armed conflicts. And
ongoing humanitarian emergencies now grip 56 of the countries where
UNICEF is working, she points out.
"If we don't seize the start of the new
millennium to solve the terrifying plight faced by our children, then
we are guilty of contributing to their suffering and to the wholesale
abuse of their rights. The choice is ours," she adds.
An estimated 300,000 children under 18 years
are involved in over 30 armed conflicts around the world -- as
soldiers, porters, messengers and sex slaves.
According to UNICEF, over 2 million children
have died as a result of wars, and more than 6 million have been
injured or permanently disabled.
Additionally, more than 1 million children
have been orphaned or separated from parents, and over 15 million
displaced from their homes, either as refugees or internally
displaced within their own countries.
Olara Otunnu, the UN's Special
Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, says that children
are most often the first victims, and frequently deliberate targets,
in today's violent conflicts.
"In light of this abominable fact,
particular emphasis needs to be placed on ensuring the protection of
children during armed conflict, and on placing their protection and
well-being on the agendas of peace processes."
Otunnu also says that children need to be a
priority when developing programs or allocating resources for
building peace in post-conflict situations.
"It is particularly important that
international civil society and all relevant actors work together to
ensure that parties to conflict adhere to commitment for the
protection of children and that they may have made to each other and
to the international community," he adds.
Bacre Waly Ndiaye, director of the Office of
the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told delegates recently
that children constituted the main victims of the worst human rights violations.
"They were too often invisible and
lacked awareness about -- or lacked the means to ensure respect for
-- their rights. They were the main victims of armed conflict,
constituted the most important segment of the refugee populations,
and were most affected by HIV/AIDS, structural adjustment programs
and extreme poverty," he told the Preparatory Committee for the
U.N. Special Session on Children scheduled to take place next year.
Meanwhile, the Geneva-based Women's World
Summit Foundation (WWSF) has appealed to governments and NGOs to
commemorate a special day dedicated to the prevention of child abuse.
The WWSF, in collaboration with the
U.S.-based Coalition for Children, has earmarked Nov. 19 as
"World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse" in order to raise
awareness and seek preventive measures to protect children from
abuse, both at home and during war.
According to WWSF, 95 percent of child
abusers were themselves abused as children, and 80 percent of
substance abusers were abused as children.
Additionally, 80 percent of runaways cite
child abuse as a factor while 95 percent of prostitutes were sexually
abused as children.
Moreover, about 78 percent of prison
population were abused as children while 50 percent of those who
attempted suicide reported having been sexually abused at some time.
END
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After
Deaths In Japan, Nation Rethinks Corporal Punishment
By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug. 21 (IPS) -- His mother says
nine-year-old Ryuji was not paying attention when she tried to help
him with his math homework, so she hit him. Then her boyfriend did
the same.
But the beating went on for two days. They
rushed him to the hospital when Ryuji finally fell unconscious, but
by then it was too late.
When news of Ryuji's death at the hands of
his own mother and her boyfriend became public this month, the
Japanese public was aghast.
But lawyers and commentators say physical
violence against children by their own parents or guardians is not
new in Japan, and that only recently is such behavior being seen as abuse.
"Hitting children has always been
considered a form of discipline in Japan. It is only during the past
year that such attitudes (have begun) to be challenged," says
lawyer Fumiaki Isogai, who has been working on child abuse cases for
the past 10 years.
"The biggest problem is categorizing
child abuse as a human rights issue," he says. "For many
people in Japan, children 'belong' to the parents and this (thinking)
allows the parents to do what they like with their children."
In early August, the National Police Agency
released a report showing that in the first half of this year alone,
there have been 94 documented child abuse cases nationwide. This is a
more than 50 percent increase from the figure posted during the same
period in 1999.
Of the cases recorded from January to June
this year, 20 were fatal. Fifty-two of the total involved victims
younger than six years, including 15 who were under the age of one year.
According to the police, there were 103
people suspected of child abuse who were either arrested or had
complaints filed against them during the same period. Of this number,
31 were mothers and 30 were fathers.
The police said most of the assailants
explained their violent behavior toward the youngsters by saying that
they wanted to teach their children a lesson, or claiming that they
had wanted to protect their offspring from doing something wrong.
In one case that was cited in the National
Police Agency report, a two-year-old boy died after his mother pushed
him too hard against a step and ruptured one of his internal organs.
The mother told the police that she had
become angry after the child was unable to climb the stairs by
himself. She said she was merely trying to teach him to do it better.
In March, a woman and her two friends were
sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of causing
injury that led to the death of a child, who happened to be the
woman's six-year-old daughter.
For not eating her dinner, the little girl
was tortured for six hours -- hit with a metal mop, thrown into the
air and burnt with a cigarette lighter.
Social workers say Isogai's observation that
the Japanese view of children not as individuals but as "family
belongings" is accurate. They also say that it is one reason why
reports of child abuse often come too late to save the young victim.
News reports on the death of Ryuji, for
instance, included statements from neighbors who told the police that
they had heard the boy alternately weeping or crying out for help.
But they had apparently done nothing and spoke up only after his death.
"People do not want to interfere
because they think parents know what is best for their children,"
says Katsuji Kurashina of the Child Abuse Prevention Center
affiliated with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
The Center, which was set up just this
April, is the first such organization in Japan. Kurashina and seven
other social workers help local child consultation centers boost
services for abused children.
In May, a new law was also passed allowing
child centers to temporarily take victims of abuse into protective
custody if alerted by medical doctors or teachers.
The term "child abuse" has now
been more clearly defined, with "violence" including
neglecting to provide meals or care to children, and "verbal
abuse" as treatment that causes serious psychological damage.
Still, Kurashina points out that the new law
does not make abuse a serious offense that carries a long prison
sentence. She also notes that its stipulation for concrete evidence
places many social workers in a quandary, because of the reluctance
of neighbors to talk to authorities.
"With the rise in fatal cases, there is
a need to increase vigilance," adds Kurashina.
Meanwhile, she says that one emerging trend
has been the rise in the number of mothers who hit their children
over trivial matters, or because they suspect the youngsters of being
slow to learn.
One mother, for instance, sought counselling
recently after realizing that she had been hitting her child for
being in diapers longer than her friends' children.
Kurashina believes the trend is the result
of more young mothers relying too much on books on child-rearing, as
well as the lack of understanding by husbands of their wives' anxieties.
One positive development is that the
increase in media reports about child abuse cases has made people
more aware of the issue. Thus, says Kurashina, "telephone calls,
many from abusive parents themselves, are on the rise."
One child consultation center last year
received more than 4,000 phone calls. Social workers say they have
been barely able to cope with the volume of queries.
END
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Liberian
Refugee Children Run Out Of School Funds
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 21 (IPS) -- An
international relief agency is urging donors to help continue the
schooling of 10,000 Liberian refugee children currently living in Guinea.
The flow of international assistance that
helped, in part, to guarantee instruction for the refugee children
there is on the verge of drying up, says the United States-based
Refugees International (RI).
"Unless the international community
provides the funds to integrate Liberians into the Guinean school
system, more than 10,000 Liberian children and adolescents will be
without any education prospects," it reveals.
For education rights activists, the plight
of the Liberian children is the latest example of a crisis that
affects many other children living in camps for refugees or
internally displaced people -- being denied permanent, quality
education due to the irregular flow of funds.
There is still a lack of commitment to
ensure that refugee children receive a good education, observes Kazi
Rafiqul Alam, the executive director of Dhaka Ahsania Mission, a
leading non-governmental organization (NGO) in Bangladesh.
"Additional resources should be made
available either to governments (caring for refugee children) or to
the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees)," adds Alam.
According to Berewa Jommo, the regional
director of the Nairobi-based African Community Education Network,
the prevailing trend is a cause for concern. "The education
situation for refugee and displaced children and young persons in
sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, is catastrophic."
For both Jommo and Alam, this situation
calls into question the recent pledges made by the international
community to guarantee proper schooling for children living in
difficult circumstances.
In April, for instance, national education
leaders from 181 countries pledged at the World Education Forum in
Dakar, Senegal to ensure that children affected by conflicts receive
quality basic education.
The Dakar Framework of Action, which was
endorsed by these national leaders, included among its commitments
the following promise: "Ensuring that by 2015 all children, with
special emphasis on girls and children in difficult circumstances,
have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of
good quality."
And to achieve such a goal, the Dakar
declaration called on governments, international organizations,
agencies, and groups represented at the Forum to "meet the needs
of education systems affected by conditions of conflict and instability."
According to the Education for All 2000
Assessment (EFA 2000), a global report on the state of education
released during the Dakar gathering, the educational needs of
children affected by conflicts cannot be marginalized unlike what
prevailed in 1990, during the World Conference on Education for All
in Jomtien, Thailand.
"There was little mention of education
in emergencies, just a reference in Article 3 of the (Jomtien)
Declaration to removing educational for under-served groups,
including refugees, those displaced by war, and people under
occupation," the EFA 2000 stated.
What has led to the subsequent shift, it
added, was the escalation of conflicts during the ensuing period.
"War and other calamities have unfortunately stalked the world
in the 1990s."
Among them were the Gulf War, genocide in
Rwanda, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,
Colombia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Burundi and Angola.
As a result, the authors of the EFA 2000
noted, "No review of Education for All can now ignore the
destruction of education systems, programs and infrastructure that
accompanies such disasters, nor the traumatic effects of violence and
displacement on teachers, children and their families."
According to the UNHCR, there are close to
650,000 refugee children currently enrolled in education programs run
by the agency. They include 165,000 children in Iran, 79,000 in
Tanzania, 78,000 in Pakistan, 53,000 in Uganda and 38,000 in Kenya.
Such assistance, however, is relatively low
when compared with the global picture of war victims. "Around
the world 20 million refugees and 30 million displaced persons live
in precarious circumstances, and at least 60 percent of this number
are children," affirms Education International, a Brussels-based NGO.
Adds Kacem Bensalah, head of the Emergency
Educational Assistance Unit at the U.N. Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization, "Africa is the region of the world which
has the most disturbing numbers."
For education activists like Alam, efforts
to help such children also require "special programs" that
consider their unique circumstances.
The EFA 2000, in fact, argues that such
programs should be comprehensive. "The principles underlying
refugee education include meeting the psychological needs of the
refugee children and adolescents, and building knowledge, skills,
attitudes and values contributing towards a durable situation."
It adds that education initiatives should be
tailored "to build for the long term, not just for the child but
for his or her community and nation."
But as Refugees International observes,
without a steady flow of funds, little can be achieved. And in most
camps that house the Liberian refugees, it reveals, "the
resounding plea to the international community was not for food or
medical attention, but for education of their children."
END
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Poverty In
Argentina Impacting Kids Nutrition, School Performance
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Aug. 17 (IPS) -- As more of
Argentina's once large middle-class fall below the poverty line,
increasing numbers of women and grandparents are forced into the
labor market, leaving their young children to fend for themselves
after school.
According to a study carried out by the
Buenos Aires city government, 66 percent of public school students
between the ages of nine and 11 prepare their own lunches, as do 80.3
percent of 12 to 14-year-olds.
"Luckily, it's my sister's turn
today," Victoria, 12, told IPS.
"I fix sausages, hamburgers,
sandwiches," says Victoria's 10-year-old sister, confirming the
study's conclusions on the poor nutritional value of the food
prepared by latchkey kids.
Buenos Aires Under-Secretary of Food
Security, Guillermo Guido, said that not only is the enormous
proportion of kids who prepare their own meals alarming, but so is
what they are eating.
Of the kids that cook, and more girls do so
than boys, most of those interviewed said they prepared hamburgers or
sausages (40.4 percent), while 28.4 percent opted for a simple
sandwich. Eggs, chicken, pasta or fish were mentioned far less frequently.
Victoria and her sister take turns cooking
and washing the dishes. "Sometimes we fight because she makes a
big mess when she cooks," says Victoria. And on their way home
from school, they often have to remember to buy the food they need to
fix lunch.
The fights sometimes end in blows, the girls
admit. "If she doesn't listen to me, I call my mom at work, but
she doesn't want us to call her about silly things," said
Victoria, who is resigned to playing the role of substitute mother
for a few hours every day.
In Argentina, public schools run on a
double-shift, so kids end up spending only the morning or the
afternoon in school, meaning hours alone at home if their parents
work full-time.
Psychologists and sociologists who
specialize in family affairs point to a number of factors that are
leading to the increase in the number of children spending time at
home alone every day in Argentina.
