Eight child traffickers are already serving jail terms ranging from three to seven years in different prisons across the country for child trafficking offences.

Head, Investigation and Monitoring Unit of the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Mallam Mohammed Babandede, said this in his paper at a one-day workshop on Public Awareness Campaigns and Advocacy on Trafficking in Women and Children, organised for Journalists in Osun, Kano and Cross River by WOTCLEF.

Babandede said women and children trafficking are now serious offences since 2003, when NAPTIP was established.

He said 20 people are now behind bars, while 25 cases are still on-going in various courts.

He said out of several millions of children between the ages of five and 17 years working in the world, 180 million are in the worst forms of child labour.

According to him, eight percent of the figure are in Latin America, while 30 per cent and 60 per cent are in Africa and Asia respectively.

Babandede said most teenage girls recruited from Nigeria are being used for prostitution in Italy and other parts of Europe, and appealed for war against the illegal act.

In her speech, National Coodinator, Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF), Mrs Veronica Umaru, described trafficking in persons as a modern form of slave trade, adding that "human beings are trafficked for a wide variety of reasons and purposes, all of which are degrading and dehumanising. Which generally increase the state of insecurity of women and children.

According to her, some of the purposes for which human beings are trafficked include domestic labour, sex, forced marriage, begging for alms, forced labour, ritual purposes and organ transplant.

In her paper, Mrs. O. A. Aiyegbusi, Head of Public Enlightenment Unit of NAPTIP urged the media to wage war on Trafficking in persons by educating and mobilizing people to know the effect of the crime.

With the maximum number of child workers in the national capital coming from Bihar, officials from the Centre and the two state governments would soon meet to chalk out a rehabilitation programme for the children.

Giving the information while inaugurating a Transitional Education Centre for working children here, Delhi Labour Minister, Mangatram Singhal, said the Union Ministry of Labour would organise the meeting in the Patna.

"The Government of India and state governments of Delhi and Bihar will draw a comprehensive programme for the rehabilitation of children who are compelled to work because of economic compulsions," Singhal said.

The Minister said Delhi Government wanted to make the capital a "no entry" zone for child labour and warned that strict prosecution measures would be initiated against those found employing children.

"On the other hand, the government will initiate steps to provide rehabilitation, of which education will be the core aspect, to such children who are compelled to work due to their economic misfortune," Singhal said.

The transitional education centre for children withdrawn from work, opened in Jahangirpuri area of the city, will be run by the NGO Kiran Deep Society for Women and Child Rights.

The Delhi Shops and Establishment Act, 1954 prohibits employment of children who have not completed their 12 years of age. The Factories Act, 1948 prohibits employment of children who are not yet 14-years-old.

EVERY child, regardless of background, has the right to a proper education as stipulated by conventions that protect children's rights which Zimbabwe is signatory to.

These conventions empower governments to provide funds to enable children, particularly those from poor families or orphans, to attend school, among many other basic human rights needs.

But it is disturbing to note that at least 700 orphans in Murehwa have dropped out of school and this could just be a reflection of what is happening in other districts.

Zimbabwe ranks as one of five countries in the world with the highest number of orphans and it necessary for the Government to come up with measures that ensure these children get the basics of life.

One in every four children -- 1,6 million in all -- are now orphaned, and this number is growing says Unicef.
It is becoming evident that funds for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children (OVCs) under the Basic Education Assistant Module (Beam) have become inadequate to meet educational needs for the needy children.

This calls for assistance from other channels like the non-governmental organisations that initially assisted the Murehwa orphans before they withdrew their funding in 2004.

Most of the children, whose parents died of HIV-related illnesses, can be seen loitering around Murehwa Business Centre in search of jobs or begging.

The girl children have resorted to prostitution, which is one of the major drivers in the spread of HIV and Aids.

Perhaps the question we should all be asking is what will happen to these children should funding for school needs continues to be erratic?

The other option could be to place these children under adoption but this is a practice that is not carved in the Zimbabwean culture.

Traditionally, close relatives would fend for them like they were their own upon death of their parents.

But the economic decline has witnessed disintegration of family ties as families now concentrate on their own offspring leaving the orphans exposed to various forms of abuse.

These children wander through the villages and eventually find their way to the cities where they get involved in all sorts of deviant activities in order to survive.

We believe education is the key to a successful life and we urge the Government to come up with a system that will empower all communities particularly the rural-based, to ensure all children get assistance for education.

There have been instances where headmasters took too long to submit forms for children seeking Beam funds resulting in the ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Services making payments late.

A Parliamentary Committee on Health and Child Welfare recently said that Beam funds had been abused in Masvingo and that most orphans were not benefiting from the programme.

The committee noted that the selection process was subject to abuse and advised the system to revert to the department of social welfare that initially handled these matters.

Children's homes that are supposed to accommodate orphans are also facing mounting problems due to lack of funding and resources.

Apart from the cost of feeding the children, children's homes have had to contend with the increased numbers of orphans seeking shelter.

