Child trafficking is rampant in Southeast Asia, with hundreds of thousands of children caught up in this lucrative and shadowy business. In the Philippines, where poverty is high and jobs are scarce, and unscrupulous recruiters trick parents into selling their children into prostitution and slavery.

Child trafficking has become big business in the Philippines, where children are lured from villages across the archipelago with promises of high-paying jobs in and around the nation's capital, Manila.

But once there, most girls end up in the sex industry, and boys often end up working as virtual slaves on farms and in fish markets.

In Manila, U.N. Children's Fund child protection officer Victoria Juat says naive children and parents are lured by an old trick.

"Normally they are promised, words like, 'Okay you will be a house help, you will be a saleslady, you will be a cashier in this restaurant.' But no, it will be something else," said Victoria Juat. "Later they find out no, they will be brought to a brothel, they will be brought to karaoke bars and they will become something else."

The crime of trafficking children exists throughout Southeast Asia. According to the State Department, the largest number of victims trafficked annually in the world come from this region, often to feed the booming sex-tourism industry.

As early as the mid-1990s, UNICEF estimated that close to 200,000 foreign child labourers, 70 percent of them boys, had been lured into Thailand from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, and Southern China. Tens of thousands are trafficked within their own borders. UNICEF says as many as 35 percent of sex workers in the Mekong River nations are under the age of 17.

UNICEF also says Thailand is a regional hub through which trafficked children are diverted to other cities and countries in the region, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.

Cecilia Flores Oebande, the president of Visayan Forum Foundation, a private organization in the Philippines that helps to rescue and care for trafficked children, says it is a lucrative business.

"It is, next to drugs and arms smuggling, it is the second most profitable business here in the Philippines," said Cecilia Flores Oebande.

Most of the children are brought to the capital by ship, the main mode of transport in this nation of more than 7,100 islands.

The Visayan Forum has teamed up with the Philippine coast guard, the government's Port Authority, and the country's largest shipping company, Aboitez, to keep a sharp eye on arriving boats in the main ports, looking for possible traffickers traveling with groups of children.

The organization has operations in four main ports serving Manila, and says it rescues between 20 and 60 children a week. But officials say thousands are never found.

Across the street from Manila's main North Harbor port, Visayan Forum runs an emergency shelter where rescued children stay for several days while social workers attempt to locate their parents.

Marina Ulleque is a social worker with the Visayan Forum. She meets the boats at Manila's busy international sea port and hands out cards with emergency numbers to possible child victims, telling they can get help.

She says her work has its dangers. The Visayan Forum has filed nine criminal cases against traffickers on behalf of 31 children during the past three years. No trafficker has been convicted, but Ms. Ulleque says those arrested will sometimes threaten workers from her organization.

"Sometimes they send their lawyers here and also they say, 'I am the relative of senator so-and-so and I am the friend of the station commander or the port police,' something like that, so we are being harassed," said Marina Ulleque.

One victim hoping for justice is 17-year-old Menchu, who has been staying for more than a year at a Visayan Forum safe house in Manila waiting for the case of the men who allegedly trafficked her to come to trial.

Menchu, who comes from a large, poor family on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, was recruited along with a group of friends with promises of high-paying jobs in a Manila restaurant.

Menchu says that while on the boat, she and her friends saw two men approach their recruiter, and overheard them say the girls looked young and fresh.

The terrified girls told the ship's authorities, and the traffickers were arrested, but Menchu is still waiting for her day in court.

The president of Visayan Forum, Cecilia Flores Oebande, says urgent action must be taken to tackle the problem.

"This is urgent, every day," she said. "We are running out of time, because every day there are children being trafficked. We need to fast-track our action or else it's maybe too late for all of us."

Despite the efforts of local and international anti-trafficking groups, the problem is growing in Southeast Asia. Many experts say that the extreme poverty in the Philippines, Cambodia, Burma, Laos and Indonesia, combined with poor law enforcement and corruption, means that traffickers will continue to prey on the region's children.

http://www.politinfo.com/articles/article_2005_05_27_2029.html

Nearly 200 slum children from eight states gathered here for four days to discuss issues related to child rights, suggest solutions and share their experiences.

The fourth National Convention on the Rights of the Child, organised by Community Aid and Sponsorship Programme and Plan International (CASP-Plan) - two child focussed NGOs - was conducted May 23-26.

"We shall campaign against any ill that makes life a burden for children. We want the government and the media to help us in this campaign and work towards a society free of child abuse," Anu Singh Chauhan, a 13-year-old participant, said at a press conference Friday.

Chauhan, a Class 8 student of Rajkripa Higher Secondary School, New Delhi, said: "Child labour is a disease which spoils lives and kills a child's dreams. I will work towards its eradication by talking all my friends into attending school."