One factor is that the traditional,
close-knit extended family unit is giving way to the nuclear family,
especially in large cities.
Furthermore, it is becoming more and more
common for both grandparents and parents to work. Growing poverty,
which already affects one-third of this Southern Cone country's 37
million people, and declining incomes have pushed more adults into
the labor market, with families unable to afford a nanny or
baby-sitter to take care of the children.
The problem is just one aspect of the
decline of Argentina's middle-class, many of whom now make up the
"new poor," or families who might own their own homes, and
who continue to identify themselves as middle-class, but whose income
level puts them below the poverty line.
Surveys also indicate that in the past 10
years, the proportion of female heads of household, in which the
mother represents the family's main or sole economic support, has
ballooned from six to 27 percent in the city of Buenos Aires. In many
cases, the father is present, but unemployed. In other cases, he does
not live with the family.
According to Psychologist Susana Toporosi,
coordinator of the adolescent psychopathology department in the
Buenos Aires Children's Hospital, children will be fine alone at home
only if they have the emotional support and security of knowing there
is an adult who loves them and is available to take care of them.
"Only in those conditions will they not
feel lonely," said Toporosi.
But, she stressed, that does not mean
youngsters should be burdened with the responsibility of cooking,
cleaning or taking care of younger siblings.
That situation, which is generally not a
question of choice for parents, overburdens children with duties that
compromise their performance at school and leads younger siblings, in
the care of their older brothers and sisters, to act childishly and
suffer from a lack of motivation, said Toporosi.
She also added that children at home alone
are at risk of being hurt or killed in accidents. Burns, poisoning,
cuts and falls are among the most common, and help is sometimes late
in arriving if the kids have to call their parents at work or turn to
a neighbor.
Another disturbing aspect of the growing
trend of latchkey children is the increasing number of hours spent in
front of the TV. A study conducted last year by the children's cable
TV station Nickelodeon found that children aged seven to 12 in this
city spent, on average, one to four hours each day watching TV.
The most surprising result of this survey,
however, is that 46 percent of the children interviewed said they had
a TV set in their own bedrooms. This not only makes it more difficult
to control the amount of time they spend watching TV, but it also
reduces the amount of time spent together as a family.
Like many parents, Victoria's mother sees
the TV set as company for her daughters, and as a safeguard that
keeps them off the street instead of fighting among themselves.
"I prefer to have them watching TV," said the girls'
mother, who has resigned herself to the "lesser evil."
END
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Child
Labour News Service
15 August 2000
** Officials
Turn Blind Eye To Child Trafficking
** Trade
Unions Survey Reveals Mass Exploitation Of Children
** Least
Visible, Most Vulnerable
** Imprisoned
Childhood, Ailing Youth And Uncertain Future
** News-In-Brief
** Announcements
*********************************************************
Officials
Turn Blind Eye To Child Trafficking
Phnom Penh: According to the Cambodian
League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and
Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC)
trafficking in children for sexual purposes is booming, because of
the lack of law enforcement and the culture of impunity.
LICADHO and ADHOC said that there were
people in the police, judiciary and military making substantial
profits from the trade, which is regularly supplied with children
from financially desperate parents.
Dr Kek Galabru, the President of LICADHO,
said that though safeguards for children were built into Cambodia's
constitution, in practice, abused children were being ignored by the
legal system and stigmatised by society.
A police official from the Ministry of
Interior acknowledged that the trafficking in children for sexual
purposes is a serious problem and said little was being done to stop
it. He informed that a new department against sexual exploitation of
children is being set up. It will be created by next month and once
it is operational they will try and gauge the size of the problem.
"Now, the police in each commune or
district are responsible for fighting against traffickers by
themselves, therefore the Ministry of Interior has no statistics
about the situation," said the official.
Lim Mony, the Head of the Women Section of
ADHOC points at a noticeable drop in the starting age of prostitutes,
with pre-teen sex workers becoming more common.
However the lack of research meant little is
known about the extent of the problem and often what little research
has been done is contradictory. An ADHOC investigation yielded 87
reported cases of trafficking in nine provinces in 1999. But at the
same time other NGOs put the number of child prostitutes at more than
2,000 nation-wide.
Sun Vanna, chief of the bureau for
prevention of trafficking from the Ministry of Women and Veteran's
Affairs, said the exact number of sexually exploited children is hard
to discover due to the clandestine nature of the industry.
She quoted studies by the Human Rights
Commission in 1996-1997 which estimated nearly 15,000 women were
involved in the sex industry - 81 per cent Khmer, 18 per cent
Vietnamese and one per cent from other countries.
Mony said that not only was trafficking in
Cambodian children for sexual purposes getting worse locally, it had
now become an international business, with children being sent to
Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan.
(From the files of Phnom Penh Post)
END
Start of
Child Labour News
Trade
Unions Survey Reveals Mass Exploitation Of Children
Blantyre - Despite ratifying the United
Nations Convention on Child Labour, Malawi's record on the issue is
still poor. A recent survey conducted by the Malawi Congress of Trade
Unions MCTU has established that cases of child labour are still widespread.
The survey, according to MCTU secretary
general Francis Antonio, shows that the pressure of work on
traditional breadwinners is so intense that it has become almost
acceptable to pass on the Family's responsibilities to young children.
Commenting on the findings of the survey
Antonio says that in most tea and tobacco estates the problem of
child labour is very serious. He noted that children were forced by
their parents and employers to work under very extreme conditions
such as intense heat, smell and chemical effects.
"Child labour which is our enemy is
prevalent in the tobacco industry and agricultural sector. It is a
complex issue with no simple solutions despite the fact that it is
cruel and insulting to human dignity," says Antonio.
MCTU President, Ken Williams Mhango
attributes the problem of child labour to poverty. Mhango says
because there is low family income in Malawi, unemployment has risen.
The outcome has been that thousands of children have resorted to
spending their lives in hellish atmosphere.
Mhango says, "child labour is as a
result of poverty, HIV/AIDS pandemic, cultural beliefs and other
socio-economic problems in the country.
Alarmed by the pathetic condition under
which most children work, the Malawi Congress of Trade Unions and the
Malawi government have undertaken to eliminate child labour.
The country's Labour and Vocational
Minister, Peter Chupa says the government with the helping hand of
trade unions will start tracking down companies and estate owners who
employ children as workers.
"It is very unfortunate for a right
thinking adult who knows the sweet fruits of education to bar
youngsters from attending school by employing them as a manual
labourers. We will pounce on such companies and estate workers,"
says Chupa.
While in other countries child labour is
described as work performed by children under the age of 15 which
damages their physical, mental, social or psychological development;
laws in Malawi define a child as a person under the age of 15.
(From the files of Africa News Service)
END
Start of this
Issue Child Labour News
Least
Visible, Most Vulnerable
Cheriton, Va. -- Fourteen years old and
barely 4-foot-6, Amelia Gomez spends her days pulling weeds and
picking red peppers, often complaining that the pesticides give her rashes.
Daniel Velasquez, 13, who picks cherry
tomatoes nearly 12 hours a day, recently arrived on Virginia's
Eastern Shore after a two-day bus ride from Florida.
Amelia and Daniel are among hundreds of
child farm workers on Virginia's Eastern Shore, part of the estimated
150,000 children 16 years or younger who work the nation's farms.
For the most part migrants, these children
often work 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, facing dangers from
pesticides and risking exhaustion and dehydration. These children,
labour experts say, are among a steadily growing group of young field
hands and constitute one of the least visible and most vulnerable
classes of workers in the nation.
Their plight is such that Democrats in
Congress are planning to introduce legislation next month to make it
harder to hire 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds.
Advocacy groups say many child farm workers
are exploited because they are scared to speak up and desperate to
hold their jobs and because many are illegal immigrants.
Child farm workers are often paid less than
the $5.15 minimum wage, sometimes receiving $2.50 an hour.
"When people think of agriculture, they
think of the agrarian myth and what a wonderful, nurturing, safe,
wholesome environment to raise a child," said Diane Mull of the
Association of Farm Worker Opportunity Programmes. "In some
cases, that's true, but it's certainly not true for migrant
farm-worker kids."
And while federal law allows children to
work long weeks in the fields, some federal officials are highly
critical. "Agricultural employment for kids is bloody
dangerous," said John Fraser, director of the U.S. Department of
Labor's wage-and-hour division. "Only 6 to 7 percent of the jobs
that young people take are in agriculture, yet 40 percent of the
work-related fatalities that young people suffer are in agriculture."
Fraser said the government was increasing
investigations into improper use of child farm workers. Last year it
cited 46 farms for violations involving 102 minors. There are 1.9
million farms in the US.
(From the files of New York Times)
END
Start of this
Issue Child Labour News
Imprisoned
Childhood, Ailing Youth And Uncertain Future
'Slavery may have been eradicated on paper
but in reality it remains a global phenomenon.'
Last week, in a secret raid Kailash
Satyarthi, Chairperson South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude
(SACCS), rescued nine persons from bondage in villages of Eastern
Uttar Pradesh. They all hail from Bihar. Most of them are no longer
children and are unaware of what childhood means. Some of them suffer
from anaemia, night blindness and tuberculosis.
One of the rescued, Badri had been sold to a
carpet loom in Sarai Pitha by the middlemen around 13 years back
where he was made to work for over 16 hours a day. He was only 10 then.
Although Badri is now a free man, but sadly
he is not free from the adverse consequences of being in bondage for
over a decade. At the age of 23, he is in a poor physical state. His
visibility at night is poor and he is afflicted by tuberculosis. This
is not the end of Badri's misery. SACCS activists when contacted his
family found out that his child bride, losing hope of his return,
left him to marry someone else.
Not just this, his two younger brothers, 13
years old Roudhi and 12 year old Nande, were also lured into bondage
by the middlemen promising a bright future and a meeting with their brother.
Badri with a touch of sadness told SACCS
activists that, 'We came here empty handed and are now returning home
empty handed, with nothing to look forward to'.
Kailash Satyarthi expressed that a symbol of
'opulent living' - carpets are being exported to various countries
defying all the laws of the countries and sacrificing the childhood
of millions of children. These children took to work hoping for a
better life, but their hopes have been shattered. They have a lost
childhood and a marred future.
Another rescued bonded child labourer,
Nandkishore, 14 years old, said, "Being locked up for over five
years, we are totally unaware of the outside world."
Mr. Satyarthi feels that despite all the
national and international pressure on the carpet industry there is
no discernible change.
He alleged that appointment of a magistrate
level special officer at the district level to deal with complaints
against child labour has not been met so far. He lamented the fact
that the issue of identification, rescue, rehabilitation of child
labourers is on the back burner. He also reminded that though
children are identified and rescued, there is no long-term policy
either with the state or central government.
SACCS estimates that there are at least 60
million child labourers, a large portion of which is employed in the
carpet industry.
END
Start of this
Issue Child Labour News
News-In-Brief
-- TANZANIA JOINED ILO'S ANTI-CHILD LABOUR
PILOT PROJECT
Tanzania is one of three countries picked by
the ILO for implementation of anti-child labour programme to achieve
a sustainable prevention of the worst forms of child labour in the
world. Other two are Nepal and El Salvador. The support to make
Tanzania implement this programme follows the government's decision
to address, as a matter of priority, the most hazardous and
exploitative child labour practices. The proposed project is aimed at
understanding an implementation process including identifying child
labour and who are at risk, withdrawing working children from the
work place and providing relevant alternatives. A draft for a
National Child Labour Elimination Policy has already been prepared
and will soon be presented before the parliament for adoption.
-- CHILD SEX TOURISM LAW FAILS FIRST TEST
A law trumpeted in Parliament as ending the
ability of Canadians caught sexually exploiting minors abroad to
escape punishment has failed the first test case, allowing a teacher
accused of molesting a 17-year-old girl during a school trip to Costa
Rica to escape prosecution. Bill C-27, known as the child sex tourism
bill, stipulates that cases involving sexual exploitation cannot
proceed unless the government of the country where the offence was
committed formally requests the intervention of Canada's justice
minister. Canadians accused of having sex with underage prostitutes
overseas can however be prosecuted in Canada without a formal request
from the foreign government. Critics feel that the child molesters
can take Canadian kids to countries where the laws are weak, sexually
abuse children and get away with it.