A wholesome approach to the problem is necessary and that includes identifying organisations to support them, and work towards a comprehensive approach to also assist other vulnerable children.

Kumasi, July 25, GNA - About two million Ghanaian children are engaged in various forms of child labour, a Ghana Child Labour Survey has indicated.

Mr Kwaku Kyei, Country Director of African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN), Ghana, who announced this, said they were engaged in various sectors including commercial, agriculture, fishing, weaving, carving, truck pushing and pottery.

He was speaking at a stakeholders meeting to address the child labour situation in the Ashanti Region in Kumasi on Monday. Participants at the meeting organised by ANPPCAN were from Kwabre, Bosomtwe-Atwima-Kwanwoma, Amansie West and Obuasi municipality. Mr Kyei said child labour was a growing phenomenon in developing countries and stressed that an estimated 218 million children were engaged in various forms of labour globally.

He said ANPPCAN Ghana, Child Labour Programme focused on addressing among other issues, child labour in Ghana in general and in Ashanti Region in particular.

Mr Bernard Morara, Exchange Programmes Officer in Kenya, hinted that the ANPPCAN project in Ghana targeted children aged between five and 17 years who were already involved in working various sector of the economy.

He said at the heart of the project was the withdrawal of children involved in child labour and re-integrating them into school and supporting them to remain in school.

Mr Morara said ANPPCAN Ghana believed that by expanding educational opportunities, facilitating access and quality of education and training of children as well as mobilising communities against child labour, would go a long way to minimise the problems in the targeted districts. He said statistics from the population census of 2000 showed that over 60,000 children of school-going-age failed to enrol in school in the targeted districts.

Mrs Beatrice Prempeh, Amansie West District Director of Education in a contribution, said she was happy that the organisation had come to the District to assist in solving child labour issues because a lot of the children were suffering from this social problem.

Miss Virginia Tyler, an American who works with Brass Casters in Kumasi, said children should not be allowed to work during school hours to the detriment of their proper development.

Mr Emmanuel Anniboye, Kwabre District Director of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), said child labour was rooted in the cultural practices and there was the need for stakeholders to look at it critically.

THE gloomy picture of child labour painted by the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) statistics during the three-day conference held in Boksburg recently has prompted the labour department to take the lead in the protracted fight against this scourge. The international conference, under the theme, Putting Children First, discussed the worst forms of children’s exploitation, such as child trafficking, children engaged in hazardous work in agriculture, commercial sexual exploitation, child domestic labour and child slavery.

According to the ILO’s global report, 217,7-million children between the ages of five and 17 are involved in child labour. Of these, an estimated 126,3-million are involved in the worst forms of child labour, and 122,3-million children are economically active in Asia and the Pacific, 49,3-million in sub-Saharan Africa, 5,7-million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 13,4-million in other regions.

Among the working children aged between five and 14 years, 69% are employed in the agricultural sector, 9% are in the industrial sector and the remaining 22% are employed in the services sector.

The report further indicates that sub-Saharan Africa has a high incidence of economically active children — 26,4 % of children aged between five and 14 years are at work in the region. There has been an increase in the number of children involved in child labour from 48-million to 49,3-million.

The increase in child labour has been worsened partly by high population growth. Its convergence with grinding poverty, with the added factor of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, has hindered progress in the fight against child labour.

In Africa, an estimated 50000 children are involved in prostitution and pornography, and about 120000 children under the age of 18 are thought to have been coerced into taking up arms as child soldiers or military porters, messengers, cooks or sex slaves.

Back home in SA, a survey in 1999 found that at least 36% of the estimated 13,4-million children aged between five and 17 were involved in work-related activity — this amounted to 4,8-million children.

The survey found that 12,5% of children worked at least two hours a day. Children living in deep rural areas were most likely to do economic work for three hours or more a week (12%), closely followed by those in commercial farming areas (11%), with between 5% and 6% in urban areas.

Joining hands with other countries, the labour department presented resolutions at the conference and vowed to lead other government departments in combating the abuse of children, and child labour in particular.

One of the vital resolutions considered was the creation and strengthening of Child Labour Programme of Action (CLPA).
The CLPA document serves as a binding document committing government departments and other key stakeholders in the struggle to diminish child labour.

As part of the resolution, the education department was mandated to implement educational policies and practices that should, over time, fully address the issues of child labour.

The implementation steps included suggestions to review curricula with the aim of accommodating vocational training to develop entrepreneurial and other life skills. The social development department was also mandated to work on the Children’s Bill on monitoring children, as well as helping them to deal with the factors that push or pull them into labour.

The endeavour should assist government to support families in need; to boost the role played by the family; and to provide training in parenting skills, especially for those at risk.

The labour department resolutions linked with those of the ILO, which advocated that a national programme of action common to all countries be adopted and that the knowledge base on the prevalence of child labour be broadened to align legislative and policy reform.

The ILO resolutions also call for the elimination of cultural practices that negatively affect the protection of children.

