December 12, 1996

Child labour condemned

Hazardous work betrayal of rights, Unicef report says

NEW DELHI - With an estimated 250 million children at work in the world, hazardous child labour appears to be increasing on every continent regardless of national incomes, politics or culture, the United Nations Children's Fund has warned.

Calling for urgent international action to end hazardous child labour by the end of the decade, Unicef says the exploitation of children can no longer be defended as a product of poverty. Instead, it says governments must focus their efforts on basic education, enforce their own labour laws and address social problems such as caste and ethnic divisions that appear to be fuelling child labour.

"Hazardous child labour is a betrayal of every child's rights as a human being and is an offence against our civilization," Unicef says in its 1997 State of the World's Children report, released today to mark the agency's 50th anniversary.

Describing the world as a place with a "grotesque skewing of priorities," Unicef says children now work in exploitative jobs in virtually every country: stitching clothes in the United States, tapping rubber trees in Malaysia, mining for gold in South Africa and collecting garbage in Brazil.

It says children are exploited for physically dangerous work, dull domestic jobs, demeaning tasks and commercial sex, often because they are simply too young, small or naive to resist.

"It is time morality prevailed," the report says. "As we step into the next millenium, hazardous child labour must be left behind, consigned to history as completely as those other forms of slavery that it so closely resembles."

Unicef differentiates between child labour and child work, arguing that the former inhibits a child's physical, mental, social, emotional and cultural development.

"We're making it very clear that while child work should not be eliminated, child labour must be eliminated," said Jon Rohde, Unicef's representative in India, home to the world's largest child labour population.

He said exploitative child labour is most apparent when it prevents a child from attending school and enjoying a reasonable amount of recreation.

Unicef does not take issue with child work, such as after-school jobs or household chores, that do not interfere with a child's basic rights like education.

But in the developing world, it says, a majority of child workers under the age of 14 work at least nine hours a day for six or seven days a week, which turns their work into exploitative labour.

Unicef admits there are no clear figures on child labour, with estimates ranging from 73 million worldwide to 400 million, when major chores such as fetching water in rural Africa are included. The most commonly accepted estimate is 250 million.

In its report, however, Unicef takes sharp aim at those who argue that child labour is a result of poverty, pointing to a rise in child labour in many industrialized and developing Asian countries. Between 1983 and 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office recorded a 250 per cent increase in child labour, mostly in the agriculture sector and among immigrant and ethnic minority families.

To end hazardous child labour, Unicef says governments should invest more in basic education and focus on local needs such as skills training and part-time schools to fit children's schedules.

Since most child labour exists in local industries, the report warns that consumer boycotts in the West will do little to reduce the phenomenon. It estimates that only 5 per cent of child workers are employed in export industries.

Unicef argues that child labour cannot be viewed in isolation from economic and population trends. It calls on the world's rich nations to make greater strides to reduce the debt burden of many African countries that have cut education spending to meet foreign obligations. In sub-Saharan Africa, 47 per cent of children of primary school age do not attend school.

Unicef also advises all countries to step up legislative efforts to end hazardous child work. The report points to Hong Kong's success in ending child labour through strict labour inspections and identity cards for young workers.

In India, on the other hand, no employer has ever been imprisoned for employing children. Of 4,000 cases registered against Indian employers for violating child labour laws, 3,500 were dismissed or the fines were less than $6. The rest remain before India's courts.

In many places, parents put their children to work at an early age because local schools are not attractive, especially for girls, the report says. Unicef points to a decline in education spending per pupil in Africa and Latin America, and a drop in the quality of schooling in many other countries.

An estimated 140 million children between the ages of six and 11 do not attend school, and roughly an equal number drop out of school early.

"It would cost an estimated $6-billion a year, on top of what is already spent, to put every child in school by the year 2000," Unicef says. The world spends more than 100 times that much every year on weapons.

Unicef admits much of the world's hazardous child labour is also a product of ethnic, class and caste divisions. In South Asia, for example, most school drop-outs come from low-caste and ethnic minority families, and form the bulk of the child labour force.

"The rigidity of the caste system in India only dramatizes what is true in most of the world, including the West," Unicef says. "The dominant cultural group may not wish its own children to do hazardous labour, but it will not be so concerned if young people from racial, ethnic or economic minorities do it."

In its report, Unicef also tries to highlight hidden forms of child exploitation such as domestic work which it says traps girls "in a cycle of dreary tasks amounting often to virtual slavery."

In many parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, orphans or children from poor families are indentured to middle-class homes as servants in return for room and board. Yet they tend to be poorly nourished and often subjected to sexual abuse by their supposedly benevolent employers.

Unicef also warns of a rise in the number of children employed by the commercial sex industry. In Nepal, it says 50 per cent of workers are estimated to be children, who provide a major source for Indian brothels as well.

In a landmark decision this week, India's supreme court ordered an end to child labour in hazardous industries and directed government officials to fine offending employers the equivalent of almost $1,000 for every child in their workplace. The money is to be used for a fund for compulsory education for child labourers. The court also ordered offending industries to replace each child employee with an adult member of the child's family.

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