-- HUMAN TRAFFICKING: 454 NIGERIANS DEPORTED
"At least 454 Nigerians mostly women
and children who fell victims to human traffickers were deported back
to the country from USA, Italy, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Netherlands
between last year and July, 2000", revealed Amina Titi Abubakar,
founder of Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation
(WOTCLEF). She was delivering a lecture on the "Challenges of
Trafficking and Child Labour in Nigeria" in Calabar. Italy had
the highest number of human trafficking deported, closely followed by
Netherlands. It is an Open testimony to the amazing speed with which
trafficking scourge had eaten deep into the fabric of our nation,
Abubakar said. "Trafficking in women and children, is now
considered the third largest source of profits for organised crime,
behind only drugs and guns", she added.
-- FARM FEARS IN CHILD LABOUR BID
The Victorian Farmers' Federation (VFF) has
attacked plans to crack down on child labour last month. The
Victorian Government wants to significantly increase penalties for
breaches of child labour laws. But farmers said penalties of up to
$A10, 000 or a jail term could put some farmers out of business. The
VFF said that while it condemned exploitative child labour practices,
a common-sense approach was needed to exempt farming families. About
70 per cent of Victorian farms were family-operated, without a clear
division between work, family, duties and fun, it said. Under the
present law a permit is needed for the employment of most children
under the age of 15. Farm children are not exempt.
-- HIGH COURT NOTICE TO FORMER MINISTER IN
CHILD LABOUR CASE
Karnataka High court ordered issuance of
notice to former minister Vimala Bai Deshmukh of Bijapur following a
writ petition filed by a city based NGO, Campaign Against Child
Labour (CACL), alleging misuse of child labour under the guise of
'adoption of a girl-child'. The petitioner contended that another
NGO, Sumangali Sevashrama, in order to 'get favours' from the
respondent (when she was a minister), had 'arranged the adoption' of
an eight-year-old girl child Sumitra of Channapatna. The respondent
shifted the girl to Bijapur and instead of bringing up the child as
an adopted daughter, misused her as a domestic servant.
-- ILO PLEDGES $ 7M AID TO NIGERIA TO FIGHT
CHILD LABOUR
The International Labour Organisation (ILO)
and the International Programme on Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC)
have pledged $700,000 to fight the raging incidents of child labour
in Nigeria. Mr. Cornelius Dzakpasu, ILO Director in Lagos, hinted
that ILO would provide advisory services towards successful
implementation of National Programme on Elimination of Child Labour,
to be funded by the U.S. government for an initial period of two
years. He also called upon the federal government to join other
countries in the world by ratifying the ILO convention on child
labour. Around 3,000 child workers are to benefit from the programme.
-- SINGER PARTICIPATES IN PROGRAMME ON
ELIMINATION OF CHILD LABOUR
The ILO has selected Singer Bangladesh
Limited as its implementing agency to provide skill training for
gainful wage employment to former child labourers through its 83
sewing schools throughout the country. This is in line with ILO's
programme to eliminate child labour in the readymade garment industry
of Bangladesh designed to monitor the employment of child labour in
enterprise, encourage children and their families to see the positive
relationship between education and future employment opportunities
and the benefits of acquiring skills training and enterprise
development skills and resources.
-- CORE LABOUR RIGHTS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
A recent report by the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions assesses the application of ILO
core conventions in the European Union's member states. While freedom
of association and the right to collective bargaining are observed in
law and practice in most of the EU, "in certain countries
difficulties do remain." Three countries in particular-the
United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany-make normal union activity
difficult, according to the report. The report also found violations
of the ILO's forced labour and child labour standards.
-- HELPING UKRAINE
The U.S. Department of Labor has announced a
two-year technical assistance programme with Ukraine addressing mine
safety and health, services for jobless workers, child labour,
industrial relations and gender equality. The programme will cost
$3.75 million in FY 2000. As part of the programme, DOL will work
through the ILO to help Ukraine develop a plan of action to combat
child labour, to foster effective industrial relations activities to
prevent and resolve labour disputes and promote collective
bargaining, and to promote gender equality and non-discrimination in
the workplace.
-- COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE CHILD LABOUR IN
LOCK INDUSTRY
Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has
constituted a committee to examine the issue of child in the lock
industries in Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh. Taking cognisance of
a news item, 'Children Still Slog in Aligarh Lock Industries',
highlighting the plight of child labour and ill-effects of the
working conditions, the commission constituted a five-member
committee headed by NHRC special rapporteur, Chaman Lal. The
committee will examine every aspect of employment of child labour in
the lock industries in Aligarh and report to the commission within
three months. The committee also included Madhukar Dewedi, Special
Secretary, Labour in Uttar Pradesh Government and PK Singh, Deputy
Labour Commissioner of Agra.
-- MAOISTS MUST END ABDUCTIONS, KILLINGS AND
THE RECRUITMENT OF CHILD SOLDIERS
Amnesty International issued an appeal after
a mounting evidence that children as young as 14, including girls,
are being recruited by members of the armed opposition group, the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). It called for an immediate end to
the recruitment of child soldiers. At least thirty children have been
abducted over the last few weeks by members of the CPN (Maoist).
Although it is not confirmed whether these children were abducted to
be trained and deployed as combatants. "As an organised armed
opposition group, the CPN (Maoists) are accountable under
international law and should respect basic human rights at all
times," Amnesty International said.
-- NAIDU TURNS HIS ATTENTION TO LITERACY
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu
Naidu announced the plan to achieve total literacy in the state by
2005. A weeklong literacy drive, "Chaduvukundamu" (Let us
study), launched recently in Mahbubnagar district with the lowest
literacy rate of 13.3 per cent, is the first step in this direction.
It is aimed at retaining children in schools and also to wean back
those who have been lost to labour. On the literacy scale, the state
ranks among the nine most backward states, with over 30 million
illiterates. The school dropout rate is around 62 per cent or 1.5
million children stop coming to school every year. Not surprisingly,
Andhra Pradesh heads the list when it comes to child labour.
END
Start of this
Issue Child Labour News
Announcements
-- ELIMINATING CHILD LABOUR: ESTABLISHING
BEST PRACTICE IN TOBACCO FARMING - OCTOBER 9 TO 10, 2000, NAIROBI, KENYA
To address the need to end the use of child
labour in the tobacco growing sector, the British American Tobacco,
the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant,
Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) and the
International Tobacco Growers' Association (ITGA) have established an
international partnership bringing together business, farmers and
labour. The two-day conference in Nairobi starting October 9, 2000
will provide a forum for discussion of child labour in tobacco
farming with the objective of establishing a permanent international
infrastructure to address the issue and provide a framework for
ongoing action. (For more information: http://www.endchildlabour.org)
-- 'HIGHWAY TO HELL'
A film on cross border trafficking of girls
for prostitution - from Nepal to India. Shot in Nepal and India,
"Highway to Hell" is made by award winning filmmaker Meera
Dewan with Niraja Rao, Produced by Southview Productions for MARG
(Multiple Action Research Group) funded by CIDA. (Video; 38 min;
2000; English) (For further details contact at MARG, Tel.: (91 11)
649 7483, 649 5371, 649 6925; Fax: (91 11) 649 5371; Email: marg@del2.vsnl.net.in)
END
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What Is
Best For AIDS Orphans?
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
MEXICO CITY, Jul. 30 (IPS) -- What is the
best form of care for AIDS orphans? What environment is ideal to
enhance and guarantee the rights of these children?
For health activists, such questions matter,
given the circumstances these children find themselves in following
the death of one or both parents to this pandemic. According to the
United Nations department for AIDS (UNAIDS), studies have revealed
that AIDS orphans run greater risks of being malnourished and stunted.
Such children are also victims of the stigma
associated with the killer disease. As a result, says UNAIDS, they
are often denied access to schools.
In some countries, it adds, they have even
been deprived of basic health care needs since "it is assumed
that they are infected with HIV (the Human Immunodeficiency Virus
that causes AIDS) and their illnesses are untreatable."
According to a US-based health body, the
National Pediatric and Family HIV Resource Center, these children
need to be protected from sexual exploitation, too, because they are
more likely to be abused and forced into "exploitative
situations," such as prostitution, "as a means of survival."
What will help them, it argues, are skills
that will include ways to make "sound decisions about
relationships and sexual intercourse," advice on how to
"resist pressure for unwanted sex or drugs," information
about "youth-friendly health services," and assistance
regarding "human rights, including legal rights such as inheritance."
So to whom should such children turn to for
care? Orphanages?
No, says UNAIDS. What it has been arguing
for are community-based initiatives in countries with AIDS orphans.
"Experts argue that orphanages are more
expensive than community-based approaches and that orphanages can be
culturally inappropriate if they cut children off from their social
origins," says Dominique De Santis, spokeswoman for UNAIDS.
This view has been given weight by
successful programs implemented in a number of African countries,
ranging from Malawi and Zimbabwe to Uganda. In the case of Malawi,
for instance, the government decided as early as 1991 to support
community-based programs under its National Orphan Care Task Force.
In Uganda a similar emphasis has been
spearheaded by the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO),
which currently has 35 branches nation-wide to care for AIDS orphans.
"It helps fund education and training
for the children and runs a micro-finance program to help the
caretakers start up small businesses and trading activities,"
reveals De Santis.
Child rights activists have also come out in
favor of this shift away from orphanages. "As with any child,
AIDS orphaned children need a family environment in their own culture
in which to live and grow," observes Bruce Harris, the executive
director of Casa Alianza, the Latin American branch of Covenant House.
From his experience, the best environment
for such a child is the comfort and home of a relative or, in the
absence of one, the home of a foster family in the child's community.
In Central America, he adds, this continues to be the norm, where the
orphaned child is "being absorbed in a traditional manner by the
extended family."
But the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) feels
that such responses need to be more broad-based, drawing on support
from governments, the international community, the private sector and
civil society organizations, since there is a "severe
strain" on the traditional support system.
This is true, says Carol Bellamy, the head
of UNICEF, if one looks at the pressure on grandparents -- the major
caregivers. "The grandparents who in so many cases are taking
care of their orphaned grandchildren have limited resources. They
cannot keep this up forever."
Such concern, in fact, is not misplaced when
one considers the alarm raised at the 13th International AIDS
Conference, which was held early this month (July 9-14) in Durban,
South Africa, about the rapidly rising number of AIDS orphans.
In a report released during the conference,
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) estimated that
by 2010, "at least 44 million children will have lost one or
both parents... in the 34 countries most severely affected by the
AIDS pandemic." Furthermore, it added, "Of these 44 million
orphans, 68 percent of their parents will die of AIDS,"
representing a dramatic increase from 1990, when AIDS accounted for
16.4 percent of parental deaths.
According to the authors of this report,
"Children on the Brink 2000," the orphan crisis is most
acute in sub-Saharan Africa, currently the home of 12.1 million of
the 13.2 million children worldwide orphaned by AIDS.
"In at least eight countries in this
region, between 20 and 35 percent of children under 15 have lost one
or both parents. By 2010, 11 countries will reach this rate,"
the report revealed.
For UNAIDS, such dismal predictions warrant
a dramatic mobilization of local and international resources to care
for these children. "Although we have seen some progress made by
several African governments in response to the orphan crisis, much
more is needed," says De Santis.
What is required, she adds, are national
policies that seek to reform the education sector to assist these
orphans and their communities, in addition to changes in the health
sector, which should guarantee quality care for the needs of the
children and communities affected by AIDS.
Equally important for the orphans, she
asserts, are laws. They need to be introduced and enforced to
"protect the rights of these children."
END
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NGOs Seek
Concrete Action To Protect Children In War
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul. 26 (IPS) -- A coalition
of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has accused
the U.N. Security Council of paying lip service to the cause of
war-affected children worldwide.
"The Security Council must back words
with action if it is to protect a generation of children from the
ravages of armed conflict," says the Coalition to Stop the Use
of Child Soldiers.
The coalition, which includes Save the
Children, Doctors of the World, World Vision and International Rescue
Committee, has asked the Security Council to come up with
"specific and concrete measures" to protect children.
Some of the measures proposed by the
coalition include exerting political and economic pressure, including
targeted sanctions, arms embargoes and travel bans on countries
deploying child soldiers, and developing preventive measures,
including early warning systems, to enhance the protection of
children in armed conflicts.
Additionally, it wants specific reporting on
threats to the rights of children in every Security Council briefing
on conflict situations.
The coalition points out that millions of
children have been killed, injured and forced to flee their homes as
a result of conflicts, while hundreds of thousands have been
recruited as child soldiers.
"Armed conflict has also left countless
children without access to education, health care and other essential
programs," it adds.
The appeal for specific measures to protect
children has come amid a special meeting of the 15-member Security
Council today focusing on "Children and Armed Conflict."
