WASHINGTON — The Labor Department today released its fifth annual report on the worst forms of child labour in 137 countries and territories that receive U.S. trade benefits.

"The United States believes that all people can benefit from the opportunities created by free trade and globalization," said James Carter, deputy undersecretary for international labor affairs for the U.S. Department of Labor. "Yet a free market can only operate efficiently when it is supported by protections for workers, including protections from the worst forms of child labour."

The department's Bureau of International Labor Affairs prepared The Department of Labor's 2005 Findings on the Worst Forms of child labour under the child labour reporting requirement of the Trade and Development Act of 2000. The act requires trade-beneficiary countries and territories to implement their international commitments to eliminate the worst forms of child labour.

As defined by International Labor Organization Convention 182, the worst forms of child labour include any form of slavery, such as forced or indentured child labour; the trafficking of children and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict; child prostitution and pornography; the use of children for illicit activities in particular the trafficking of drugs; and work that is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

The report presents information on the nature and extent of the problem in each of these 137 countries and territories and the efforts being made by their governments to eliminate the worst forms of child labour.

The bureau's International child labour Program collected data from a wide variety of sources, including U.S. embassies and consulates, foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations, and international agencies. In addition, bureau staff conducted field visits to certain countries covered in the report.

http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/ilab/ILAB20061547.htm

Nestlé, the chocolate maker and Labour Party donor, is sponsoring a Christian Socialist Movement meeting at Labour’s conference.

The meeting will discuss “Is slavery history?”

David Lammy, the minister for culture, will appear with Nestlé’s head of corporate affairs, and a representative from Anti-Slavery International.

But campaigners have raised questions about Nestlé’s own record in West Africa.

“Nestlé has carelessly bought cocoa from plantations that use child slave labour,” says Bama Athreya, executive director of the International Labour Rights Fund. “We saw child slave labour on these farms.”

Nestlé’s chief executive, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, rejects “slavery” accusations, but admits, “Children are working in the Ivory Coast, without a doubt.”

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9725

DAET, CAMARINES NORTE (12 September) -- To help ease the problem on child labourers in the province especially those engaged in hazardous mining activity in nine barangays in the municipalities of Labo, Jose Panganiban and Paracale, a convergence planning of the different stakeholders was conducted.

The 3-day training on the formulation of an integrated plan against child labour in Camarines Norte cum team building workshop by duty bearers was sponsored by the provincial government through the Provincial Social Welfare and Development (PSWDO) with assistance from Philippine Broadcasting Network-International Labor Organization (PBN-ILO) project, and the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD). It was held Septemberf 4-6 at Nazareth Development Center here.

Lorna C. de Claro, Camarines Norte Provincial Social Welfare and Development Officer, said the training sought to come up with a realistic and wholistic plan to lessen child labour in the province.

The programs and projects that are already existing and were integrated during the training include: policies, resolutions, education, values formation, skills and livelihood, and to include media advocacy.

The ILO has identified some 563 child labourers in this province engaged in hazardous work with another 2,800 at risk of becoming child labourers in the nine barangays of the three municipalities.

Red Batario, CCJD executive director, said that there is an emerging role of media in the campaign against child labour and the need to focus on what is wrong but on what is working.

CCJD Operations and Administrative director Girlie Alvarez, on the other hand, said that journalism is needed in the program because it provides the essential link between journalism and democracy with vital connection with the community.

She said that journalism should see the public not merely as an audience but as market, adding that it is not merely to persuade but to search for the solutions.

http://www.pia.gov.ph/default.asp?m=10&sec=news&r=&y=&mo=&fi=p060912.htm&no=48

Johannesburg (AND) For young Africa children, the path out of poverty starts is in the classroom -International Monetary Fund President Paul Wolfowitz said on Tuesday.

Speaking during the annual IMF and World Bank meeting in Singapore he said most of the children in Africa are still not able to attend even primary school.

He said a new initiative has been set up to eradicate illiteracy in developing countries.  

“The Education for All Fast Track Initiative has encouraged a growing number of countries, the majority of them in Africa, to develop credible plans for increasing primary school enrollment, especially of girls. 

“This initiative could fulfill the dreams of 70 million children in 60 countries who want to go to school, if - let me underscore that - if donors increase the resources needed to match improved performance,” the president said.

However, the pioneers of the Education for all Fast Track Germany, Italy and Japan were condemned by the Global Campaign Education (CGE), an independent made up of a number of education lobbyist groups in more than one hundred countries.

The three countries were declared “misers when it comes to educating the world’s children,” by the GCE.
According to the president of the GCE, Kailash Satyarthi, “hundred million children will not go to school…because of broken promises by rich countries”.

He said leaders of the three countries “should be ashamed” for failing to meet their targets.

