Fight poverty to end child labour

New Delhi: Seven year old Naushad is quiet and sombre. He is still recovering from the traumatising experience of being a child labourer.

Naushad, a silent participant at the recently held South Asia Congress on Child Labour and Education in the Indian capital, was rescued by Delhi based Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) from an agent in the Indian capital who had brought him from his native village in Bihar on a false promise to pay his family a paltry sum of Rs. 500.

Children at the South Asia Congress on child labour / Photo credit: BBA

Several children who attended the three-day Congress shared their heart-rending experiences and what became undeniably clear is that poverty, gender inequality, humanitarian emergencies like conflicts and disasters and cheap labour make children more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Entrapped innocence

According to estimates done by the International Labour Organization (ILO), around 218 million children are toiling in the world, out of which 126 million are involved in the worst form of child labour, endangering their health, physical and psychological growth.

Most of these working children are found in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“There is a need to attack conventional notions that children will learn while at work,” said Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson, Global March Against Child Labour.

He expressed deep concern over the fact that India with her dubious distinction of having the largest number of child labourers in the world has also become a transit for trafficking children to other countries.

Education is the right response

Addressing the gathering, Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said, “Children who are denied education will grow up as illiterate adults excluded from any opportunity for social mobility.”

Delhi's Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit addresses the gathering / Photo credit: BBA

 “It is our shame and we must invoke shame in those employers and trafficker and unscrupulous people who benefit from this practice,” said Dikshit.

It is, therefore, extremely important to tackle the issue within a triangular paradigm. Elimination of child labour needs to be intricately linked with education and poverty alleviation strategies.

This requires a multi-dimensional approach consisting of awareness building, community participation, alternative and viable social and economic rehabilitation and strict enforcement of national and legal instruments for child protection.

Anees Jilani, a civil society leader from Pakistan took special note of children working in the domestic and informal sector who fall outside the purview of any law and are subjected to such inhuman practice.

In India, for instance, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986, together with all other legislations, covers only 15% of the total child labour population in the country keeping out sectors like agriculture that employs close to 80% of child labour.

Strict laws

What is, therefore, needed is a universal ban on the heinous practice and not just a combination of regulations and prohibitions that makes the task of combating child labour more complex and challenging.

However, this is easier said than done as the current policies and programmes do not address the issues of families suffering from sever economic hardships that make them more vulnerable to child labour.

Bans are necessary but can only address the problem partially. The need of the hour is to recognise that child labour is a manifestation of poverty and inequity in society.

Also, once withdrawn from work, there is hardly any effort to rehabilitate the children into mainstream schooling. 

Responding to this problem, a participant suggested that governments should provide residential schools that combine formal education and vocational training focusing on rehabilitation.

Girls have rights too

Eleven year old Bano from Pakistan studies in a one-room madrassa (an Islamic school). Though, it is like a silver lining in the cloud for her, the girl has no means of recreation as she is burdened with household chores.

Drawing special attention to gender discrimination, participants felt that while demanding education for all, girls should be given due weightage as in many households they work chores and earn to pay for their brothers’ schooling.

What became evident was that child labour is the direct impact of the inequalities that stem from age-old socio-economic relationships based on the hierarchy of caste, class and gender. Given the multi-faceted dimension of the problem, a holistic approach is needed to tackle the issue.

With key inputs from Anita da Costa Pereira Machado and Denise Possobom.