Addressing the meeting, the executive
director of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy, said
that all those who violate children's rights or collude in such
violations -- whether governments or rebel groups, manufacturers of
or dealers in weapons of war, and unscrupulous businessmen -- must be
"shamed, disgraced and held accountable for their actions."
"The corridors of the United Nations
are littered with unfulfilled promises, promises that were made in
good faith to ease suffering and end exploitation, and to protect
children from the loss of childhood, from rape and mutilation, and
recruitment as child soldiers," she added.
Yet time and again, in such places as
Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Afghanistan, Kosovo and East Timor,
cruelty and indifference has prevailed, Bellamy said. "It is not
too late to make good on those promises," she added.
One is the need for education programs to be
re-started as soon as possible, even while conflict still wages.
Moreover, hospitals, schools and other sites where children are most
likely to be found must be protected from attacks and violence, as
set out in international humanitarian law.
"We urge Council members to use their
influence to ensure that we receive the finding required, and that it
is sustained and consistent, so that we can plan not just for the
short-term, but to ensure that children are supported in their
longer-term needs for rehabilitation, re-integration and return to
childhood and normality," Bellamy noted.
Olara Otunnu, the U.N.'s special
representative for Children and Armed Conflict, urged the
international community to implement a series of specific measures to
put pressure on both governments and rebel groups who abuse children.
These measures include a legal ban on
exports of natural resources by warring parties, the exclusion of
crimes against children from amnesty agreements, and greater support
for the world's internally displaced.
"The Security Council and other key
actors can make a big difference by using their collective weight and
influence to lean on parties in conflict," Otunnu told delegates today.
"In today's world, no party in conflict
is an island unto itself. The international community should make any
assistance to parties in conflict -- be it political, financial,
material or military -- contingent on observing standards for
protection of children," he asserted.
Otunnu also said that in the context of
peace processes, the international community should exclude grave
crimes against children from amnesty provisions and legislation, and
cooperate in the investigation of individuals accused of these crimes.
Meanwhile, in a report released last week,
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has outlined some of the recent progress
made by the international community in ensuring the rights and
protection of children in situations of armed conflict.
These include the adoption of the optional
protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child which bars the
recruitment of children under 18; the inclusion by the Security
Council of the protection of children as a priority concern in U.N.
peacekeeping operations; and the establishment of Child Protection
Advisers in peacekeeping operations.
Annan also says the international community
has succeeded in securing commitments from a variety of armed groups
to refrain from violating the rights of children in armed conflicts.
The report also makes several
recommendations, including the exclusion of genocide, war crimes and
other egregious crimes against children from amnesty provisions
during peace negotiations.
The study also says that any political,
diplomatic, financial or military assistance for countries or armed
groups be contingent on compliance with international child
protection standards.
END
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Circus
Schools In Brazil Rescue Kids From The Streets
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul. 21 (IPS) -- Circus
schools, which have mushroomed across Brazil since the 1980s, have
turned out to be one of the best means for social integration of
children in high-risk situations, such as juvenile delinquents and slum-dwellers.
Alex Souza dos Santos, who at 18 describes
himself as "an artist," makes his living putting on shows
demonstrating his acrobatics skills at schools, parties and other events.
Souza dos Santos says he is a survivor of
the streets, and was saved by "a strong guardian angel."
At age seven he left his home in Itabuna, in
the state of Bahia in Brazil's impoverished northeast, to accompany a
prostitute friend on a day trip that turned into a journey that took
him all the way to Rio de Janeiro, 1,200 kms to the south, where he
grew up on the streets and beaches.
In 1993 Souza dos Santos came dangerously
close to becoming one of the victims of a police massacre of eight
street children and adolescents sleeping near the Candelaria Church
in downtown Rio de Janeiro, an incident that shook public opinion
worldwide. Although he formed part of that group of street kids --
known as the "children of the Candelaria" -- he spent his
nights in a favela (shantytown) near the port.
"Many of my other friends have
died" as well, he says sadly. Of the 72 original "children
of the Candelaria," 48 have been killed, according to
organizations that assist street children.
Souza dos Santos stared death in the face
more than once after falling into thievery and drugs, and he spent
time in reform schools. But seven years ago his life took a new turn,
when he came into contact with the project "If That Street Were
Mine," set up by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to help
street kids in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's second largest city.
"I cried from hunger many times, I was
a rebel, but my life changed," says the teenager, expressing his
gratitude for the help he received.
In a big old house, the youngsters attracted
by the project, most of whom are black, study theatre, dance, music
and computer skills. But the classes in circus skills are the favorite.
"It is what they find most gratifying
and appealing, because it is a continuation of what they do on the
streets and the beaches -- capering about, doing somersaults,
juggling," said Antonio César Marques, the coordinator of
the project.
Of some 90 children and adolescents who
frequent the house, two-thirds learn circus skills like juggling,
tightrope walking and acrobatics. Those who show talent are prepared
for the National Circus School, a government institution that
provides four-year courses.
Souza dos Santos was one of them.
Specializing in a balancing act involving a board resting on a roller
and other acrobatics, he worked in a theatre group in the past, and
today puts on two-man shows with a colleague.
Six of the youngsters who got their start in
"If That Street Were Mine" are currently studying at the
National Circus School, and four more will join them in August. Five
have already been hired by large circus companies in Brazil and
abroad, said Marques.
The project is a "center of
formation" of citizens, in the words of Jo Ventura, one of the
teachers. In practice, participating youngsters are set on the road
toward a vocation, not necessarily the circus. Learning to live
together and follow rules, and reflecting on their lives and society
are ongoing aspects of the project.
The children, most of whom are drop-outs who
never finished their primary education, are encouraged to return to
school. "We try to impress on them the need for a formal
education, even if it's boring," said Ventura.
Souza dos Santos got the message, and is now
happy that he knows how to "read, write, and converse without
the mistakes I used to make."
Of the roughly 1,300 youngsters who have
taken part in the project, more than 1,000 have been reunited with
their families or have gone on to school or socially productive jobs.
Only around 200 ended up back on the streets, said Marques.
"Factory of Dreams" is another
initiative that teaches circus skills to children and adolescents
from the favelas ringing Rio de Janeiro. The aim of the program is to
develop full-fledged citizens, encouraging the youngsters to go back
to school, boosting their self-esteem and preventing juvenile delinquency.
The "Factory of Dreams" was set up
by Telma Pereira Martins and her son Bruno. Pereira Martins calls the
400 students ages five to 23 her "kids." In order to be
accepted as a member of the "family," the children must
attend a regular school.
One important activity is tutoring for
children with special education needs, to help them overcome their
difficulties at school.
The results have been excellent. Last year,
99 percent of the children passed from one grade to the next, and
"this year we are hoping for 100 percent," said Pereira
Martins, who launched the project seven years ago, with 29 children.
Funding from the state-run oil-company
Petrobras and a donation of a large plot of municipal land in a
neighborhood near the port enabled the project to expand, and to
build new -- but as yet unfinished -- installations.
The "Factory of Dreams" offers
training in circus skills to a less marginalized and rebellious group
of youngsters than those targeted by "If That Street Were
Mine." The program's founders point out that seven former
students -- one of whom had been a juvenile delinquent living on the
streets -- are working in circuses in Europe.
Today, 26 youngsters have made it to the
status of apprentice, and earn a monthly stipend of $75 "as an
incentive to encourage them to continue perfecting their talents"
with the help of skilled teachers hired thanks to the Petrobras funding.
In Belém, the capital of the northern
state of Pará, the city government uses the circus as a means
of removing children from the garbage dumps where their families
scrape by on what they can earn as scavengers by selling waste.
END
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Saving
Romania's Abandoned Children
By Marian Chiriac
BUCHAREST, Jul. 20 (IPS) -- Mihai was 17
years old and weighed only 20 kilograms when he was transferred to a
hospital due to his precarious physical condition.
He is just one of the over 100,000 children
in Romania's child-care institutions, according to official estimates.
Mihai's case was extensively highlighted by
the local press who claimed that his condition was the result of
starvation as staff from the orphanage stole the food destined for
the needy children.
Romanian officials have launched an
investigation into the alleged thefts while the European Union
anti-fraud office has begun its own inquiry as the food had been
donated by the EU to supplement the diets of the orphaned children.
A decade after the communist regime was
overthrown, Romania is still trying to improve its image of a country
where many vacant-looking and listless orphans are crowded into cold,
filthy dormitories.
Such images of Romania's orphanages, which
shocked the world in the wake of the former communist dictator,
Nicolae Ceausescu, unfortunately still loom large.
"The situation became better in recent
times but the truth is that some child-care institutions are still in
dire conditions despite the millions of dollars worth of foreign aid
spent on them," says Vlad Romano, president of the National
Child Rights Agency (ANDP).
ANDP was set up in January this year and it
aims to return abandoned children to their biological families
whenever possible or place them with foster families and provide
alternative services in the existing orphanages.
Under pressure from the European officials
for its poor treatment of orphans and abandoned children, Romania
recently promised to streamline its communist-era system and ensure
that the money reaches the needy children.
Representatives of the European Union and
the World Bank met with Prime Minister Mugur Isarescu to discuss the
problem, and urged rapid change.
The international organizations decided to
allocate over 21 million Euros in the next three years to support
reforms in Romania's child protection system.
On July 14, one day before the meeting, the
Romanian government adopted new rules to help local authorities to
cope with the financial burden of orphanages.
The move aims to de-centralize the
administration and financing for more than 440 orphanages and
hospitals across the country.
The new legislation also sets rules for the
transfer of funds to local public child care services, but the
government has yet to estimate the size of the total funds needed.
Last month, Bucharest doubled budget
allocations for child protection to $209 million this year, compared
to 1999.
"It is important that Romania now has
almost all the needed laws in order to improve child protection,
de-centralize administration and finance child care
institutions," says Irina Cojocaru, manager of "Copilul
Meu" (My Child) Foundation.
"The only problem is that the money
does not always get to the children. It gets lost in bureaucratic
circles," she added.
"Copilul Meu" Foundation's
activity seems to be a successful story. Founded just two years ago,
it has accommodated over 40 children in foster families while 30
other babies have been adopted.
"As a private institution we have to
work directly with our sponsors and have responsibility for every
penny we get," Irina Cojocaru added.
The situation is quite different in most
state-run institutions.
Continuing poverty -- the average monthly
salary is less than $100 -- and lack of family planning facilities
have kept orphanages full. A total of 74,000 children are living in
cradles across Romania.
Another 25,000 live in foster homes and
2,000 on the streets of the main cities.
The crisis can no longer be blamed on the
communist regime when Nicolae Ceausescu banned contraception and
forced women to have more children than they could look after, in an
move to boost the country's work force.
Over the past decade, failed economic
reforms and high unemployment have led to crippling poverty -- the
number of abandoned children increasing in line with the growth in
impoverished families.
At least 1,000 children are annually
abandoned -- many of them by poverty-stricken teenage mothers, 60 per
cent of whom are unmarried.
"Families with many children, single or
very young mothers are most likely to abandon their children,"
says Raluca Slamnescu, manager with Save the Children foundation.
A survey conducted by her agency showed 37
percent of families abandoning their children are living on a monthly
income worth the equivalent of $15 per family member.
Lack of proper housing conditions has
prompted another 26 percent of families, with more than six children,
to put their children in state care while most young mothers aged 15
to 19 were abandoning their babies after birth.
"Most of the poor families say they
would keep their children provided they got support like money,
clothes and food," Slamnescu said.
END
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CHILD LABOUR
NEWS SERVICE
1, August 2000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
**********************************************************
** UN Signs
Up With Big Business To Promote Values
** G8 Summit:
Pledges, Yes; Funds, No
** 100,000
Children Treated As Slaves In Peru
** News-In-Brief
** Announcements
**********************************************************
UN Signs
Up With Big Business To Promote Values
(You won't be seeing the United Nations
secretary general proclaiming "Just do it", but global
business and the U.N. might be entering a brave new world.)
United Nations: The corporations are paying
big money to be able to say they are supporting the missions of the
U.N. In return, the U.N. gets some big business participation it
hopes might teach others as they pledge to promote the values of the U.N.
Around 50 companies have agreed to join the
U.N. "Global Compact", launched by secretary-general Kofi
Annan, in January 1999, thereby committing themselves to nine key
principles, including pledges to protect human rights, eliminate
child labour and develop environmentally friendly technologies.