Johannesburg (AND) Some 70% of child labour worldwide is reportedly found in agriculture, with many children engaged in forced and hazardous activities.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), these children are often obliged to work long hours, use sharp tools designed for adults, carry loads too heavy for their immature bodies and operate dangerous machinery.

"Children working in agriculture also risk exposure to toxic pesticides, dusts, diseases and unsanitary conditions," FAO’s rural development division head - Parviz Koohafkan has said.

Considering that agriculture is one of the three most hazardous work sectors - along with mining and construction - reducing child labour in this sector was on the agenda of a recent meeting in Rome, which brought together representatives from FAO and other international agricultural organisations and the International Labour Organisation to discuss how to coordinate their efforts to tackle the problem.

Agriculture is one of the three most hazardous work sectors in terms of work-related deaths and injuries, and it is generally accepted that this is especially true for children, whose lack of experience or training and still-developing bodies make them particularly vulnerable.

“Some agricultural activities - mixing and applying pesticides, using certain types of machinery - are so dangerous that children should be clearly prohibited from engaging in them,” Koohafkan said.

New Delhi, September 18: Making it clear that the Delhi government had to seriously consider the issue of child labour, the Delhi High Court has directed it to submit a comprehensive plan and policy on how it intends to carry out rescue and rehabilitation of all child labourers including domestic labourers in the Capital.

From October 10, employing children as domestic workers and in shops, roadside eateries (dhabas) will be banned.

Joint Labour Commissioner Piyush Sharma, who was present in court during the hearing last Friday, was directed to file this information in an affidavit.

As many as 425 children had been rescued last November, from illegal zari factories in Shahdara.

Out of these, 265 were below 14 years of age and were sent to the shelter home at August Kranti Bhawan with an NGO.

The NGO had later informed Child Welfare Committee that as it was unable to look after the children so they be shifted to another shelter home. However, no proper plan for rehabilitation of these children was drawn out after this and most found their way back to other factories.

The court asked the government to submit a reply on whether the children were handed over to their parents or sent back to their homes.

A petition had been filed by Save the Childhood Foundation (Bachpan Bachao Andolan) demanding that all government departments and agencies rescue child labourers across the city, especially the ones engaged in zari units.

The raid had exposed the lack of planning and implementation of the rehabilitation process of the government.

New York - A United Nations task force set up to prevent abuse of children in war zones on Thursday recommended sanctions against a Congolese militia accused of forcibly recruiting youths as soldiers.

The move was the first enforcement step by a new Security Council Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict, set up late last year to prevent children from being abducted, raped or forced into combat.

The working group's first target was the Congolese Revolutionary Movement (MRC), a militia operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri district, where ethnic violence and clashes had killed tens of thousands of civilians.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said the step was an "important landmark in the fight against impunity for those who commit grave violations against children during armed conflict".

Ngudjolo deploys 10 000 fighters
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported to the working group in June that the MRC was forcing children into its fighting ranks.

The group's leader, Mathieu Ngudjolo, accepted a government offer of amnesty a month later in return for his men joining the national army.

Ngudjolo had boasted of having at least 10 000 fighters deployed across the troubled district, but experts doubted that claim and it was unclear in any case whether they would ever show up at demobilisation camps, as required by the truce.

A decision to actually impose sanctions would be up to a separate security council committee in the DRC. UN sanctions on individuals typically included travel bans and asset freezes.

The vast central African country's government was seeking to integrate former rebel fighters into its security forces as it tried to put behind it a 1998-2003 civil war that pulled in armies from six neighbouring countries and killed four million people, most of whom died from hunger and disease.

UN peacekeepers had been in the DRC since 1999 and the mission was currently the world body's largest and most costly.

The DRC held its first free multi-party elections in 40 years in late July, and a presidential runoff was due on October 29.

Bhola (name changed) left his mother, siblings and their ramshackle hut in Himachal Pradesh and came down to Chennai to work. He takes care of a partially paralysed senior citizen, and his chores include wiping away the constant dribble from his mouth and feeding mashed food with tremendous patience. Bhola, all of nine years, sits quietly by the old man's wheelchair with a `wipe cloth' tied to his waist.

From October 10, though, life might change for Bhola and children like him when the Government's ban on employment of children below 14 in homes, hotels, roadside eateries, resorts, and spas comes into effect. Early in August, the Labour Ministry announced that it was adding these jobs to the list of hazardous occupations in which child labour is banned under the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act, 1986.

And the penalty for violators is a jail term ranging from three months to two years and/or a fine of Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000. The decision was taken on the recommendation of the Technical Advisory Committee on Child Labour.

The ban is meant to come to the rescue of thousands of children who are often subjected to physical violence, psychological trauma and sexual abuse when they work in homes and hotels. The Committee stated that children employed in roadside eateries and highway dhabas were the most vulnerable, especially to sex and drug abuse.

