Every morning in the garment factories of Dhaka, the brick kilns of Pakistan, the carpet looms of the Punjab, the rubbish tips of the Philippines and countless bus stands, street corners and workshops, homes and plantations all over the developing world, an estimated 250 million children begin another day at work¹.

The kinds of activities that children are engaged in, the nature of the societies they work in, and the fact that economic exploitation of children is condemned by international norms and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, make child workers both difficult to count and tempting to underestimate.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the issue of child labour in developing countries. Within the body of literature that has emerged, there has been much to disagree about: the reasons for child labour, the importance of child-generated income and the conditions of children who work, to name some contentious points. There has been broad agreement, however, about the detrimental nature of child labour. It has been described as a scourge, an evil, and a blight on the face of society.

Horrific stories of children in bonded labour working long hours at arduous tasks dominate Western attempts to tell the child labour story. These same horror stories have apparently influenced Western initiatives to eradicate child labour from the developing world, such as the "Rugmark" label that claims to guarantee a carpet has not been made using child labour, or the "Child Labour Deterrence Bill" designed to prohibit the import of goods made by children into the United States.

Such measures have been credited with success. There has been a change in the pattern of carpet exports to the West and a reduction in the number of children working in garment factories. However the primary triumph has been to create a way in which Western consumers, with just a little understanding of the production process in the developing world, can engage in guilt free shopping.

Although the horror stories of child labour persist, there have been few attempts to understand and unravel the human dimension of the situations of children who work. Most attempts at explaining the phenomenon of child labour fail to portray working children and their families as anything more than powerless, passive participants in the incidence and continuity of child labour - as people without choices and deserving of pity.

It is to this portrayal that I take exception. I do not advocate that we allow child labour to continue without intervention, but I do believe it is time we took a different angle on the child labour story. Child Labour is not just about horror stories, although some of the stories are undoubtedly horrific. And it is not just about statistics of how many children are working and how pitiful their wages are, although this too is part of the story. Child labour is about children, and families and survival.

In 1996 I was involved in a Pakistani study conducted by a small Non-Government Organisation (NGO) in the North West Frontier capital, Peshawar. The study aimed at enhancing the understanding of child labour in the area by providing some accurate, information about children who worked. Questions such as the extent to which children engaged in different types of activities, how much they could expect to earn and how many hours a day these children worked were of interest, because so little was known about the child workers in this area. The study also attempted to make the issue of child labour more tangible by giving the children an opportunity to tell their own stories - why they were working, how they felt about what they did, and their personal ambitions.

One of the original motivations to pursue this study of child labour, was the result of the NGO (Human Resources Management and Development Centre - HRMDC) employing four scavenger boys on a solid waste management project in an urban slum. Before joining the HRMDC project, the boys roamed the streets of Peshawar from dawn to dusk collecting other people's rubbish to recycle and sell to a junk dealer. Working with HRMDC they went from house to house in the project area collecting waste that had been sorted into organic, and inorganic an depositing it at a central point. The conservative traditions of the area and observance of purdah by the women meant that this was a task that could only be undertaken by children. Women did not have the mobility to move from house to house and men were not free to visit the home of a woman outside their immediate family. In return for their efforts, the boys received appropriate clothing to work in; overalls, boots, gloves and hats, a regular income and the opportunity to attend an informal education centre (which they all accepted gladly). In the hours outside their work for HRMDC and attending the school, no compulsion was put on the boys to stop their other income-generating activities, although they were encouraged to use their gloves and boots for work and were given some health and safety advice by HRMDC staff members.

The eagerness with which these children responded to learning in the informal school prompted the HRMDC staff to investigate ways of expanding the programme to cater for more child workers. It was hoped that the information gained in the study on child workers in the area would help secure a small amount of donor funding to assist such a programme.

The study found that although the majority of the children interviewed worked long hours and did not have much time to play, they were making a significant contribution to the income of their poor families, and in nearly all cases they had been involved in making choices about their work. Some had selected occupations where they wanted to learn a skill and carve out a career for themselves, while others had actively chosen the activities where they could earn the most money. They all had dreams for the future and planned what they would do when they grew up.

Part 2...

1 Three years after their study on child workers and many funding proposals later HRMDC still hasn't found an international donor to support their informal education centre for working children. It has gone ahead anyway using funds generated by recycling the organic waste into compost and selling it, and gaining sponsorship from individuals within Pakistan. It costs approximately $A 150.00 to provide a child with a year's education at the centre.