The list includes Daimler Chrysler, Nike
Inc., Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Bayer Corp., Dupont, Lm Ericsson,
Healtheon/ WebMD, Deutsche Bank AG, BP Amoco plc, Novartis AG and
Unilever, to name a few.
Once a year on a special U.N. Web site, they
must publicise how they have succeeded in applying the nine U.N.
principles of good international behaviour.
"Companies don't need to wait for
governments to pass laws before you refuse to employ children,"
said Annan. If companies lead by example, the governments may wake up
and make laws to formalise these practices.''
U.N. sees this "structured dialogue''
between corporations and labour and human rights groups as a powerful
force for change.
Nevertheless, the opponents say it's too
little too late.
The critics demand a binding legal framework
to oversee the conduct of multinational corporations.
"I think these companies jumped at this
opportunity because they realised that it makes them look good,"
said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies.
"They will say publicly in front of a global audience that they
are for rights, but they also knew that there is no enforcement."
They feel that the Global Compact allow
"business entities with poor records to 'bluewash' their image
by wrapping themselves in the blue and white U.N. flag.
Nike Inc., for example, has been targeted by
labour organizations for conditions at its factories in Asia. Shell
has been criticized for environmental degradation around its oil
fields in Nigeria.
Admitting "that some of these companies
may have made mistakes, may have done the wrong things,'' Annan said
it was necessary to "encourage them and work with them in moving
in the right direction.''
Maria Eitel, a Nike vice-president, said,
"When you are on the hot seat you learn very quickly."
Maria Livanos Cattaui, secretary-general of
the influential International Chamber of Commerce, however cautioned
about turning the Global Compact into a monitoring or enforcement operation.
U.N. believes big business can have more
influence than its own members can in shaping the lives of billions
of people.
"Better to engage corporations, than to
do nothing at all. " Kofi Annan said.
(Source: UN)
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G8 Summit:
Pledges, Yes; Funds, No
Okinawa: The G8 Summit of the wealthiest
nations, comprising of the United States, Japan, Germany, Canada,
England, France, Italy and Russia, endorsed the Global Campaign for
Education's (GCE) main principle at their July meeting. They agreed
"no government seriously committed to achieving education for
all will be thwarted in this achievement by lack of resources."
"This is a victory for the Global
Campaign for Education -- tens of thousands of activists in 180
countries who have called for free, quality education. What we need
now is a global initiative that mobilises the resources and backs the
efforts of poor countries to meet the 2015 goal of education for
all," said Rasheeda Choudhury, who represented GCE in Okinawa,
along with Phil Twyford and Seth Amgott of Oxfam.
In Okinawa, the G8 declined to make specific
commitments of new resources and declined to produce a global plan to
put every child in school and end adult illiteracy.
President Clinton made one of the few
concrete pledges, saying the United States would provide $300 million
of surplus food for school lunch programmes in poor countries to
induce young students to go to school.
"The G8 get richer by the day due to
globalisation. It was totally appropriate for their summit to focus
on allowing the poorest people in the world to share the benefits of
this prosperity. They set the right target on education. But promises
are not enough. They have to deliver, and the GCE will make sure that
they do," said Phil Twyford, Advocacy Director of Oxfam International.
About 120 million children in the developing
world never enrol in school. Hundreds of millions more never learn to read.
White House advisors reiterated the U.S.
commitment to continue working for more concrete progress.
White House support for the campaign
increased following a presentation on it by Bob Chase, President of
the 2.5 million member National Education Association in the U.S., to
Presidents Clinton and Wolfensohn as well as Dr. Amartya Sen and Bill
Gates in April as part of the GCE's Global Action Week.
The pre-summit meetings between the G8 and
leaders of developing countries and international agencies produced
some progress as well. World Bank President James Wolfensohn
reiterated and expanded on a commitment to increase subsidised
lending for basic education, from an average of $1.8 billion a year
to $3 billion a year.
Global Campaign for Education is a world
wide coalition of development NGOs such as Action Aid, The Global
March Against Child Labour, Oxfam International, national NGO
Coalitions from Bangladesh, Brazil, South Africa, and the global
teachers unions confederation Education International.
(For further information, please contact Dominique
Marlet, Communication, Education
International;
Tel (32 2) 224 06 80
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100,000
Children Treated As Slaves In Peru
Lima: Around 100,000 children aged six to 14
years work in conditions of slavery as domestic servants in Peru,
revealed a report recently published by the Centre of Social Studies
and Publications (CESIP).
The study, which bares the serious situation
of Peruvian childhood, said that the infants are forced to execute
heavy tasks, for extenuating working hours, without time limit, and
are exposed to many humiliations.
The CESIP's Promotion and Defence of the
Child and the Adolescent Programme chief, Isaac Ruiz, said that this
dramatic situation must be eradicated because it violates the
elemental rights of the children.
"Children work must not exist, and much
less in the home" in the opinion of international organizations
like the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the International
Labour Organization (ILO), added Ruiz.
Ruiz said that none of the pertaining legal
dispositions that protect the Peruvian minors are abided by in this country.
The official said that most of the small
domestic servants are girls who are brought to the capital of the
country by the so- called godfathers or godmothers, who put them to
work in conditions of servitude in the homes of well-to-do families.
"The employers promise them study,
board and lodging, money, and good treatment, but finally they get
nothing and are exploited, " said the social researcher.
Ruiz said that the working hours of the
domestic servants are round the clock and that they cannot go to
school, becoming little slaves or serfs in the home.
"They are exposed to numerous dangers,
like sexual abuse, discrimination, drug addiction, criminality and
debasing treatment, " explained the CESIP official.
Ruiz said that there is a trend to avoid
mentioning the theme because in 1993, when 435,000 children were
detected working in these conditions, 14.4 percent of them as
household servants, nobody said anything.
Today more than 2 million children work in
Peru in the worst material conditions and without the possibility of
developing and growing healthy, said Ruiz.
(From the Files of Xinhua News Service)
Start of this
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News-In-Brief
-- Board For Preparation Of National
Strategy For Children Set Up In Albania
The Board of the National Strategy for
Children institutionalised the works for a national platform for
children and for the establishment of an action structure in Albania.
This strategy is not only a moral obligation but also an
international obligation, since the country has ratified the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child. By the end of this year the
Board will finish the preparation of the national strategy for
children and will also prepare the first Report on Child Rights
Situation in Albania to be presented at the UN Committee on the
Rights of the Child in Geneva. The work of the Board will be in
partnership with the non-governmental organisations.
-- A Victory For Bonded Labourers
Following two month long agitation by bonded
labourers in west of the country, where the practice is concentrated,
Nepal recently announced the abolition of bonded labour with
immediate effect. More than 36,000 bonded labourers, including
children, are expected to benefit from the government's decision.
Land Reforms Minister Siddha Raj Ojha informed that the debt of the
bonded labourers had been written off. He also warned of legal action
against those who keep bonded labourers. This was the first time that
the bonded labourers took to the streets demanding freedom.
-- Iranian Union Warning On Child Labourers
The head of the official trade union in Iran
says more than 300,000 Iranian children and adolescents' work
illegally in workshops and factories. Ali Reza Mahjub said that even
though the Iranian authorities had banned child labour, the number of
children working illegally could double within a year. He said that
child labourers were poorly paid and lacked social protection. Iran
is a member of the International Labour Organisation and has signed a
number of conventions on working conditions.
-- 28% Children Working In Ghana
An awareness workshop on the worst forms of
child labour was organised by the Ghana Employers Association (GEA)
in conjunction with ILO in Kumasi. The aim was to identify the
various forms of exploitation and to come up with specific
recommendations to address the problem of child labour in the
country. Samuel Nuamah Donkor, Ashanti Regional Minister, informed
that 800,000, or 28% of children, between the ages of 14 and 17 are
involved in child labour in the country. He opined that effective
implementation of labour laws, information sharing and effective
sensitisation through dialogue is the best way of minimising child
labour in the country.
-- ILO Launches Programme For Working Children
ILO and the carpet manufacturers in Pakistan
have launched a project aimed at rehabilitating and educating the
working children. The goal of the project is to provide education to
10,000 children through the establishment of 300 centres throughout
two districts, Shaikhupura and Gujranawala. In addition, the Child
Labour Foundation will create 100 more rehabilitation and education
centres with ILO assistance to provide free education to 3,000
children. Two non-governmental organizations, Bunyad and Sudhar, will
open 100 schools for working children. The Pakistan Carpet
Manufacturers and Exporters Association has contributed $900,000 for
the project while United States has given $2 million.
-- MOU-II On Bangladesh Garment Industry Signed
BGMEA and UNICEF have signed the second
Memorandum of Understanding on elimination of child labour from
garment industry in Bangladesh. The first MOU was signed in 1995. The
overall objective of the second phase is to contribute to elimination
of child labour and to prevent new recruitment in the garment
industry through monitoring verification and awareness raising.
Strengthening of informal education programme for children and
vocational training to facilitate transition to skilled workers for
potential gainful jobs are the prime focus in the second phase of MOU.
-- Philbin Criticised For Endorsing Van Heusen
The New York-based labour union, Union of
Needletraders, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), sharply
criticized Regis Philbin, host of the popular game-show, "Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire?" for attaching his name to the new
clothing line manufactured by Phillips-Van Heusen. Last year, Van
Heusen was one of several retailers named in a class-action lawsuit
that claimed as many as 13,000 workers on Saipan worked under
sweatshop conditions. It was the first case to hold U.S. retailers
accountable for mistreatment of workers in foreign-owned factories
operated on U.S. soil. Representatives have however assured that
Regis is committed to making sure that his work isn't produced in sweatshops.
-- 'Sweatshop Retailer Of The Year' Named
While Wal-Mart was awarded the "Canadian
Retailer of the Year" by the Retail Council of Canada at their
36th annual meeting in Toronto, they were awarded the "Sweatshop
Retailer of the Year" award outside the convention. The award
was sponsored by the Maquila Solidarity Network, UNITE and Students
Against Sweatshops and a number of religious community organizations,
and supported by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). "Given that
Wal-Mart is one of the biggest users of sweatshop labour on the
planet, they merit this award", said CLC President Ken
Georgetti. The CLC, the national voice of the labour movement,
represents 2.4 million Canadian workers.
-- Activists Help End Flawed UN-Corporate Partnership
After a year long campaign by
environmentalists, human rights groups, labour unions and other
non-governmental organizations, the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) abandoned its perilous partnership with a group of
transnational corporations whose tarnished human rights,
environmental and development records threatened to rub off on the
world body. UNDP was planning to create a Global Sustainable
Development Facility (GSDF) in partnership with about 15 corporations
including Dow Chemical, mining giant Rio Tinto, energy conglomerate
ABB and biotechnology leader Novartis. Through the partnership UNDP
had planned to sell global corporations its international network of
offices, high-level governmental contacts and its reputation at a
bargain price.
-- Indian Government Debating ILO Convention
On Child Labour
No South Asian country has yet ratified the
ILO Convention on the worst forms of child labour. Even in India, the
state governments have expressed their reservations about the
Convention, especially the age ceiling. According to the convention
all below 18 are children. In India 14 is the age limit for employing
children. The ratification process has now reached the Union cabinet
from where it will go to the Parliament. The official figures put
child labourers at 10 million while NGOs say there are no less than
60 million child labourers, half of them engaged in the worst forms.
Start of this
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Announcements
-- Working Group On Education For All
As a follow-up to the World Education Forum
held in Dakar in April 2000, UNESCO is in the process of creating a
'working group on education for all', to assist in providing
technical guidance for the movement, creating and sustaining
partnerships, supporting regional and sub-regional networks, and in
ensuring proper linkages among flagship inter-agency programmes,
within the Dakar follow-up process in general. It will also
facilitate donor co-ordination at national, regional and
international levels. The group will bring together representatives
from developing countries, donor countries, regional EFA networks,
civil society - NGOs, OECD and the G-8. It's first meeting will be
held in November 2000.
-- IAOS Conference On Statistics,
Development And Human Rights
The Swiss Federal Statistical Office (SFSO)
and the Swiss Development and Co-operation Agency (SDC) will, on
behalf of the International Association for Official Statistics
(IAOS), organise an International Conference on "Statistics,
Development and Human Rights" in Montreux, Switzerland, from
September 4-8, 2000. Of particular relevance to child rights, the
session entitled 'Childhood at a Glance' will largely discuss
statistical information as a basis or policies aiming at protecting
and promoting the rights of the child. This high level Conference
will gather some 500 participants from the five continents.