The convention resulted in children identifying an action plan to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The recommendations made by the children included creating awareness, stringent punitive action and mobilisation of opinion on child labour, health, poverty, neglect of the girl child and alternative education.

"We want our friends from various strata of society to come forward and participate in the campaign. We have had well-off children helping us out or at least empathising with us in several cities like Mumbai and Pune," said 15-year-old Yogesh L. Medar of Mumbai.

A member of the Bal Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan for the past three years, Medar was one of the two spokespersons at the press conference and deftly handled the media's questions.

"I spend around four hours a day at the sangathan where we discuss and implement solutions for several of the problems faced by slum children in Mumbai," he said.

The bal panchayat or children's council, as the event was referred to, was initiated in Delhi in 1996 by CASP-Plan, aimed at bringing together children aged 10-15 from slums in various parts of the country.

"We only helped them in running the entire show. Otherwise the event was organised and managed by children themselves. Even the media was invited and handled by children," CASP-Plan's Praven Sharma said.

India has an estimated 70-80 million child labourers, many of them bonded labourers, as a result of which they lose out on basic rights like education, health, food and sanitation.

Over 85 percent of the child labour is in the rural areas, in agricultural activities such as livestock rearing, forestry and fisheries.

On Dec 2, 1992, India ratified the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1990. This ratification implies that India will ensure wide awareness about issues relating to children among government agencies, implementing agencies, the media, the judiciary, the public and children themselves.

http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=84066&n_
date=20050527&cat=India

An estimated eight million children are currently working in Pakistan, with almost two-thirds employed full-time, according to the annual report of the country's leading child rights society.

"The basic rights of the children - education, health and protection are being grossly violated in the form of child labour in a wide range of sectors that are often hazardous and difficult to access," Zarina Jillani, a child rights activist working with the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The annual report of SPARC entitled, 'The State of Pakistan's Children 2004', released earlier this week, looks at the condition of children in five broad categories: education, health, child labour, violence against children and juvenile justice.

SPARC is the country's leading child rights body. Established in 1992, it has been publishing the annual reports since 1997. Through research, advocacy, awareness raising and training, the society works nationwide to improve conditions for young people.

The report points to a substantial increase in the number of working children in the country. According to the National Child Labour Survey conducted in 1996 by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS), about 3.3 million children were economically active in the country.

The SPARC report added that poverty had a direct impact on child labour and called on Islamabad to do more to foster poverty alleviation.

Taking a critical look at government spending, the report said: "Pakistan spent 98 billion rupees (approximately US $1.6 billion) on poverty alleviation programmes from July to December in the financial year 2003-2004. After this much spending why has there been no discernable decrease in poverty in this country?"

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/bfb79e
19dfa990939f44cc888dac3bed.htm

Ivory Coast's farmers have vowed to combat the use of child labour on the farms that produce 40 percent of the world's cocoa, mindful that without a national crackdown their beans will find no purchase in the US come July.

Importers of one-third of all the cocoa produced in the west African state, the US has imposed demands that the beans be certified as free of child labour, from picking and processing to packing.

The issue has earned such currency that US MPs Tom Harkin of Iowa and Eliot Engel of New York urged a boycott of chocolate made from African cocoa for St Valentine's Day in February to protest against child labour used in its production.

Harkin has sponsored numerous bills in congress to demand that trade preferences be denied to countries that fail to end child labour in agriculture.

"Certifying that all phases of cocoa production are free from child labour is a crucial element in ensuring the survival of our industry and the maintenance of our global dominance," said Moussa Bado, the organiser of a two-day conference on the industry's responsibilities. "We are the test card for these policies."

About 200 000 children work, mostly as pesticide sprayers, on the farms that have turned Ivory Coast into the main driver of the west African economy, according to a study by the International Labour Organisation.

These children, many of whom are of primary-school age, are among the 6 million of Ivory Coast's 17 million people who rely directly or indirectly on cocoa for their livelihood.

Efforts to curb the use of child labour on Ivory Coast's cocoa farms have waxed and waned over the past several years, though little concrete progress has been made.

The World Cocoa Foundation last year offered vocational training to 1 200 children aged between 12 and 16 to keep them from the fields, but there has been little impetus to expand the programme to serve other children.

Cocoa and coffee exports represent 40 percent of the export receipts for the country, and 20 percent of its gross national product, according to state figures.

Those receipts have become even more important to the economy in the three years since rebels failed in a bid to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, sparking a civil war.

"We are already facing a very difficult environment to sell our products and we cannot afford to let other factors prevent us from selling our cocoa," said Bado.

Among the options proposed by the Coffee and Cocoa Board to keep children from the fields was an apprenticeship programme for poorer families, said the its president, Lucien Tape Doh.

