UNICEF REPORT DEMANDS END TO MOST INTOLERABLE FORMS OF CHILD LABOUR, SUCH AS PROSTITUTION, BONDED LABOUR
Press Release
ICEF/1836
UNICEF REPORT DEMANDS END TO MOST INTOLERABLE FORMS OF CHILD LABOUR, SUCH AS PROSTITUTION, BONDED LABOUR
19961209 ADVANCE TEXT'1997 State of World's Children Report' Presents Six Steps to End Child Labour, Which Affects 250 Million
Launching the 1997 State of the World's Children Report in New York on Wednesday, 11 December, Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), called for global action to tackle child labour. The UNICEF report suggests six key steps to address the root causes of child labour and to ease the plight of an estimated 250 million working children. Demanding an immediate end to the most intolerable forms of child labour, such as prostitution or bonded labour, Ms. Bellamy described them as "so grave an abuse of human rights that the world must come to regard them in the way it does slavery -- as something unjustifiable under any circumstances".
The report estimates that at least one quarter of the children in the developing world are working -- some 250 million children aged five to fourteen years -- and proposes six key steps that must be taken to address the situation:
-- The immediate elimination of hazardous and exploitative child labour;
-- Free and compulsory education for every child;
-- Stringent child labour laws and their vigorous enforcement in each country;
-- Registration of all children at birth;
-- Data collection and monitoring; and
-- Codes of conduct and procurement policies.
UNICEF's most fundamental demand is for the immediate elimination of hazardous and exploitative child labour. "Work that endangers children's physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development must end", said Ms. Bellamy, "Hazardous child labour is a betrayal of every child's rights as a human being and is an offence against our civilization."
The UNICEF insists that any comprehensive attack on hazardous child labour must advance on several fronts. It must take into account the best interests of the child as a human being with a whole range of needs and rights, not simply as a child labourer. It must aim to release children immediately from the most damaging situations, such as bonded labour and prostitution; rehabilitate those children who are released from work, through the provision of adequate services and facilities, especially education; and protect working children who cannot immediately be released, making their life as safe and as conducive to development as possible.
The report stresses the links between the provision of education and the eradication of child labour, pointing out that education can liberate today's child labourers and prevent children drifting into work in the future. The UNICEF points out that "the longer and better the education, the less the likelihood that a child will be forced into damaging work".
The report calls for a change in national and international priorities to ensure that every child has access to relevant, good quality primary education. It cites a sample survey in 14 of the world's least developed countries to illustrate the level of educational deprivation. In these countries, half the pupils have no textbooks. Classes are often huge, with 67 pupils per teacher in Bangladesh and nearly 90 per teacher in Equatorial Guinea. As well as being underfunded, education is often rigid and uninspiring, with a curriculum irrelevant to and remote from children's lives. As a result, around 30 per cent of children in developing countries who enrol in primary school do not complete it. "Education has become part of the problem', says UNICEF. "It has to be reborn as part of the solution."
The report calls on governments to allocate 20 per cent of their budgets to education and basic social services, and on donor governments to do the same with their official development assistance. "It would cost an estimated $6 billion a year, on top of what is already spent, to put every child in school by the year 2000. That may seem an enormous sum. Yet, it is less than 1 per cent of what the world spends every year on weapons."
The report includes a chapter addressing four of the most persistent myths surrounding child labour, starting with the belief that child labour is found only in the developing world. The report points out that there are child workers in all countries, rich and poor. In the United Kingdom, for
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example, the most reliable estimates show that between 15 and 26 per cent of eleven-year-olds are working. In the United States, a three-day sting operation by the Department of Labor in 1990 found more than 11,000 children working illegally.
Secondly, the report challenges the myth that child labour will never be eliminated until poverty disappears. It points out that child labour exists primarily because there are people willing to use children for profit -- to exploit their poverty, usually defying existing national law. While the effort to eliminate all forms of child labour must go hand in hand with measures to reduce extreme poverty, "the end of hazardous child labour does not have to, and must not, wait for the end of poverty", the report states. "World poverty cannot be eliminated by the end of the decade. But hazardous child labour -- and the grave violation of the rights of the children involved -- can be." The elimination of hazardous and exploitative child labour is, in itself, an important strategy for the reduction of poverty, according to the report.
Thirdly, the report challenges the idea that child labour is mainly found in export industries. In fact, only a small fraction of the world's child workers are employed in export-sector industries -- probably less than 5 per cent. Most children work on farms and plantations or in houses, far from the reach of labour inspectors and from media scrutiny.
Finally, the report addresses the idea that sanctions and boycotts are the only way to make headway against child labour. This myth implies that the people and governments of developing countries have been ignoring the problem of child labour. In reality, governments, communities, organizations and individuals have been working to expose child labour abuses, develop local and national programmes, and promote consumer awareness at home and abroad.
Sanctions and boycotts have been very effective in raising awareness of child labour in export industries, forcing some governments and business leaders to take vigorous action against it. However, different approaches are needed to reach the remaining 95 per cent of child labourers whose work is often unseen and unreported, such as child prostitutes, farm labourers, domestic servants, and those working in local industries.
Nearly every country in the world has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognizes the child's right to be protected from economic exploitation and from work that is hazardous or likely to interfere with the child's education or development. Under article 32 of the Convention, governments are committed to establishing a minimum age for employment, regulations on terms and conditions of employment, and proper penalties to ensure that these labour laws are enforced.
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"The lives of working children will not change unless the world backs its words with action", says UNICEF. "It is time morality prevailed. As we step into the next millennium, hazardous child labour must be left behind, consigned to history as completely as those other forms of slavery that it so closely resembles."
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NOTE:The 1997 State of the World's Children Report will be launched by Ms. Bellamy at 10:30 a.m. on 11 December, at a press conference in the Labouisse Hall, UNICEF House, 3 United Nations Plaza, 44th Street, New York, NY 10017. Ms. Bellamy will be joined by Roger Moore, UNICEF Special Representative for the Film Arts.
For further information, contact the following at UNICEF's Media Section: Madeline Eisner, (212) 326-7261; Rana Flowers, (212) 326-7309; Patrick McCormick, (212) 326-7162; or Angela Hawke, (212) 326-7259. Copies of the report will be available at the press conference. For an advance copy or for a press kit, including a copy of the report, photographs, graphics and feature materials, contact the Media Section. For broadcast footage, contact William Hetzer, Chief of Broadcasting/Electronic Communication Section, (212) 326-7290.