For further information please contact IAOS
Conference Secretariat, Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Espace de
l'Europe 10, CH-2010 Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Tel. (41 32) 713
60 83, Fax: (41 32) 713 60 93, Email: iaos2000@bfs.admin.ch
END
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Sri
Lanka's Tamil Tigers Bait Children, Parents
By Feizal Samath ~ July 19
COLOMBO, (IPS) -- Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger
insurgents are drawing children into their ranks with false promises
of restoring them to their families or sending them abroad after some
time, say aid workers.
Even as the international community accused
the armed ethnic rebels of breaking a promise to keep children out of
their cadres, there was fresh evidence of more child recruitment by
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
Soon after capturing the strategic Elephant
Pass linking the Jaffna peninsula to the Indian Ocean island nation's
mainland in late April, the Tigers began a new recruitment drive,
targeting children in the north and the east, aid workers said.
"In the eastern Batticaloa region, the
rebels showed films of their battlefield successes and urged
youngsters to join the war effort against what they labelled as
'foreign invaders' (the Sri Lankan army). Within days, 14 youngsters
had joined the rebels," said an aid worker from the region.
In mid-July, the U.N. Children's Fund
(UNICEF) accused the LTTE of not keeping its word to a special U.N.
envoy that the Tigers would not use under 18-year-olds to battle Sri
Lankan troops while children below 17 years of age would not be used
for non-combat duties.
"We have had very limited success with
the rebels in our campaign against child soldiers," UNICEF
Representative in Colombo, Colin Glennie told IPS.
The LTTE had given the assurance when Olara
Ottunu, Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for
Children and Armed Conflict met Tiger leaders in Sri Lanka two years ago.
"There has been little progress since
those assurances. We know the rebels recruit children and despite
their repeated denials, we have told them that we are not satisfied
until they have put these assurances into practice," Glennie noted.
Dozens of school-going children, some just
10 years old, have been recruited by the LTTE in the past several
years in their battle against government troops in the northern and
the eastern regions where the Tigers are demanding a separate home
for Sri Lanka's minority Tamil community.
There were many children among the over
60,000 people killed in the 17-year-old conflict. According to a
leading human rights group, many of the young rebels killed in recent
fighting in the north "were brought home in sealed coffins as
they had been mangled by shelling."
However, aid workers say that parents and
even youngsters find the bait offered by the LTTE hard to resist.
"The rebels offer new recruits a chance
of going abroad after three years of voluntary service or promise to
return the children after they have served five years," an
international aid worker told IPS.
The child soldiers are paid a monthly wage
of about 3,000 rupees ($40) for frontline battle duties while their
parents are supplied regular food rations. The child recruit's family
also gets farm land and parents are helped to get daughters married
without paying dowry.
"The rebels look after the families of
their cadres. They have a good support system going," the aid
worker said.
While poor parents find the offer tempting,
the young boys and girls are drawn by the chance of going abroad.
"Who would resist the temptation to be sent abroad by the rebel
group to various countries as political refugees?" he noted.
"I know one Tamil youngster who was
helped by the rebels to reach Ireland after an arduous journey which
took him through Greenland," the worker said.
The Tigers mainly target schools for
recruitment. "They go into schools, give lectures and video
presentations on the war," another aid worker said.
Aid workers say that the Tigers are not
observing their promise to UNICEF to put up banners at recruitment
camps declaring no one below 18 years would be hired.
The rebels are careful to keep the children
out of sight of international aid workers. "You would rarely see
them around or at checkpoints. Occasionally when a rebel vehicle
whizzes past, there would be some young recruits inside," he added.
Meanwhile, rights groups have criticised the
Sri Lankan government for trying to lower the age of entry into the
army. According to UNICEF officials, there was an attempt some years
ago to bring this down from 18 to 17 years because few young men were
joining the army.
"Thankfully that proposal was shot down
but we must be vigilant as there is pressure on the government at all
times due to still fewer numbers joining the army," the official noted.
A public outcry last year, forced the army
call off an attempt to glamourize the profession among school students.
END
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Keeping
Pregnant Teenagers In School In Chile
By Gustavo González ~ July 17
SANTIAGO, (IPS) -- Although 17-year-old Ruth
Muñoz will be a mother in just two months, she has not dropped
out of school, thanks to a successful project implemented in Chile
with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Muñoz and 130 other pregnant girls
and young mothers in the Liceo Unidad Operativa de Educación y
Capacitación high school (UNOPEC), in the municipality of
Conchalí in Santiago, are an exception in this Southern Cone
country, where the overwhelming majority of the estimated 13,000
adolescents who get pregnant annually -- considered a conservative
figure -- drop out of school.
The UNOPEC project, which got underway in
Conchalí in 1993 with UNFPA support, provides education to 130
pregnant students, and the school's child care center takes care of
80 children while their mothers are in class.
Teen pregnancy is the main cause of school
dropout rates among Chilean girls, said Minister of Education Mariana
Aylwin on the occasion of World Population Day, celebrated July 11 in UNOPEC.
In 1999, schools reported to the ministry of
education the existence of 5,857 pregnant students, 235 of whom were
still in primary school.
The rest of the cases were not registered
because the girls dropped out of school without any explanation,
pointed out Dr. Ramiro Molina, who said the official figure may only
represent around 25 percent of the real number of pregnancies, which
could stand as high as 24,000 a year.
Molina, director of the Center of
Reproductive Medicine and Integral Development of the Adolescent at
the University of Chile School of Medicine, pointed out that in the
past year, 41,000 to 42,000 children were born here to mothers under 19.
Many teen pregnancies occur among the
poorest of the poor, who are already marginalized from the school
system. But there is a significant number of teen pregnancies among
middle and upper-income students.
Earlier this month, Minister Aylwin
personally interceded on behalf of two pregnant students expelled
from a technical school by the principal, who said they set a
"bad example" for the rest of the students.
In a gesture against such attitudes, Pres.
Ricardo Lagos received Leslie Riveros, 14, and Anais Muñoz,
15, in the government palace of La Moneda, and announced an
inter-ministerial program to tackle the problem of teen pregnancy.
A law sponsored by Lagos himself when he was
serving as education minister prohibited the expulsion of pregnant
students from school. But the law only applies to public schools, and
does not stipulate specific sanctions in case of incompliance.
There is broad consensus that the problem of
teen pregnancy must be tackled in an integral manner, starting with
prevention, and putting an emphasis on sex education and reproductive health.
Pregnant teenagers do not only run into
discrimination in schools headed by conservative principals, but in
society at large, UNOPEC students pointed out.
"When my tummy started to show, a lot
of people would look at me and say things," said Ruth
Muñoz. "Instead of supporting you in your problem, they
make it worse. If you get on the bus, they look at you funny when you
try to pay the student fare."
"Pregnancy happens due to the lack of
good sex education," said Isis Contreras, 17. "After my
pregnancy, I would tell all of the girls to hold their heads up high,
to keep going forward, to finish their studies. It doesn't matter
that they're alone, it doesn't matter that the father (of the baby)
is the biggest scoundrel around."
"Keep your head high always, 'buck up'
and be proud to be mothers," said Viviana Rojas, 16, another of
the UNOPEC students who spoke on World Population Day.
Along with Minister Aylwin, the minister of
the national women's service, Adriana Delpiano, and Thierry
Lemaresquier, UNFPA representative in Chile, participated in the
meeting with the students.
Lemaresquier pointed out that every minute,
a woman dies of childbirth complications somewhere in the world, and
that pregnant girls between the ages of 10 and 14 are five times more
likely to die in childbirth than women aged 20 to 24.
"In order to change things, we need a
greater commitment by society as a whole. Men and women have equal
rights, including the right to education and health care," said
the UNFPA representative.
"We have two problems," said
Minister Delpiano. "First, to see how to support young mothers
in terms of not limiting their, and their children's, future
prospects. And second, to prevent pregnancies that in most cases are unwanted."
Aylwin concurred with Lemaresquier that both
the father and mother must share responsibility for teen pregnancies,
which are usually faced by the young mother on her own. Because after
all, it takes two to tango.
END
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Australian
Students Target "Child Labor Firms" For Olympics
United
Students Against Sweatshops ~ July 19
Student unions representing 600,000 members
will campaign against clothing and sporting good companies to raise
awareness of child labor in the lead-up to the Olympics in Sydney.
The National Union of Students, partnering
with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, will
campaign on 48 Australian university campuses. NUS will focus on
companies that have failed to sign the industry's Homeworkers Code of
Practice, reports Nikewatch. They intend to target Nike, Fila and
others who have refused to sign the code and therefore made it
impossible, the union claims, to find out if they use homeworkers in
their production.
"We plan to be very active at the time
of the Olympics," said NUS officer Jordy Hunter. "When we
ran the last campaign we wrote to student groups in England, Europe
and America to ask them to run solidarity campaigns, and we got a
great response back. To fight against a multinational company like
Nike we need a global student response."
The union is also planning a "no
sweat" clothing label to be sewn on garments "so
manufacturers can show consumers they have abided by the Homeworkers
Code of Practice."
Michelle O'Neil, union secretary of the
Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia asserted that the
Code represents a commitment from companies to pay industry wages and
not exploit homeworkers or use child labor.
"We are not saying companies who do not
sign the code exploit outworkers, but if they refuse to sign the code
of practice, like Nike, we are not confidently able to say they do
not exploit outworkers. We want to use the Olympics to increase
consumer awareness about the products they are using and the story
behind the label so they can use their buying power to influence
companies' behavior."
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CHILD LABOUR NEWS SERVICE
15 July 2000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
**********************************************************
** Brazil
Strikes Against Child Prostitution
** Clinton
Inks Child Protection Agreement
** Benin
Sourcing Children For Labour Says Report
** News-In-Brief
**********************************************************
Brazil
Strikes Against Child Prostitution
Brasilia: President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso has unveiled Brazil's first-ever national programme to combat
child prostitution in a landmark attack aimed at the growing sexual
tourism industry and the chronic abuse of minors in far-flung rural areas.
The pilot programme is backed by more than
$3 million over the next six months and aims to pull at least 20,000
children out of illegal prostitution rackets stretching from highway
truck stops in the Amazon jungle to the tropical beaches of Rio de Janeiro.
"The problem is severe, and while we
know its scope is very large, we simply do not know how many children
are involved," said Wanda Engel, head of Cardoso's project.
While Brazil is home to Latin America's
biggest economy, most of the population of 165 million lives in
poverty, forcing many young girls and boys to abandon school to work
on farms or sell their bodies to help put food on the family table.
Cardoso's strike at child prostitution came
on the 10-year anniversary of Brazil's strict Child Protection Law,
which has won praise from the United Nations and served as a model
across Latin America for outlawing child labour and making primary
education mandatory.
The law's greatest impact came in the area
of child labour with Cardoso's administration reducing the number of
minors in the workforce to 2.9 million in 1999 from 4 million just
three years ago. Cardoso admits more must be done. "Many
families, sadly, contribute to this sad tradition in our country."
Cardoso said "At times, they do not
know that the place for a child is in school, other times they need
labour to help feed the family."
But officials say battling child
prostitution will be far more difficult than cracking down on illegal
child labour, because industry support cannot be enlisted and
families are often reluctant to rescue their children from the sex trade.
"About 60 percent of girls who are
exploited sexually have also been abused sexually at home. So, often,
families are part of the problem," Engel said.
Also complicating government efforts are the
economics of prostitution. While the government will offer children
about $28 a month to stay off the streets, they can still make more
through prostitution -- and often must in order to survive.
(From the files of Reuters)
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Clinton
Links Child Protection Agreement
President Clinton early last week signed an
international agreement at UN headquarters to ban the forcible
recruitment of youths as soldiers in armed conflict and a companion
accord to protect children from being forced into slavery,
prostitution and pornography.
"Every day," Clinton said,
"thousands of children are killed and brutalised in fighting
wars that adults decided they should fight in. Every day around the
world, and even here in the United States, children are sold into
virtual slavery or traffic for the worse forms of sexual abuse."
The two child protection agreements are
protocols to an umbrella convention on children's rights.
Since its adoption in 1989, the Convention
on the Rights of the Child has been ratified by 191 nations and is
the most widely accepted treaty in the history of the United Nations,
with only two holdouts - the United States and Somalia.
The United States signed the convention
treaty in 1995, but America has not ratified it because of
congressional concerns that the accord may infringe on the role of
parents and impose a particular educational curriculum.
The two protocols are stand-alone agreements
that the President will ask the Senate to ratify this year.