With the labour department declaring its intention to fight child labour, it seems that interesting times lie ahead.

SA has joined the rest of the world in committing to protect the rights of children, to ensure that they enjoy their childhood in such areas as schooling and entertainment.

It is only through such efforts that child labour can be addressed.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A240086

Cuddalore, July 27. (UNI): The police on Wednesday rescued about 160 children from a Nagappatinam bound "Cholan Express" at railway station here this afternoon.
The children aged between ten to 14, were said to be brought by a private contractor from West Bengal to work in a Myladduthurai ONGC plant.
Police said, on a tip off received from Chennai Child Line office on Wednesday morning, the Child Welfare Committee informed Cuddalore Superintendent of Police Sanjay Kumar that three general boggies of the Cholan Express were carrying the children to make them work in the plant.
When the train reached the station at around 1330 hrs, the police along with railway officials rescued the children.
On questioning, the children, who knew only Bengali and a little of Hindi, informed the police that two persons were taking them in the train and they managed to escape when they saw the police.
The children said the agents paid money to their family inorder to bring them here to work for a private contractor, who had taken up contract work with ONGC plant.
Later, the children were sheltered at a marriage hall at Tirupatiratpuliyur here.
Police had informed the Child Welfare authorities concerned.
A search was on for the two agents, who brought the children.
Co-passengers in the train said the two persons, who looked like North Indians were accompanying the children, police added.

Experts, child rights activists and trade union leaders have stressed on the need of formulating strategies and effective implementation of these strategies and national policies by the government, NGOs and private sector to eradicate child labour in the transportation sector.

At an interaction programme organised by Child Workers in Nepal (CWIN) in the capital on Monday, Deputy Superintendent of Police of the Valley Traffic Police Jagat Man Shrestha informed that 15 children, who were working in this sector, have died of vehicular accidents in the last fiscal year.

He said the transport entrepreneurs employ children because they find children as cheap labour who can work not only as assistants in vehicles but also as domestic helpers.

President of CWIN Gauri Pradhan told Nepalnews that 20 percent of the total work force in Nepal are children. He estimated that there are around 8-10 thousand children working in transportation sector at present. However, in the last few years, child labour has gradually shifted from formal sectors like transportation to informal sectors like brick kilns and domestic helpers, he added.

Superintendent of Police of the Women Cell Parbati Thapa said unless arrangement of permanent rehabilitation of the children working in this sector is made, the problem would continue to grow further in the future.

Secretary of the Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions Bidur Karki said policies regarding compulsory equal wages to children would discourage employers from hiring children. He said that children who are enthusiastic towards driving and are above 14 should be given formal driving training by the government.

According to CWIN, children between 10-14 are more vulnerable to be used as child labourers. Lack of educational opportunities in villages, family conflict, misbehaviour by parents, encouragement by friends and instinct to see and feel new things in urban areas are some of the causes that bring children to work in transportation sector. Children from villages where transportation has reached a few years back are the major sources of child labourers.

According to a survey carried out by CWIN, over 67 percent of these children working in the transportation sector are supporting their family through their earnings. 55 percent of them help in buying food items for their family members while 31 percent help for schooling of youngsters.

The CWIN survey also revealed that over 74 percent of child workers are not paid but given food and shelter.

In Kathmandu valley alone, around 2,200 children are working in the transportation sector. The situation is volatile in western regions where transportation services have just reached in the last few years. The situation in eastern and central region, where there is more access to educational opportunities and the level of public awareness has risen, child labour in transportation sector has decreased in the last few years.

For 13-year-old Helen Angwa, days are long, beginning at 05.00 and continuing to about midnight. The hours in between are spent on ceaseless work for a restaurant owner who bought her when she was just nine.

"She (the owner) came to look for me in our village in 2002," Angwa told IPS in broken French in the Cameroonian capital, Yaoundé. "My parents said they did not have the means to provide for me, but that my new mother would take good care of me in Yaoundé."

"Today, I do all the work in this maquis (a term used in several West African countries to refer to a restaurant) and I am not paid. I eat a little good food when the owner is not there, or when a client helps me out," she said.

Unfortunately, Angwa's story is far from unique. She is the victim of a trade in children that persists even though a law promulgated in January this year sought to ban it -- making child trafficking punishable with jail terms of 10 to 20 years, and fines of about 95 to 1,900 dollars.

Legislation also forbids children younger than 18 from working. But, neither sanction appears to have had much effect on Emilienne Efon, the owner of the restaurant where Angwa works.

"I needed a cleaner…So, on the advice of a friend, I went to Santa to look for (a worker)," she told IPS.

"She (Angwa) was a minor when she arrived, but look, she is a woman now. She does everything that I ask her to, and does not give me any problems. Can one say that Angwa is a captive?" Efon asked. She declined to tell IPS how much she had paid for Angwa.

Santa is located near Bamenda, a town 400 kilometres west of Yaoundé. The region is severely affected by child trafficking, says Joseph Chongsi Ayeah, president of the Centre for Human Rights and Peace Advocacy: a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Bamenda.