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2534207&f
SectionId=613&fSetId=304

As many as one in eight Togolese children are sent away from home to work, a study of child labour in the West African state suggests.

They travel across borders, to as far away as Liberia, Cameroon or Gabon.

Sending very young children away to work is considered normal, interviews conducted by a charity in the worst affected areas showed.

Nonetheless, their parents concede that many come home ill, unhappy, and no richer than when they went away.

For an impoverished farming family it can sound very tempting - an offer from someone they know to take their son or daughter, and place them in a "good" family where they will earn their keep, and get some training or education.

These areas have always supplied migrant workers to richer parts of Togo and to neighbouring countries.

Children from poor families have always gone to stay with richer relatives, and helped around the house in exchange for board and lodging.

But what these families do not usually know is that the trade in housemaids and young farmhands is now big business.

Thousands of Togolese children and young teenagers are supplied to the labour markets in the capital, Lome, and to nearby Benin, Nigeria and Gabon.

Exploitation and rape

The development charity, Plan International, talked to families in the small towns and villages where the children come from; almost two thirds of families had had at least one son or daughter go away to work.

These were usually very poor families, generally with several children and often with parents who could neither read or write.

Girls - the majority of these working children - usually went by arrangement between their parents and an intermediary; boys often went without their parents' knowledge to get money or a bicycle, or just for the adventure.

One surprise is that children still go, despite the fact that other youngsters have come home sick, unhappy and often still destitute, the boys telling stories of exploitation on agricultural plantations, many girls pregnant as the result of rape, some even infected with Aids.

Plan is calling for free and compulsory education to keep children, especially girls, in school, community action to make parents aware of the dangers, and a greater willingness by the Togolese authorities to prosecute the traffickers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4578573.stm

U.S. chocolate makers are preparing a voluntary plan to end child labour on West African cocoa farms, hoping their efforts will prevent Congress from pushing for chocolate products to carry labels reading "no child slavery."

Facing pressure from lawmakers and nongovernmental organizations, the biggest chocolate companies have promised to have credible certification standards established by July 1.

"The members of Congress are quite aware of all the work that's going on. We are working with the government here and with governments overseas," said Susan Smith, a spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association.

"There are a lot of things that need to be improved and we understand that. Cocoa farmer families certainly need a lot more help, and we are working on that," she said.

Failing to meet the deadline could bring a political and public relations backlash for the industry, which took in some $15 billion in retail sales last year.

Not all industry watchdogs say putting labels on chocolate bars is the best solution.

"I think all of us are going to urge more efforts," said Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, a nonprofit organization working to end slavery worldwide.

"Let's not beat them (industry) with sticks; let's hold out some carrots too," he said. Legislating labels could end up harming West Africans reliant on income from cocoa bean sales more than it harms the chocolate industry, he added.

The chocolate industry's darker side surfaced several years ago in reports that children were forced to harvest cocoa crops in West Africa. More than 40 percent of the world's cocoa beans come from Ivory Coast, a country struggling to end a civil war.

Chocolate makers like Barry Callebaut USA, Hershey Foods Corp., Nestle and Mars Inc. supply Americans with more than 3 billion pounds of chocolate per year.

HARKIN-ENGEL PROTOCOL

In 2001, U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and leading chocolate manufacturers agreed to address the worst forms of child labour in the cocoa industry and proposed funding to create labels for chocolate products, guaranteeing that no forced child labour was used.

The so-called Harkin-Engel Protocol demands "a credible, mutually acceptable system of industry-wide, global standards along with independent monitoring, reporting and public certification."

In February this year, reacting to charges the industry was dragging its feet, Harkin said he was considering federal legislation to require mandatory labeling.

"The chocolate companies have the leverage and clout to stop this suffering. But if corporate responsibility is lacking, Congress will be obliged to act. I look forward to the day sometime soon that I will buy chocolate with a clear conscience," Harkin said in the statement.

Neither Harkin nor Engel were available for comment.

Smith said there was no need for a law requiring U.S. chocolate makers to guarantee their products are free from forced child labour. "We just don't think it's going to happen."

Darlene Adkins, coordinator of the child labour Coalition, said labels would be a huge endeavor and could curtail the flow of cocoa arriving in this country, most of which comes from Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana.

"It could eventually mean higher prices on consumers. My hope is that the protocol will work and that we don't have to go there," she said.