The umbrella convention is a binding human
rights treaty that spells out for the first time that children have
the right to education, to health care and to be free from economic
and sexual exploitation.
The protocol on child soldiers provides that
no one under age 18 should be allowed to fight and says governments
should not permit compulsory recruitment of anyone under 18. The
protocol would raise the age of voluntary recruitment of soldiers
from 15 to 16 and says insurgency groups can neither recruit nor
deploy people younger than 18.
The protocol on the sale of children, child
prostitution and child pornography calls for criminalising the
offence of trafficking and for cross-border co-operation between
sending and receiving countries. It is also expected to serve as a
global framework to standardise national legislation banning the sale
of children for sexual exploitation, for illegal adoption or for use
of their organs.
The United States was the eighth signatory
of the protocol, joining Argentina, Cambodia, Canada, Monaco, Norway,
San Marino and Sweden.
Both protocols takes effect three months
after being ratified by 10 countries.
(From the files of CNSNews)
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Benin
Sourcing Children For Labour Says Report
According to a recent survey finding, over
49,000 rural Beninese children, constituting 8% of the rural child
population between 6 and 16, are currently working abroad. The
findings were revealed at a meeting held from June 20-22 in Abomey, Benin.
These children are mainly trafficked to work
on plantations on the Ivory Coast and as domestic servants in Gabon.
The figures, based on a household survey,
are thought to be accurate. The survey was conducted by Benin
National Statistical Agency in conjunction with INSAE and the World Bank.
In the survey, randomly sampled mothers from
all 6 departments were asked to report on the whereabouts of their
children. Only children who had left the country explicitly to find
work were counted among the 49,000 children that were estimated to be
victims of trafficking.
However the children who left "for
other reasons" may conceal an additional number of child
workers, and bring the total number of child labour emigrants close
to 80.000. There are particularly many girls in this latter group,
and "placement" for domestic service may not have been
considered as work by the reporting mothers.
61% of trafficking children were found to be
boys, and 39% to be girls. The average age of departure was found to
be 10.9 years.
Certain villages have been hit hard by
organised child traffickers and there were villages where up to 51%
of the children in the age group had left to work abroad. In one
village 72% of households had at least one child working abroad.
Surprisingly, the presence of a primary
school in the village did not have an effect on the child migration.
The strongest positive effect came from the
availability of mass media in the village. The presence of an
operative NGO also had a positive effect. On the other hand, presence
of various types of local organisations had no significant impact on
the trafficking situation.
Probably surprising economists more than
practitioners, the relative poverty of the household seems
insignificant. Relatively wealthy rural households have just as many
children trafficking as the poorer ones. As economic factors fail to
explain child labour migration, the effect of social norms should be
given increased attention.
The meeting was organised by the Ministry of
Social Protection and Families, UNICEF, World Bank, and the Beninese
NGO, CEDA. 90 representatives from NGO's and government attended.
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News-In-Brief
-- Child Labour Consultation Highlights
Pressing Issues
Concerted efforts of NGOs, government
agencies and the judiciary are key to end the scourge of child
labour, felt the participants at a three-day National Consultation in
the Indian capital organised by South Asian Coalition on Child
Servitude (SACCS) from July 6-8. Justice Ramaswamy, member NHRC,
Union Labour Secretary LD Mishra and Member of Parliament Prasanna
Patsani were present at the occasion. Delving into the root cause,
Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson SACCS, asserted that interplay of
various factors, including illiteracy, is driving over 60 million
children to work. Dr. Mishra admitted that the implementation of the
laws is tardy. The hallmark of the meeting however was the chilling
testimony of children who have been through the ordeal.
-- 32 Children Rescued From Perpetual Bondage
Police officials along with Samarthan, an
NGO, rescued 32 children from a local sweetmeat shop in Walope
village in Ratnagiri district in a raid. Most of the children were
under 14 years. The children were working in extremely harsh
conditions. The Ratnagiri case is symptomatic of the widespread use
of child labour in the state.
According to 1998 national statistics,
Maharashtra has the third-largest child labour force in India.
"These children, who are Dalits from Tamil Nadu, were brought
here by agents hired by the employer more than a year ago,"
alleges Shabana Warne, co-ordinator of Samarthan. The children were
paid a shockingly meagre salary of Rs. 150 a year.
-- Minors Exploited In Sweatshops, Brothels
Argentina's justice system recently
discovered some 200 adolescent girls -- mainly Paraguayan immigrants
-- sexually exploited in brothels in the province of Buenos Aires.
Just few days back 40 Bolivian minors were found working in virtual
slavery conditions in a clandestine textile factory. The raids are
widely attributed to an investigation by a team of Channel 13 TV
reporters, who filmed illicit activities with a hidden camera. The
common denominator in all the raids was that the youngsters came from
neighbouring countries. The authorities are investigating the
possible existence of a network dedicated to trafficking in child workers.
-- Rules To Ban Under 13 From Labour
The Korean Labour Ministry announced that it
would revise rules to bar children under 13 from getting hired as
early as this month. The revision comes in compliance with a newly
effective International Labour Organisation (ILO) regulation, which
bans labour, albeit light, by children under 13. Currently, children
in Korea aged below 15 can get jobs if he or she holds a permission
to work. Those employing children under 15 without such a permission
are subject to up to two years in jail or 10 million won in fines.
-- Students Target "Child Labour"
Firms For Sydney
Some of the biggest brand names in sports
and fashion clothing will be targeted by a student campaign.
Australia's National Union of Students will campaign against child
labour and exploitative outworker practices during the Sydney 2000
Olympic Games and World Economic Forum in Melbourne in September.
Together with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia,
the NUS will focus on companies that have not signed the homeworkers'
code of practice. These include Nike, Fila, Mooks, Stussy, Ojay,
Esprit, Harry Who and RM Williams.
-- Thailand Set To Ratify Convention On Ban
Of Child Labour
Thailand is preparing to ratify the ILO
convention prohibiting worst forms of child labour, announced Sakchai
Sakkulwong, Director-General of the Department of Labour Protection
and Welfare. A detailed proposal on ban on the use of Thai child
labour would be submitted to the parliament soon. After the
procedures, the Thai government would then ratify the ILO convention,
making it possibly the second country in Southeast Asia, after
Indonesia, to ratify the convention. The Ministry of Labour and
Social Welfare would also push for the establishment of a National
Institute of Labour Standard to be in charge of protection and
prevention of abuses of child labour.
-- Tougher Laws To Fight Child Labour
The Victorian Government is to introduce
penalties and more enforcement officers in a crack down on child
labour. Fines will be increased from $A100 to $A10,000 or one month's
jail for a breach of child labour laws. The move was welcomed early
this month by unions, social welfare groups and industry law experts.
Victoria's Industrial Relations' minister, Monica Gould, says
enforcement during the Jeff Kennett Government administration had
been lax, and that, for every child-labour permit issued, dozens of
children were likely to be working illegally. About 2000 Victorian
child-labour permits are granted annually, the majority for the
entertainment industry.
-- Ministry Initiates Program To Eliminate
Child Labour In Romania
The Romanian Ministry of Labour and Social
Protection (MMPS) early this month officially launched the
International Program for Child Labour Elimination set up in
co-operation with the International Labour Bureau. The project
estimated at 600,000 dollars will be financed by the US Government. A
group of 1,500 children coming from Roma families, split families or
living on the streets will be selected for this project through which
they will be integrated in educational institutions while child
labour will be eliminated progressively, Labour Minister Smaranda
Dobrescu said. The program will operate for two years at national level.
-- 2 Of 3 American Children On The Job By
Age 15
A recent Labour Department Report reveals
that about 50 percent of kids hold informal jobs such as baby-sitting
or yard work by the age of 12. By age 14, the share of kids working
was 57 percent. By age 15, 64 percent of teen-agers were working--38
percent in formal ongoing employment arrangements and 31 percent in
formal jobs that included hours worked during the school year--not
just summer vacation. "The American work ethic starts at an
early age," said Labour Secretary Alexis Herman of the findings,
released by the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
-- Naples McDonald's Owner Fined For Child
Labour Violations
Adams & O'Reilly Inc. that operates 13
McDonald's restaurants in Collie and Lee counties has been fined
nearly $105,000 for violating child labour laws, the Department of
Labour informed. The company had 306 minors working earlier and more
hours than federal law allows. Mark Casey, a Labour Department
spokesman, said officials investigated the company for the past year.
The violations involved workers younger than 16, who are not allowed
to work more than three hours on a school day and not before 7 a.m.
or after 7 p.m. during the school year, he said. The company has
denied the charges and says it will appeal.
-- 'Emergency Plan' To Include Ban On Child Labour
The Syrian government has adopted an
"emergency plan" with an aim to eliminate unemployment in
three years. The government has allocated 80 billion liras (1.65
billion U.S. dollars) for the anti-unemployment project, with 15
billion liras (309.3 million dollars) of the fund to be provided by
the Postal Savings Bank. The government plans to amend the Labour Law
to ban children under 16 from work and allow only qualified labourers
to work in the public and private sectors.
-- Anti-Sweatshop Bill For City Approved
The General Assembly approved a bill that
would allow the city of Durham to establish the first anti-sweatshop
law in the South, and supporters hope the City Council will vote on
the ordinance as early as July 17. If Durham adopts the ordinance, it
would allow the city to take working conditions into account before
granting its contracts rather than accepting the lowest bid, as state
law otherwise requires. Durham's contracts could prohibit forced
labour, dangerous working conditions and child labour, among other
things, and could require contractors to reveal where their products
are made and how much workers are paid.
-- Thirteen Ratifications For ICC Statute So Far
To the end of June, thirteen states have
completed ratification of the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court -- Senegal, Trinidad & Tobago, San Marino, Italy,
Fiji, Ghana, Norway, Belize, Tajikistan, Iceland, Venezuela, France,
and Belgium. The Rome Statute makes it an international crime for any
person to recruit children under 15 or to use them in hostilities,
whether in an international or an internal armed conflict. It will
enter into force with 60 ratification.
-- Legislation To Bar Child Soldiers In Italy
Legislation has been introduced into the
Italian Parliament, which would amend the current defence law to
raise the minimum age for military recruitment to 18 (currently 17).
The move has the support of key legislators in the parliamentary
committees on children and defence, but is opposed by some opposition
parties. Italy is embarked on a series of reforms to phase out
compulsory military service and professionalise the armed forces. MFA
officials have indicated that Italy will sign the Optional Protocol
in September.
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CHILD
LABOUR NEWS SERVICE
1 July 2000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
**********************************************************
** Negotiations
Mark Copenhagen Plus Five
** Child
Labour Under Scrutiny In US
** Italy Comes
To The Rescue Of Senegalese Children
** News-In-Brief
**********************************************************
Negotiations
Mark Copenhagen Plus Five
Sharp differences over strategies to reduce
poverty, promote employment and contend with the forces of
globalisation dominated the negotiations during the five-day United
Nations General Assembly special session on social development held
in Geneva.
The Social Summit was attended by
representatives of 186 countries, including 117 heads of state or government.
The main aim of the special session was to
evaluate the implementation of the 1995 World Summit for Social
Development and developing new initiatives to promote social development.
During the session, developing and developed
countries maintained widely varying positions. While developing
countries emphasised the need for greater debt relief and the
democratisation of the international financial institutions, the
developed nations stressed the need for realising stronger adherence
to core labour standards.
But at the same time, agreements have been
reached on significant issues. Countries have agreed to a target date
of 2015 for reducing the proportion of people living in extreme
poverty; endorsed the idea that health should be an integral part of
a country's development policy; and also endorsed the goals of the
Education For All conference that took place in Dakar earlier this year.
The Summit is seen as the first concerted
effort by the international community to address the needs of people
in the age of globalisation, and resulted in countries committing
themselves to a series of goals and targets. It has marked a major
shift in promoting international attention to social development issues.
But the Global Campaign for Education (GCE)
however feels that these new targets will too remain unmet in the
absence of any serious action. Aid levels are at their lowest for 30
years, and budgets for basic education, vital for breaking the cycle
of poverty, and for primary health care each make just about 2
percent of it.
"Action now means debt cancellation in
the first place," stresses GCE.
In the years after "Copenhagen"
wise words have been spoken, sophisticated studies have appeared,
many promises have been made. But all in all there are no real
commitments. "To each and every one of the world leaders we say:
your intentions are good, but where are the resources? We don't need
more fine words and vague promises but the money, through debt relief
and increased aid, to supplement to programmes of action. So take out
your wallet, put your money where your mouth is", says Mrs.