"Ninety percent of inhabitants of the town of Bamenda are victims of, or practice, child trafficking," he notes.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that some 600,000 children were victims of trafficking in Cameroon in 2005.

Horizon jeunesse (Youth Horizon), an NGO based in the capital, puts the number of children who are working or being trafficked in conditions of near slavery at about three million.

Cameroon has close to 17 million inhabitants, of which about 56 percent are younger than 20, according to official figures.

The exploitation of children takes various forms. Boys are typically put to work on cocoa, coffee and rubber plantations, while girls serve as cleaners and waitresses. They are often sexually exploited, and may later be drawn into prostitution.

"Once a transit country for child traffickers, Cameroon has become, for some years, a supplier of child slaves and prostitutes to neighbouring countries," said Léon Noah Manga, president of the consultative committee for a project to fight against the trade and exploitation of children in West and Central Africa. This initiative is based in Yaoundé.

Statistics for last month alone tell a frightening story of just how many children are getting caught up in trafficking.

"About 200 children of Cameroonian origin and about 60 others of Beninese and Nigerian origin…destined for employers in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea were rescued at the borders of Cameroon and returned to their families," said Manga.

But, no sentences have been passed yet against people involved in child trafficking.

"The law to track exploiters of children exists," says Ghislaine Eballe, principal assistant in the Ministry of Social Affairs. But, "In the absence of any denunciation, we can do nothing concrete in the fight against child slavery."

Activists condemn the ignorance and irresponsibility of parents who expose their children to traffickers -- but also note that poverty plays a big part in the exploitation of children. Close to 50 percent of the country's population lives below the poverty line of a dollar a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

"The trade that affects our children today is a sad reality which has been aggravated by the combined effects of the economic crisis (and) the weakening of familial links," Nicolas Mukama, president of Horizon jeunesse, told IPS.

This situation puts children at the mercy of "unscrupulous traffickers and 'mamas' (owners of restaurants) with whom they are exposed to the worst forms of exploitation, such as prostitution and drug trafficking." Mukama noted, adding that drugs affected "close to 60 percent of children less than 15 years old."

Eballe says that most people in Cameroon claim parents can do with their children as they wish.

"Nonetheless, we invite parents and all who love children -- who represent the future of this country -- to condemn the backward practices (of trafficking and exploitation) which are reprehensible."

The conflict and violence that has consumed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for nearly a decade has killed more people every six months than were killed by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Estimates place the total deaths at four million, although some experts say the figure is far higher. In a report released today in London, UNICEF said that as victims, children have defined this often forgotten, but world's deadliest, humanitarian crisis in the heart of Africa.

Child Alert: DRC, written by UNICEF UK Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies Martin Bell, describes the effects of war on children and their families as armies and militia groups rampaged across mostly eastern Congo. As a direct or indirect result of conflict, 1,200 people die every day in DRC and more than half of those are children. Many tens of thousands are believed to have been the victims of direct violence, but the death toll was mostly exacted by disease and malnutrition as fighting repeatedly drives civilians from their homes and instability prevents their access to aid and health services.

UNICEF Representative Tony Bloomberg joined Bell in London today to release the report, just days before the first free elections in over forty years are scheduled to begin in DRC. The report, based in part on Martin Bell's own observations in DRC and his past experience in war-torn countries, suggests there is hope for an end to conflict through successful elections.

"It is easy to be overwhelmed by what has happened in DRC because the sheer scale of it," said Bell. "But we owe it to the children to give them the future they deserve and these elections may be the opportunity of their lifetime."

UNICEF reports that these grim statistics make DRC one of the top three deadliest places to be born. In fact, more children under age five die each year in DRC than in China, a country with 23 times the population.

"Children bear the brunt of conflict, disease and death, but not only as casualties," said UNICEF DRC Representative Tony Bloomberg, who attended the launch in London. "They are also witnesses to, and sometimes forced participants in, atrocities and crimes that inflict physical and psychological harm."

Some of the most serious effects include:
- Sexual assaults, used as a weapon of war against women and children, have reached epidemic proportions. Last year alone, 25,000 reported cases of rape occurred in eastern DRC.

- Children are caught up in war as refugees and internally displaced people. In eastern DRC, as many as 120,000 people every month are being displaced from their homes and 1.66 million remain displaced. Constant migration robs children of schooling, health care and the chance for a normal life.

- As many as 30,000 children may be associated with armed forces or groups as fighters, sexual slaves and camp-followers.

- Almost half of all primary age school children are not in school and one out of three children under age one are not vaccinated against measles. An alarming 31 per cent of children under five are underweight.

UNICEF and its partners provide substantial emergency aid including psychological counseling, transit centres for the demobilization of child soldiers, vaccinations, temporary schools in IDP camps, access to clean water and sanitation and non-food items such as cooking utensils and jerry cans and plastic sheeting for emergency shelter. But long term development - free universal primary education, free basic health care for children under five, mosquito bed nets for pregnant women and children under five, rehabilitation of water sources, more counseling and support for women and children - cannot be maintained until there is sustained peace.