Industry-proposed standards will pave the way for farm labor monitoring and independent verification across the West African cocoa region during the 2005/06 crop harvest, with the first certification report issued in early 2006, she added.

http://www.reuters.co.za/locales/c_newsArticle.jsp;:42960112:
e6f662a514bde130?type=topNews&localeKey=en_ZA&storyID=8618011

The District Development Committee (DDC) Chitwan singed an agreement on May 24 with the ILO to implement an Action Programme against child labour. The Action programme is a first pilot Project of its kind. It is an umbrella programme under the DDC aimed at strengthening the role and capacity of the DDC in eliminating the worst forms of child labour in Chitwan in close collaboration with civil society and employers’ and workers’ organisations. Binod Prakash Singh, local development officer DDC Chitwan and Lelya Tegmo Reddy Director of the ILO Office in Nepal signed the agreement in Kahtmandu.

The Action programme will directly benefit the children working in the worst forms of child labour and their families, through a decentralized model and by strengthening the implementation of the Local Self-Governance Act 1999. The Action programme will provide services to child domestic workers and rag pickers and prevent other children who are at risk. It will also provide skill development training and micro-credit support for410 families of working children and children at risk. In addition, the DDC will establish a child labour monitoring system as well as a database on the incidence of the child labour in the district.

The second Agreement signed between CAP- CRON and the ILO aims at facilitating the application of Article 55 of Children’s Act of 1992 concerning the Juvenile Justice Procedures and system on a pilot basis in six districts such as Morang, Makwanwanpur, Kaski, Rupandehi, Banke and Kanchanpur. The agreement was signed by Mahendra Prasain chairperson of CAP- CRONand Lelya Tegmo Reddy, ILO director.

http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/pageloader.php?file=2005/05/26/topstories/main27

The Office of the Rights of the Child in the Presidency is three years late in submitting a progress report on children’s rights to the United Nations -- tainting South Africa’s image as a human rights champion.

Child rights activists have slammed the office for failing to submit the report, which was due in 2002 as part of South Africa’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The office drew further fire last week by claiming the report was finished and that it had received an extension allowing it to submit it this year.

“We have received no letter requesting an extension,” said Paulo David, secretary of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva. “The committee takes these delays seriously. South Africa will have to produce evidence to show it received an extension.”

The UN committee monitors countries’ progress in implementing the convention, as well as changes in the situation of children internationally.

Activists in the field said the UN was particularly concerned about rising infant mortality rates in South Africa since the previous submission. In 1998, 45 out of 1 000 South African children died before their first birthday -- a figure that rose to 60 per 1 000 in 2000. HIV/Aids is thought to be the cause.

When submitting progress reports, each country must respond to UN recommendations in the previous report, in which they are given guidance on how to improve their performance.

“We are concerned because the non-governmental organisation committee must write an alternative report, focusing on implementation,” Carol Bower, executive director of ChildrenNOW, said. “Ideally the two reports should relate to each other, but our hands are tied.”

South Africa’s failure in respect of its international obligations means “there is no coherent summary of where the country is as far as children are concerned”, she said.

Andy Dawes, director of child, youth and family development at the Human Sciences Research Council, said the delay was unfortunate, as South Africa had a good reputation among developing countries for advancing children’s rights. “Our Bill of Rights is a clear example of a commitment to the rights and well-being of children, and we want to maintain that reputation.”

Dawes added that the world child rights community, including Unicef and the Save the Children Alliance, “are aware of the situation [in South Africa] and concerned about it”.

The delay is attributed to staff shortages in the child rights office and a leadership vacuum after the dismissal of former director Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva.

The Democratic Alliance claims Mkhwanazi-Xaluva was initially suspended in 2003 and later dismissed on charges of forgery, irregular payments, general mismanagement and non-compliance with a memo of understanding between a state-owned enterprise and the child rights office.

“Mkhwanazi-Xaluva was later re-employed in the president’s office and has been suspended once again for serious misconduct including gross insubordination and bringing the Presidency into disrepute,” said Mike Waters, a DA spokesperson. He says the party will be calling for an inquiry into why she was -re-employed, after being found guilty of serious offences.

“The Office on the Rights of the Child has not had a consistent director since 2003, and this has affected its work. Producing the report only really gained momentum last year,” said the office’s current director, Mabel Rantla.

She added that South Africa tried to meet its international reporting obligations, but this was sometimes difficult. “We acknowledge the need to strengthen reporting systems.”

“If countries with fewer resources can get their reports in, South Africa has no excuse,” said London University law professor Geraldine van Beuren, who helped draft the UN convention.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=241468&area=/insight/monitor/

A Swiss-based non-governmental organization (NGO) known as Terre D'Homme is in the final stages of introducing a program in Russia, aimed at stopping the illegal flow of children into the country from other former Soviet nations. The group hopes the project will not only help improve the situation in Russia, but serve as a role model to other countries trying to combat child trafficking.

Sit at any traffic stoplight in Moscow and you are bound to see a mother carrying a swaddled child past car windows with