Botlhale Nong of GCE.
GCE is a world wide coalition of development
NGOs such as Action Aid, The Global March Against Child Labour, Oxfam
International, national NGO Coalitions from Bangladesh, Brazil, South
Africa, and the global teachers unions confederation Education International.
(For further information contact the GCE
media team: Paul van Tongeren, Tel: (31 655) 357 465 (English and
Dutch); Dominique Marlet, Tel: (32 477) 506 416 (English and French)
or; Marta Arias, Tel. (34 629) 866 247 (Spanish))
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Child
Labour Under Scrutiny In US
The United States is not doing enough to
protect child farm workers from what it calls dangerous and gruelling
conditions, according to a report released by an international
human-rights group.
While farm worker groups in Texas agree that
changes are needed, growers say they're careful not to hire underage
workers for fear of heavy fines and safety worries.
Human Rights Watch details cases, mostly in
Arizona, where children as young as 12 are working long hours, often
without basic necessities such as toilets or drinking water. They
also are frequently exposed to harmful pesticides, heat illness and
injuries that can cause permanent disabilities, the group says.
The report, titled "Fingers to the
Bone, United States Failure to Protect Child Farm workers,"
covers mostly children of migrant farm workers. It does not target
family farmers and ranchers who enlist their own children for farm work.
The human rights group is calling for child
farm labourers to be protected under the same laws that prohibit
underage hiring and limit working hours in other occupations.
"Agriculture is the most dangerous
occupation in the nation that's open to minors, but it's the least
protected," said Jo Becker, a spokeswoman for Human Rights
Watch. She says that child farm workers account for only 8 percent of
working minors in the United States but 40 percent of work-related fatalities.
However, an industry spokeswoman says that
most injuries are sustained by farmers' own children, and that there
have been relatively few violations of child labour laws in agriculture.
"Basically, they're trying to fix a non
problem," said Sharon Hughes, executive vice president of the
National Council of Agricultural Employers. "In practice, the
growers just don't hire children. There's too much liability
involved, and you can't get the worker's compensation for them."
In Washington, a Labour Department spokesman
says the agency has increased fines for violations in agriculture,
and stepped up enforcement. Also, Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, twice
has introduced legislation calling for child farm workers to be
treated the same as children in other occupations, although the
measures have stalled.
"We've always said that farm work is
very dangerous for adults, so we can only imagine the dangers for
children," said Juanita Valdez-Cox, co-ordinator for the United
Farm Workers Union in South Texas. "Our concern is not only with
pesticides or problems with high heat, but the very dangerous
machinery that's used."
She supports changes to child labour laws
that Human Rights Watch is advocating. She says she's seen children
as young as 8 working alongside their parents in Rio Grande Valley
onion fields.
Two years ago, some produce growers in the
Valley were fined as much as $250,000 for employing children.
But in those cases, an industry spokesman
says, migrant farm workers brought their children with them without
the knowledge of owners - and they dispute whether they were actually
doing fieldwork. They called it an isolated incident.
All the same, they say, growers have become
more vigilant.
"No grower in the state of Texas is
employing child labour anymore," said Bruce Frazier, president
of Dixondale Farms in Carrizo Springs, Texas, which raises
cantaloupes and onions. The farm employs as many as 125 workers, but
never anyone younger than Mr. Frazier says.
He said he's also quit contracting with crew
leaders who bring their own workers, in order to keep closer tabs on
his employees. The Texas Farm Bureau additionally is opposed to
changing current laws, for fear that it could eventually affect
regular family farms or ranches.
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Italy Comes
To The Rescue Of Senegalese Children
ROME: Italy plans to help finance an
initiative aimed at fighting child labour in Senegal, where nearly
500,000 minors work in virtual slavery conditions.
The two-year programme, to get underway
within the next three months, will be carried out in conjunction with
the United Nations children's fund (UNICEF) and several Italian
non-governmental organisations that are active in that west African country.
The Italian government will provide 1.2
million dollars in funding for the programme, which will also focus
on getting children off the streets, where they are exposed to a
broad range of abuse, including child prostitution and sex tourism.
One of the most widespread forms of
exploitation of children is domestic work, with girls as young as
eight working more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Most of the young domestics were sent from
the provinces by their parents, who could no longer feed them, to the
capital to find work.
But those who are unable to find work as
domestics in Dakar end up living on the streets, where they are
vulnerable to rape and other kinds of abuse.
The programme will also include a drive to
register children, to enable them to go to school. Most families in
Senegal do not register births, as many are unable to afford the fees involved.
But the most dangerous aspect of that
phenomenon, is that since the children do not legally exist, it is a
simple matter for them to disappear at any time, abducted as sex
slaves, abused and murdered, or for the purpose of organ harvesting.
Another danger is that some extreme Islamist
centres to which families turn over their children to learn the Koran
send them out to panhandle.
''They send them out with a can to beg, and
force them to bring back a certain amount of money every night. If
they fail to do so, they are beaten,'' said the official.
The project will also help the government of
Senegal to improve treatment of minors by the justice system.
Presently, juvenile delinquents are sent to the same prisons as adults.
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News-In-Brief
-- Indian Child Labourers Demand Action
To mark the first anniversary of the
adoption of the Convention on Worst Forms of Child Labour, over two
hundred rescued child labourers under the aegis of South Asian
Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) staged a demonstration in the
Indian capital, Delhi, to demand tough action against the
exploitation of children. Gathering at the mausoleum of Mahatma
Gandhi, the protestors passed around petitions and called on the
Indian President, K.R. Narayanan, to impose a ban on children working
as domestic servants. SACCS estimates there are more than 60 million
children at work in India, despite the fact that child labour is
illegal in the country.
-- US Abuser Of Honduran Street Kids Jailed
For Life
A Florida Atlantic University Professor,
Marvin Hersh, was recently jailed for 105 years or having travelled
to Honduras to sexually abuse street children and for trafficking a
14-year-old boy back to Florida as a "sex toy". Affidavits
described Hersh as a long-time paedophile who travelled to Central
America and Asia to find victims. His friend, Nelson Jay Buhler, was
convicted with travelling for the purpose of sexual contact with a
minor and aggravated sexual abuse of a child in Honduras. According
to federal statute it is a crime for any American citizen to travel
abroad with the intent to sexually abuse children. These are the
first convictions under the "Mann Act" extra territorial
laws in the US.
-- LTTE Continues To Conscript More Child Soldiers
Reports reveal that LTTE, which is suffering
from an acute shortage of manpower, has forcibly recruited 200
schoolchildren and conducted a 14-day military training course for
them. The newly trained members are assigned the task to recruit more
and more cadres to the LTTE. These new cadres have already been sent
to schools situated in the uncleared areas to engage in propaganda
work to attract more students to the LTTE's fold. There are also
reports that LTTE is continuing to conscript little children despite
vociferous protests from parents and thereby violating international
human rights.
-- Street Child Migration Victims Brought To
The Attention Of World Community
Casa Alianza- Latin America, a child
advocacy group, brought the plight of hundreds of thousand of Latin
America street child migrants to the attention of the world community
during a follow up meeting to the 1998 Summit of the Americas held in
December 1998, organised by the International Organisation for
Migration (IOM) and the Inter American Commission on Human Rights in
Santiago de Chile, to discuss ways to uphold and protect the human
rights of all migrants workers. Falling outside of most conventional
definitions of migrant workers, the thousands of street children,
despite their large numbers, continue to fall through the cracks of
safety nets designed to protect migrant workers. 15% of all street
children in Guatemala City alone are from surrounding Central
American countries.
-- Nepal's Tourism Industry Branded 'Hazardous'
Nepal's tourism industry, considered too
dangerous for child workers, will no longer be able to employ those
below the age of 16, announced Labour Ministry official Dev Ratna
Tamrakar. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 2000
considered tourism a hazardous industry, he informed. "The act
seeks to eliminate the worst form of child labour," he said.
Under the Labour Act of 2000, people found guilty of employing
children in trekking, white water rafting, hotels, resorts, casinos,
bars, pony trekking, gliding and mountain climbing could be sentenced
to up to a year in jail and fined 50,000 rupees. Tourism including
trekking and mountain climbing is a major source of foreign currency
for Nepal, which earned 12.17 billion rupees from tourism in 1998-99.
However, child rights activists say about two million children
including debt-ridden bonded labourers, agricultural workers and
domestic servants are working in the country of 22 million people.
-- Administration Backs Stricter Limits On
Teens Jobs
Clinton administration has agreed to support
legislation seeking stricter limits to work by teenagers. The bill,
sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin, proposes to change existing U.S.
laws to increase the minimum age for farm work to 14, set limits on
the hours teenagers can work in agricultural jobs and, make it
illegal for children under the age of 16 to work as commercial street
peddlers or in door-to-door sales. An increase in fines for
violations of child labour laws is also sought. The five most
dangerous jobs held by teenagers, according to a recently released
ranking by National Consumers League, are delivery and other driving,
working alone in small retail stores at night, street peddling and
door-to-door sales, cooking, and construction work.
-- ILO Announces New Social Development Programme
Project to be funded initially by Italian
Government as follow up to the Social Summit In a new initiative to
implement the Programme of Action of the World Summit on Social
Development (Copenhagen 1995), ILO announced the launch of a new
programme aimed at promoting sustainable human development at the
local and national level. Initially to be funded by a 15 billion lira
(US$ 7.5 million) grant from the Government of Italy, the
"Universitas" programme will seek to promote decent work
through training of development officials and ILO social partners in
some 15 developing countries in Central America, the Mediterranean,
West Bank and Gaza, the Balkans and Africa. Additional countries are
expected to eventually participate in funding the project.
-- Lebanon Launches Project With ILO
The International Labour Organisation and
Lebanon's Social Affairs Ministry are joining in a two-year, $600,000
project to improve social workers' ability to assist in child labour
cases and strengthen the ministry's role in enforcing child labour
laws. "The aim .. is not to impose or enforce laws on children
but to work with them and their parents to find permanent solutions
to their problems," ILO specialist Khawla Matar said. The
program will target children in working conditions that are dangerous
to their mental, physical or psychological health.
-- Children's Day At Geneva 2000
The ILO, in partnership with several
institutions, organised events focusing on the global campaign to
eliminate child labour on, 28 June, as a Children's Day for Geneva
2000. It commenced with celebration of the ratification of Convention
182 by Switzerland. In the presence of Swiss Authorities and
approximately 200 children, including young activists of the Global
March and students from various schools of Switzerland, France and
Italy, Mr. Couchepin formally handed over to Mr. Somavia the
instrument of ratification. The children also released balloons into
the air with the message "Libérez les enfants" and
"Convention No. 182". It was followed by a solidarity
concert performed by children and young dolescents, on the theme of
the elimination of the worst forms of child labour.
-- Report On Murder Of Children In Honduras Released
Marking the UN International Day in Support
of Torture Victims, on June 26, the Costa Rican regional office of
Casa Alianza- Latin America made public the findings of an
investigation that documents the murders of more than 300 children
and youth in Honduras. The report has been compiled first hand by the
organisation's legal aid offices in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula
and documents cases of murdered youth between January 1998 and May
2000. The report shows that over 55% of the murder victims were
children, under the age of 18.
-- NGOs Denounce Annan's Poverty Report
Some 80 non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) and people's movements, organised in caucuses for the UN
Social Summit, called on the United Nations to withdraw its
endorsement of a poverty reduction report, 'A Better World for All',
released by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The NGOs, charge that
the report represents only the northern countries, the same as those
who are the majority shareholders of the World Bank and the IMF. The
UN represents the nations of the world, the NGOs pointed out in a
statement, and as such it provides the principal forum for reaching
political consensus in a participatory process that includes both the
North and the South. According to Malaysian activist Meena Raman,
Annan had shared the document with "the perpetrators of the
problems of poverty and inequality in the world."
-- Kenya To Table Children's Rights Bill
The much-anticipated Kenya Children's Rights
Bill is ready and would soon be tabled in parliament, the country's
Home Affairs, Sports and National Heritage Permanent Secretary,
Joshua Terer, has disclosed. The bill seeks to enforce the
recommendations contained in the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of Children and
the International Labour Organisation (ILO) convention on the Worst
Forms of Child Labour. Kenya has ratified the three conventions. He,
however, expressed concern that implementation of most
recommendations will be compounded by other factors outside the law.
More than 3.5 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 are
estimated to work in Kenya's agriculture sector.
END
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