In order to continue providing emergency assistance, including support to children living on the street in urban centres and working in the mines throughout DRC, UNICEF has requested US $93.67 million dollars through a consolidated appeal for programmes in 2006. Currently, UNICEF is under funded by 62 per cent. Relative stability has allowed more access in eastern parts of the country, but more resources are necessary to meet the growing need.

"While DRC has experienced death rates like that of the tsunami every six months, it has not received the attention it deserves, either from the media or the public," said Bloomberg. "UNICEF issued this report to call attention to this hidden emergency and its impact on children. We stand ready to work with the elected government and all other actors to begin immediately improving the lives of Congo's children."

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EKOI-6RZ3MN?OpenDocumen

There are more "working children" between the age of five and 14 in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world.

Faced with this information, the first Southern African conference on child labour, organised under the theme "Education, not Exploitation" in Boksburg last week, has urged governments to combat the worst forms of child labour to ensure that children grow up in protected environments.

Delegates from each of the five SADC countries at the conference vowed to get national child labour action plans in place in their respective countries.

They also agreed to the regular, rigorous and publicly accountable monitoring of child labour practices.

Child labour is regarded as a serious problem in many countries, with the International Labour Organisation estimating that about 218-million children between the ages of 5 and 17 around the world are engaged in child labour.

Of these, about 122-million are caught in the worst forms of child labour, which includes child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, bonded labour, the use of children for illegal activities and children working under hazardous conditions.

The three-day conference, organised by the programme on Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in Southern Africa, was attended by delegates from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.

Conference chairperson Mary Metcalfe said governments and civil society needed to work hard to eradicate all forms of child labour that deprive children access to education and distort their personal development.

"We must commit ourselves to a relentless struggle that will not cease until the scourge of child labour has finally been banished from our countries," said Metcalfe.

South Africa has had a Child Labour Programme in place since 2003 and has begun to implement aspects of it. Delegates from South Africa met as a group and developed a set of resolutions designed to take the plan forward. Among other things, they called for the specific provisions on the worst forms of child labour to be included in the Children's Act.

They also called for the extension of the Child Support Grant to children under the age of 15 with more extensions to follow, bringing the upper age limit to 18.

The SA working group called for an education policy and practice that fully addresses issues of child labour.

The group said steps had to be taken to review the curriculum to include vocational training to develop entrepreneurial and other life skills in children.

A call was also made for free quality education for all, at all levels. Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, on the other hand, met and produced a detailed outline of the steps required to produce their national action programmes.

According to the conference's final declaration, children may participate in work activities that are developmentally appropriate and that take place in a nurturing environment, but they have a right to be protected from work that is exploitative, hazardous, and detrimental to their schooling or physical and mental development. The declaration also pointed out that child labour perpetuated poverty.

"Children who are deprived of access to education and whose personal development is distorted by poverty and inappropriate labour are at risk of being trapped in an ongoing cycle of poverty. The issues surrounding child labour are embedded in greater social-economic issues which need to be addressed by a broad range of players," read the declaration document.

The conference also resolved that countries within the Southern African Development Community could learn from each other and implement cross-national, cross-sectoral strategies to eliminate child labour, commercial sexual exploitation of children and child-trafficking.

Delegates called for more political will and careful monitoring to ensure accurate research which will enable better allocation of limited resources. They said the resources had to be used with care and efficiency to most effectively reduce exploitative child labour and to protect vulnerable children who are most at risk.

The Deputy Director-General in the Department of Labour, Les Kettledas, told the gathering that it was a serious indictment that Sub-Saharan Africa had made the least progress of any region in the world in reducing child labour.

"The elimination of child labour is a gigantic agenda that is complex and difficult," he said, adding that beyond the technical expertise required, the main instrument in making things happen was "to believe in your cause".

Which is worse: being forced by a soldier to cut off another child's ears with a machete in northern Uganda, risking rape on the streets of a Brazilian slum or being blowtorched by a boss in Togo?

The clear answer from an AlertNet poll of the world's most dangerous places for children is that this is an impossible question - they're all situations that no child should have to face, and yet thousands do, every day.

"It seems to me any place where there is some combination of conflict, breakdown of services, economic collapse or absence of governance is a potential deathtrap for children," said Christian Science Monitor journalist Fred Weir.

When AlertNet asked aid workers and journalists to think of the most dangerous place to be a child, they came up with a top 10 list that shines the spotlight on the world's worst humanitarian hotspots, including Sudan, northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Somalia, the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Myanmar.

But their responses also highlighted a gamut of poverty-related suffering that rarely make world headlines. The top 10 list included India, where millions of hungry children are forced into hard labour and prostitution .