Though child labour has been banned in hazardous industries such as bidi-making and glass manufacturing and regulated in other occupations for two decades, a 2001 Government census puts the number of working children at over 12 million. Not all of these children work in hazardous occupations — many work in homes, clean tables at hotels, serve at dhabas or teashops, help in mechanic shops and stores or sell knick-knacks at traffic signals.

Thomas George, Communication Officer, UNICEF, says the issue is a complex one and cannot be solved with a simple ban. "The ban is a welcome move because it makes hiring children punishable. Earlier, there was the loophole of regulation and people got away with all kinds of exploitative practices. But the Government has to ensure that the implementation and rehabilitation systems are in place." He says there are sufficient provisions in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and other education programmes to provide schooling for children. "It is just a question of matching the beneficiaries with the schemes. The Government has to implement the provisions on a war-footing for this ban to be really effective."

But ask Devi, a housemaid, whose twin girls are in Standard X, and one can see why it's not enough to merely guarantee compulsory and free education. Devi explains that while the education at the local Corporation school in Chennai comes free, she needs money to buy new uniforms, textbooks and shoes every year. "Getting them admitted into another school for the tenth standard was such a trial because we had to get all kinds of certificates, including a caste certificate, from various government offices."

And, this involved a whole lot of payments, both official and unofficial. "I have to borrow money from my employer at the beginning of each academic year," says Devi. Her son dropped out of school after Standard X because the family didn't have enough money. "My husband is alcoholic. I had to send my son to work because I couldn't pay for his books and uniform. But because he is earning too, the girls can continue studying."

Micro finance
Empowering women in poor families could be one way to stop parents from sending children to work. T.R. Gopalakrishnan, micro-finance consultant with UNESCO, says, "Research has consistently shown that families with access to micro-finance send a larger number of children to school. Poverty involves a wide gamut of issues.

Let's begin by addressing its most basic: the lack of resource. Various yojnas are already in place. Let the Government now take steps to teach the people how these schemes can benefit them."

Another momentous task involves changing the mindset of people who employ children, as many of them are from urban, educated families who believe they are helping the child by giving him or her a job and a home.

Jaya Viswas says the seven-year-old girl she hired "brought laughter into the house. She kept me company when my children were at school, and entertained my sick mother-in-law with her chatter." But when she was 16, her mother took her away to be married. "And that's when I realised I looked upon her as one of my own children." Jaya is among those who are sceptical about the benefits of the ban. "I gave the child a happy, comfortable home; a better one than her parents could have provided," she says.
Ananya Ghosh from Kolkata doesn't subscribe to this view, even though her driver is someone who joined their household at age six as a cleaner. She realises that abuse and ill-treatment are not the only factors. "I hired children as domestic help because I believed I was helping them by providing a safe home environment, food, clothes.
But over the years I realised that I wasn't helping; I was making it difficult for them to even imagine a life other than working for some family," she says.

Child safety remains an issue, and the ban will show results only if it is combined with other strategies for rehabilitation, including expansion of the formal and non-formal education systems. The Labour Ministry said in its notification that it was considering strengthening its rehabilitative scheme, the National Child Labour Project, which already covers 250 districts where child labour is endemic. Preventive and rehabilitative plans need to address the reasons why children are forced to work — child labour exists not only because of poverty but also because of discrimination, societal attitudes, lack of quality education and perceptions on the value of education.

Support systems
The non-formal education system serves as a bridge for out-of-school children to enter the mainstream. The concept, in existence since the 1970s, was later linked to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the National Child Labour Project.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, a Central Government initiative in November 2001, attempts to provide elementary education for those between six and 14 years of age by 2010 by partnering with State governments, local bodies and the community.

According to the programme's objectives, every child should have been in school or in an education programme by 2003. The SSA framework provides strategies for specific groups such as girls, SC/ST students, those with special needs, and out-of-school children.

Its Alternative and Innovative Education Scheme focuses on working children, bonded labourers, street children, deprived children, and children of migrant and sex workers.

The idea is to set up bridge courses, back-to-school camps, remedial teaching centres, residential camps, drop-in centres and halfway homes. Strategies also include outreach workers to establish rapport with the children, a counsellor to provide emotional support and a doctor to cater to their health needs.

The National Child Labour Project is run by the Labour Ministry and, according to its Web site, over four lakh children have benefited so far. It was launched in 1988 to provide non-formal education to children rescued from hazardous industries. Voluntary agencies and Panchayati Raj institutions are involved in setting up the schools. Children are provided vocational training, supplementary nutrition, health check-ups and a stipend of Rs 100 a month to prepare them to enter proper schools.

Childline (1098) is a 24-hour toll-free number that children or adults can call for help or to report abuse or ill-treatment of children.

The emergency service is backed by a round-the-clock support and intervention service.

It's available in about 66 cities. It focuses on street children, child labourers in the unorganised sector, domestic help and all children in need of care and protection.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/life/2006/09/08/stories/2006090800030100.htm