SECTION 1: THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD
sation. Any action to eliminate child labour has to concentrate first and foremost on 1 Ban the most hazardous forms of child work including cases like these. bonded labour, work in heavy industry or with dangerous Yet it is vital to recognise that the majority of work done by children in the substances and commercial sexual exploitation. Third World is neither so hazardous nor so Governments should support the ILO Convention on exploitative. This is why the term 'child Hazardous Labour-and act against these most extreme labour' is too explosive and negative to be forms of child labour immediately. applied to all work by children. It is insult 2 Guarantee universal primary education. If they gave it sufing to children whose lives are being ficient priority even the poorest governments could delivruined by hard labour to lump them into er on this goal, to which they have all committed themthe same category as those who help out selves by signing up to the UN Convention on the Rights in the family shop for a couple of hours of the Child. after school. 3 Make education more flexible, relevant and attractive to Indeed, some kinds of child work are child workers. It is no good simply opening the school useful, positive contributions to child doors and assuming children will flock in. There are credevel-opment. The idea that childhood ative initiatives for state education systems to build on. should be an entirely work-free zone is a 4 Register all births. This is vital if there is to be a chance luxurious and a rather sentimental Western idea. Work for a few hours a day of regulating under-age working. that contributes to the family's well-being, 5 End structural adjustment's crucifixion of Southern whether by perform-ing domestic duties economies, which has slashed education spending while or helping in the family fields, is more like fostering a dog-eat-dog climate which helps push chilly to foster a child's development than to dren into work on the streets. damage it. 6 Raise the status of child domestic workers. Existing laws And between the two extremes of posi need to be applied to this forgotten group of child labourtive and negative child work-in a grey area ers and a new worldwide campaign launched to draw less susceptible to cut-and-dried judg attention to their plight. Consciousness-raising can work ement as to whether it is exploitative or wonders here, as a multimedia campaign in Sri Lanka dam-aging-come the vast majority of chil recently proved. dren's occupations in all their multiplicity 7 Rein in the transnational corporations. In the absence of a and diversity. Children haul water and col world body prepared to regulate the transnationals, conlect firewood. They deliver newspapers and tea. They take care of younger sib sumer pressure must do what it can to force corporations lings. They work on the streets washing to adopt voluntary codes of conduct. These must apply to windshields, shining shoes or selling ciga their suppliers' employees as well as their own-and must rettes. They can be found in sweatshops or offer dismissed children an adequately funded educationin their family's sewing room. They are ser al alternative. vants in the homes of the better-off. 8 Give child workers' jobs to their own adult relatives so that If we treat all work by children as the family as a whole does not suffer. This must be estabequally unacceptable we are trivialising the lished as a general principle of anti-child-labour practice issue and making it less likely that we will worldwide. be able to root out the most damaging 9 Support child workers' organisations-along with their forms of child labour: blanket condemna demand for more protection and rights in the workplace. tion helps no-one. People in the rich world If children's wages are raised to the level of adults' it will consider work by their own children to be remove one of the main incentives to employ children. acceptable when it is performed for pock I0 Gather more information. Data on child labour is notoriet money to buy computer games. It would be thoroughly bizarre if Westerners ously sketchy and inadequate. More research is especialwho allowed their children to work for ly needed into the 'invisible' areas of child labour-those pocket money to buy compact discs within the home, on the family farm or should seek to outlaw child work in the in domestic service-which particularly affect girls. Third World which is often driven by a poor fam-ily's desperate need. In every country, rich or poor, it is the nature and conditions of children's work which determines whether or not they are exploited-not the plain fact of their working. Into this middle territory-neither entirely negative nor entirely positive-falls the work of many children. Ask most of them and they will tell you very clearly that they want to work and that the last thing they want is for Westerners to take away their livelihood by means of legal bans or consumer boycotts. They are even getting themselves organised-movements of work ing children are springing up all over the Majority World, from the famous street children of Brazil to the less celebrated domestic servants of French West Africa. They have even con fronted European labour ministers and trade unionists over child labour in Amsterdam. Their message is clear and simple: they wish to assert their right to work in non-exploita tive conditions. Given that they are forced to make their way in a brutal world which will offer them no alternative, this is entirely understandable. We can't simply tell them to wait until the glorious day when all child labour is abolished and their material and spiritual needs are more nearly provided for. There has to be an interim strategy of protection. We should listen to them carefully but that does not have to mean that we have to accept
Tackling Child Labour: A Ten Point Plan
Medical Student’s International: The Child, October 1999.
25