There were wars that didn't grab the poll limelight, but received enough votes to reflect their magnitude. Colombia - where more than 3 million people have been driven from their homes and medical agency Doctors without Borders estimates 37 percent of displaced people have witnessed the killing of parents, children or siblings - narrowly missed the top 10.

'PRACTICALLY INVISIBLE'
Child refugees, many of them on their own without loving families to protect them, featured prominently in the survey responses.

"There are large groups of children in every region of the world who are regularly overlooked by the media because their tragedy transcends geographic divides," Refugees International Research Director Maureen Lynch said.

"They are practically invisible to the public eye."

Even once wars are over, children face the risk of sexual exploitation in squalid camps, or landmines that kill and maim up to 10,000 children every year, according to the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF.

It's not just war that puts children at risk. There's the eternal problem of how to scrape together enough to eat.

Catholic aid agency CAFOD's media chief, Patrick Nicholson, put it succinctly: "Poverty kills."
Out of every 100 children born in 2000, 30 will likely suffer malnutrition, and 17 will never go to school, UNICEF says. About 30,000 children a day die before their fifth birthday, mostly from illnesses that could easily be prevented with clean water and vaccines.

In South Africa, where almost one in five people between 15 and 49 years old are HIV-positive, children are put at extra risk by the myth that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS.

AIDS is also rife in Zimbabwe, a nation in the throes of a political and humanitarian crisis that has helped to turn it from Africa's breadbasket into the country with the world's lowest life expectancy and sky-high inflation rates that make it hard to buy the most basic staple foods.

Both countries had a smattering of votes, while some respondents mentioned concern for poor children in many parts of the world who face early marriage, sexual exploitation, forced labour or virtual slavery.

An estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked every year for labour or sex, and about 1 million children are thought to be exploited in the multi-billion dollar sex industry, UNICEF says.

The western African country of Togo - where annual gross domestic product per capita was just $362 in 2003 - was singled out for high risks to children of being trafficked or suffering brutal beatings by teachers and bosses. A June report on violence against children in Togo by the U.N.'s news wire, IRIN, cited at least one case of a boy being burnt with a blowtorch for falling asleep on the job.

"Unpaid and untrained teachers (in Togo) use children to work on their land, sometimes in exchange for better grades," communications manager Elayne Devlin of children's aid agency Plan International said.

ENDEMIC VIOLENCE
Togo is not the only western African country where violent abuse of children is endemic. An Oxfam aid worker reported that it's common practice in parts of Liberia to punish naughty children by forcing their hands into boiling oil.

A lot of people mentioned child labour in their poll answers, with 218 million working children in the world, according to the U.N. International Labour Organisation. Some 5.7 million work in especially horrific circumstances, including the virtual slavery of bonded labour.

Aid experts expressed outrage at quasi-slavery in crisis-ridden Haiti, child labour in Uzbekistan's cotton fields, and under-age labourers' breaking ships into scrap metal in Bangladesh.

Sex attacks, prostitution and drug addiction are dangers for tens of millions of children who live on the streets and rubbish dumps of the world's cities. Poll respondents mentioned Brazil as a particularly high-risk country for street children, who are regularly killed by vigilantes who view them as little more than pests.

There's urban poverty in rich countries too, and a couple of respondents voted for the United States, citing gun crime and the execution of minors in some states.

Disasters experts said children in the world's quake-prone zones were in constant danger in rickety homes and schools.

"It may not cause a change in the top three 'most dangerous' places in the world for children (but) in any given year an infrequent, high-impact event (like an earthquake) may rank very high in terms of cause of deaths," Marla Petal, a consultant for Turkey's Earthquake Research Institute, said.

If schools were made quake-proof, it might have saved more than 16,000 children who died in them in an October earthquake in Kashmir.

"This is one of those unacceptable things that we can do something about," Petal said.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is liaising with stakeholders to combat trafficking in children for exploitative employment considered as one of the worst forms of child labour in West Africa and Central Africa, Mr Mathew Dally, National Programme Coordinator of the ILO, said the programme to combat the trafficking of children for labour exploitation in West Africa and Central Africa (LUTRENA) was, therefore, instituted in 2001 to promote a comprehensive approach to combat child trafficking from both the demand and supply sides. Speaking at the opening of the Independent External Global Evaluation Stakeholders' Workshop of the LUTRENA Project in Ghana, Mr Dally said child trafficking was in contravention of both international and national laws and had to be abolished immediately. LUTRENA is a multi-donor funded programme sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labour; U.S. Department of State and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).

Mr Dally said it had identified the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs, Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment and the Ministry of Justice among other institutions as those that played pivotal roles in implementing programmes against trafficking. He said it was the expectation of the ILO that a Human Trafficking Management Board would be set up and inaugurated sooner than later to further heighten the fight against child trafficking.

Mr Kwadwo Amoakwa, Chief Director of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC), said in a speech he read for the Minister that the Human Trafficking Act (Act 694) was operational and the Ministry was in the process of constituting the Management Board to advise it on policy matters under the Act.

