Every year, the World Day Against Child Labour is celebrated on June 12. The World Day this year marked the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the landmark International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 182, calling for action to tackle the worst forms of child labour.
This year, the theme was: „Give girls a chance: End child labour‟. This recognizes the fact that although there have been strides in eliminating child labour, there remain continuing challenges and a need to address the exploitation of girls in particular. Approximately 218 million children are still languishing in child labour; 12 million sold in bonded labour.
ASPBAE adds its voice to all those campaigning on the World Day Against Child Labour in asking for: Greater attention to the education and skills training needs of adolescent girls - a key action point in tackling child labour and providing a pathway for girls to gain decent work as adults Policy responses to address the causes of child labour, paying particular attention to the situation of girls Urgent action to tackle the worst forms of child labour
Globally, there are still some 75 million children not enrolled in primary school. The majority of out-of-school children in the world are girls and two-thirds of the 860 illiterate adults around the world are women.
One of the foremost advocates on this front, the Global March against Child Labour, points out that the situation of the girl child labourer only „mirrors the low social and economic status of women. In many cultures, girls are viewed as members of their birth family for only a few short years and as economic liabilities. This is nowhere more evident than in the case of education. Parents are reluctant to invest in the future training or education of their girls.‟ Girls may often be the last to be enrolled and the first to be withdrawn from schools if a family has to make a choice between sending a boy or girl to school.
In the face of the current global financial and economic crisis, there will be a marked increase in the number of families facing such choices. ASPBAE believes an aggressive stance should be taken to defend the rights of girls to education and to give them the right chances. Girls who drop out of school have a high chance of dropping into the jaws of child labour. Girls who are already into child labour will find it extremely difficult, if not totally impossible, to have a chance at formal education and learning.
Prescriptions are being made for governments to tackle the crisis head on by taking counter-cyclical measures of spending instead of scrimping, so that demand may bring the economies back to life. It would do well to apply the same measures to girls‟ education at this point when it is threatened most.
The ILO contends that child labour is a precursor to the youth employment problem – preventing children from obtaining necessary education and skills to obtain decent employment opportunities later in life as well as potentially exposing children to various hazards. But apart from this, increases in child labour potentially exacerbate both the supply and demand side of the youth employment problem. Child labour is cheap labour and this often hampers youth employment prospects.
In a study of the ILO that tries to analyse the global crisis and the impact on certain segments of the population, it noted that the incidence of Youth unemployment is already high in some countries in Asia - 25.1 percent in Indonesia, an estimated 25 percent in Sri Lanka, and 14.9 percent in the Philippines in 2007 - and the numbers are expected to rise.
But the more compelling reason why we should take girls away from child labour and bring them back to school is that girls‟ work are usually linked to human trafficking, prostitution, and bonded labour -- illicit and immoral in nature -- according to the Global March. They are invisible because most of their work is in the informal economy. Girls are sold or contracted as bonded labour and trafficked as prostitutes or domestic servants where they may repay their families‟ debt with the performance of abusive and intolerable work, which they are not free to leave. Because it is illegal, unpaid or, in the case of domestic work, it is often not even considered work, the burdensome labour of girls is rarely counted in official figures. Around 90% of all child domestic workers are girls.
As for the sex trade, the United Nations estimates that one million children are brought into it every year worldwide. The ILO puts the figure as closer to 1.8 million.
Of 61 countries that supplied information disaggregated by gender and age, it was found that 66 percent of victims were female. Twenty percent of all trafficking victims across the world are children, and in some parts of Africa and the Mekong region, children are the majority. Of total human-trafficking victims in 61 countries, 13 percent were girls and 9 percent were boys.
East Asian victims were detected in more than 20 countries, including Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Central Asian victims end up in other part of Europe and the Middle East. Southeast Asian victims also end up in the Middle East.
It does not take much imagination to see that in a world reeling from interlocking crises, the gains of past efforts to eliminate this ignominy can be easily swept away and the ranks of trafficked children, particularly girls, doing child labour again swell up the ranks -- unless vigorous interventions are put in place – unless we take a chance on girls and girls‟ education.
There are many initiatives like stipends for schoolgirls, direct cash transfers to poor families, mid-day meals, separate toilets for girls, safer schools, etc., that may snatch girls away from child labour and bring them back to schools . But only education and learning of quality and relevance which is sensitive to their particular needs, learning outcomes that prepare them for life‟s other choices, and more than middling probability of decent work later, will keep them in there. And only lifelong learning will give them a sense of power to change themselves and their communities as they transition from childhood to adulthood.
Reported by Raquel Castillo, ASPBAE‟s Asia Advocacy & Campaigns Coordinator, with inputs from Cecilia Soriano of E-net Philippines