He said the Ministry had met with stakeholders to develop a National Plan of Action on Trafficking, which when finalized would be presented to the Management Board for consideration.

Mr Amoakwa said the LUTRENA project had been successful in Ghana in dealing with the child trafficking menace in the country. He said the project remained relevant to the cause of combating child trafficking given the complex nature of the phenomenon.

Mr Jerome Heitz, Senior Programme Officer of the ILO, called on participants, who included the Ghana Immigration Service and Customs Excise and Preventive Service to take the workshop seriously. He said the recommendations would form part of the programmes to be implemented by the ILO against child trafficking. Materials for awareness creation including posters, compact discs and brochures were presented to MOWAC to help it in its programmes.

Efforts are underway to completely discourage child trafficking, at least, in the Northwest Province. Some 103 of such cases were recently withdrawn, rehabilitated and integrated into their various families.

The President of an association in Bali called Nkumu Fed Fed, Mrs. Helen Gwanfobe, disclosed this during the final evaluation of the rehabilitation and integration of victims of child trafficking, by a team of evaluators at the Bali Community Hall on Friday, June 30.

Mrs. Gwanfobe said Nkumu Fed Fed has rehabilitated 70 of the 100 victims in its Department of Rehabilitation at the Gwan Multipurpose Centre Bali, while another association known as ASSEJA rehabilitated 33.

She said her association's objective is to empower women and vulnerable children of rural communities as a means of achieving sustainable development.The President said their involvement in the Gender and Rights of the Child Programme led them to a rewarding partnership with the International Labour Organisation, ILO in the IPEC/LUTRENA Project.

Mrs. Gwanfobe said studies by ILO revealed that Cameroonian children below 16 years are victims of trafficking with Northwest and Southwest Provinces identified as suppliers to border towns.

She said there is both internal and trans-boundary child trafficking in Cameroon.

Despite resistance from some parents who find the trade lucrative, Mrs. Gwanfobe noted that Nkumu Fed Fed has done enough sensitisation through some Common Initiative Groups, CIGs, and clubs that have been created by her association in most of the Divisions of the Northwest, Southwest, Centre, West Provinces and others where Nkumu Fed Fed operates.

Mrs. Gwanfobe then revealed amidst applause that Nkumu Fed Fed has contributed to the promulgation of the law on Child Trafficking in the National Assembly with the push of the First Vice President, Mrs. Rose Abunaw Makia, who was present at the occasion.

The Mayor of Bali Rural Council, Nyamsekwen, said he was satisfied that Nkumu Fed Fed, in collaboration with Bali inhabitants, has executed the project as required.He encouraged the survivors who have passed through the Gwan Multi-Purpose Centre to use the knowledge acquired and the equipment to sustain and enrich themselves.

He declared amidst thunderous applause a three-year tax freedom to Gwan Multipurpose graduates operating petty businesses in Bali.For her part, the ILO Coordinator Mrs. Yollande Fuda, appreciated Nkumu Fed Fed for the "well-executed project."

She regretted that ILO does not have trustworthy partners like Nkumu Fed Fed to work with. She lauded the First Vice President of the National Assembly for her personal contribution in ensuring the promulgation of the Law on Child Trafficking.

Startling revelations came from one of the survivors. Sandrine Babmwo, 17, a mother of one, recounted her ordeal as a house servant to a certain woman in Mendankwe in Bamenda.

Sandrine said she worked for long hours with little or no food, no pay, a thing that tempted her to turn to boys whom she said could give her money to buy food.

This earned her an unwanted pregnancy. The boy, Sandrine said is at large.

"My child is one year three months," she lamented. She paid tribute to Nkumu Fed Fed for rehabilitating her.

Delegates to the first Southern African conference on child labour committed themselves on Thursday to get national child labour action plans in place.

About 260 delegates from five countries attended the conference organised by the programme on Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in Southern Africa (Reclisa).

"We commit ourselves to a relentless struggle, waged individually and collectively, that shall not cease until the scourge of child labour has finally been vanquished from our countries," conference chairperson Professor Mary Metcalfe said.

The delegates also agreed to have their work in their countries monitored.

"The conference resolved to prioritise the worst forms of child labour, child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of children, use of children for illegal activities, bonded labour and children working in hazardous conditions," Reclisa said in a statement.

South African delegates met as a group, developing a set of resolutions designed to take the Child Labour Programme in the country forward.

The delegates called for the extension of the Child Support Grant to children aged 15 - the grant is at the moment only available for children up to the age of 14. They want it to be extended eventually to children up to the age of 18.

In their final declaration the delegates acknowledged that child labour was a global problem.

They said that according to the International Labour Organisation about 218 million children between the ages of five and 17 were engaged in child labour.

Of these, about 13 million were in sub-Saharan Africa.

The delegates said child labour perpetuated poverty and that priority had to be given to eliminating the worst forms of child labour, which included sexual exploitation and child trafficking.

They said the fight against child labour was "a relentless struggle waged individually and collectively that shall not cease until the scourge of child labour has finally been vanquished from our countries."

An estimated three million children in South Africa are involved in exploitative labour, a conference on the matter heard on Thursday.

"The government of South Africa estimated that 32,5 percent of children aged five to 14 years were working in 1999. Between 248 000 and three million children are engaged in exploitative child labour in South Africa," Helene Aiello of Khulisa Management Services told the Reducing Exploitative Child Labour in South Africa conference in Boksburg.

Her findings are based on a case study done in Mpumalanga's Nkomazi region.

"The most common types of work done by South African children are: fetching wood or water, followed by farm work - which can be classified as exploitative work if it prevents the children from attending school."

To make the problem even worse, children are being used by hardened criminals to commit violent crimes.

This was the shock finding of a study carried out in Pretoria and Cape Town by the Community Law Centre (CLC) of the University of the Western Cape.

Jacqui Gallinett, co-ordinator of the Children's Rights Project at the CLC, said children used by adults to commit offences (the so-called Cubac phenomenon) represented the worst form of child labour.

"Cubac cuts across two child rights issues; child labour and children in conflict with the law.

"To aggravate the situation, using children to commit crimes is not a statutory offence. You can be prosecuted under common law for being an accomplice or for incitement, but there is no full recognition of the occurrence. It is merely regarded as an aggravating circumstance."

Pilot projects to address Cubac involved rapid assessment, baseline study and selected pilot sites in Mitchells Plain and Mamelodi.

Cheryl Fran, senior researcher at the Institute of Security Studies, conducted a separate child research consultation to determine children's views about Cubac. Of the 541 children consulted, 16.91 percent were male and nine percent female. Children from secure care centres in the Western Cape and Gauteng and from a secondary school in Gauteng took part in the survey.

Discussion session revealed that children became involved in crime due to factors at home, influence of friends, use of drugs and alcohol, influence of gangs and influence of adults.

According to children, adults engage them in crime by offering rewards or through violence or threats of violence.

William Mosehla, outreach worker at Itumeleng Shelter in Sunnyside, Pretoria, said the number of children being used by adults to commit crimes was increasing.

"The main reason why adults use children is because they are the least likely suspects. They use children to break into houses and to mug people on the streets. The only way to stop the children from committing these crimes would be to reinstate the law of forcibly removing children from the streets. We have to get them off the streets if we want to see this type of abuse stopped," said Mosehla.

In rural areas many children had to work to ensure their own and their families' survival. This, Aiello said, was made worse by the HIV/Aids pandemic which resulted in child-headed households.

Children between the ages of 15 and 17 may, according to legislation, be employed for "light work" if it does not stop them from attending school.

In the research done by Aiello in Mpumalanga, 2 600 children between the ages of 12 and 17 provided information about life in their villages, at home and in school.

Ninety-five percent of the children who filled out the questionnaire indicated that they did some kind of work at different times of the day. This ranged from domestic chores like cooking, cleaning and doing the washing, to fetching water, wood and looking after livestock.

Sixty percent of these children were paid for the work they did.

She said child labour was often hidden or denied due to a variety of reasons. These included fear of losing income or payment-in-kind benefits. Parents also often put pressure on their children to continue working.

Aiello recommended that free and quality basic education for the most disadvantaged children should be implemented with urgency.

The law states that if an employer is found to be employing a child below the age of 15 years in work that is detrimental to their growth, that person will be guilty of a crime.

South Africa has several pieces of legislation which govern the age at which a child may be employed, according to Lawyers for Human Rights.

The cut-off date for child labour, however, is 15, as stated in the Child Care Act no 74 of 1983.

This act states that nobody may employ a child younger than 15 years old.

It further states that the child should complete his or her compulsory schooling.

In terms of the South African Schools Act, the compulsory school-going age is from seven to 15 years. Parents or caregivers were committing a criminal offence if they did not allow their children to attend school.

Hiring a domestic help in the capital is not only easy but also organised. One only has to contact one of the thousands domestic help agencies that now operate in the capital.

Police verification is not followed either since the owners fear they will get into trouble as most of the kids are below 18 years of age.

Thousands of agencies are run in Delhi and while many of them are registered, they are rarely monitored.

Most of the children who were rescued from these agencies, find refuge in shelters for children.

Many of the kids have been lured away from their families from the village to the cities by the middlemen, with the promise of a secure life and good income.

Harsh reality

But the kids soon discover reality is very different and that many of them have been exploited.

“My father said we would be able to build a hut, so when the uncle came I was scared. But he told me to go with him. I was made to do sweeping, swabbing, washing the clothes. If they fed me in the morning then I wouldn’t get food in the evening,” said a girl.

"I didn't know how to use the gas because in my home we had an open fire, but still the aunty beat me and twisted my ear," said another.

"The families are told by the agents that these children will get two square meals, they will study, and will earn money, and so they are sent to the city. But very often they are hardly paid,” said Aparna Singh, Counsellor, Prayas Children Shelter.