Monterrey : E-9 Education Ministers miserably fail to address child labor as the greatest impediment to EFA
Feb 22
Press Release: Global March Against Child Labor
The Ministers of Education of the E-9 countries, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan, met in Monterrey, Mexico, from 14 – 15 February 2006 to accelerate the progress and strengthen mutual cooperation in achieving Education for All (EFA). While the meeting made some welcome progress in discussions on improving the quality of basic education and on education for girls, it failed to take note of the situation of child laborers in these countries, which is the biggest impediment in the realization of Education for All and the attainment of the MDGs. It is ironic that these countries, which are affected with an endemic child labor problem, have remained deathly silent on the extent and depth of the problem that is turning the realization of the EFA in these countries a Herculean task.
Kailash Satyarthi, Chair, Global March Against Child Labor and President, Global Campaign for Education said, "It was expected that the E-9 countries, led by the successful bold initiative of Bolsa Escola Familia from Brazil and the Government of India-led Indus Project on the elimination of child labor, would really sit together and deliberately look at the aggregate practical learning which will enable the E-9 countries to more realistically strategize in the future to bring children back to school, eliminating child labor. However, this was a missed opportunity for the E-9 countries and UNESCO to translate the mandate it received from the 5th EFA High Level Group (HLG) Meeting."
Satyarthi also felt that the E-9 Education Ministers have failed to draw attention to the progress made at the fifth EFA HLG Meeting in Beijing with the establishment of the Global Task Force on Child Labor and Education, which could provide a boost to the countries committed to achieving EFA and the MDGs. He said that the Governments of the rich countries need to consider innovative financing mechanisms to the southern countries that are committed to eliminating child labor in their quest to achieve EFA and the MDGs.
Elie Jouen, Deputy Secretary General, Education International - the Global Union Federation for the education sector associated with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions - expressed his dissatisfaction with the outcomes of the E-9 Summit. He mentioned that the "large southern countries have once again failed to demonstrate their political commitment in identifying and addressing the core issue of child labor as a practical obstacle in the realization of EFA. It was expected that this time around India, Brazil and China would show the way forward to the other countries by accepting the problem, but they lacked courage."
The E-9 Education Ministers meet was opened by the Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada who underscored the importance of quality education and the role of assessment in improving learning the outcomes of all children. This meeting was especially significant as it was built on the shared commitment from the last meeting in Cairo to revitalise the E-9 Initiative as a key element of South-South cooperation and to move from intent to action. The meeting recognized the challenges towards the realization of the EFA goals, particularly within the context of the E-9 countries being home to more than half the world’s population. Progress in these countries is fundamental to achieving the EFA goals because they account for:
- Over 70% of the world’s 771 million non-literate adults
- 45% of the world’s out-of-school children
These countries have some of the highest and most persistent gender and urban/rural disparities in schooling and adult literacy. In two-thirds of the E-9 countries, the Gross Enrolment Ratio in pre-primary education is still below 40%. The meeting recognized that not all countries have met the 2005 gender parity target and they committed to redoubling efforts to achieve progress exemplified by other E-9 countries, such as Bangladesh and India. Participants also shared concern on the persistence of low primary completion rates, high teacher-pupil ratios and the inadequate quality of schooling in some countries; indicators of the enormity and urgency of this issue. The meeting stressed the need to revitalize the crucial South-South cooperation in pursuit of EFA and to move from intention to action in making the EFA/E-9 partnership a force for leadership and innovation in EFA. Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to share experiences and expertise with other less developed countries that are less well-placed in their progress toward achieving EFA goals.
Blackboard march by children to demand law for free and compulsory education
New Delhi | 21 Feb 2006
Over 1000 children from all over the country today carried out a 'Blackboard march' to Parliament demanding speedy action for making the Right to Education Bill, 2005, into a law.
Carrying their demands on blackboards and slates, the children, who were joined in their march by MPs Jaya Prada, Prof S P Baghel, Girdhari Lal Bhargav, Nikhil Chaudhry, Ramji Lal Suman, called upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to help ensure free and compulsory education of good quality for all children as a fundamental right.
Organized by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the march was joined by the Parliamentary Forum on education and a number of other organizations, including the Global March against Child Labor, national Coalition on Education and the All India Primary Teachers Federation.
In their memorandum to the Prime Minister, the children demanded promulgation of a law for free and compulsory primary education, investing at least 6 percent of the country's GDP in education, speedy formation of the National Commission on Elementary Education and a complete ban on child labor.
''The government has no excuse as over Rs 5000 crore has already been collected from the public through the education cess (tax). Now is the time to spend and not to hold the money as childhood cannot wait for politics and bureaucracy,'' chairperson Bachpan Bachao Andolan Kailash Satyarthi said.
A number of social activists, parents and common people joined in the march, which began from Jantar Mantar at 1:00 p.m.
http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=256709&cat=India
Court issues notice on child exploitation in circuses
New Delhi | 17 Feb 2006
The Supreme Court admitted Friday a public interest petition seeking a direction to the central government and all the states to ban the exploitation of children in circuses, including sexual abuse and denial of food and water.
A bench of judges A.R. Lakshmanan and Dalveer Bhandari issued notice to the government returnable in four weeks and directed that the matter be listed for final disposal thereafter.
The petitioner, NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), alleged that children were forcibly detained in circuses, in many instances without any access to their families, under extreme inhuman conditions.
BBA said it had been able to liberate thousands of such children from the clutches of ruthless exploiters with the help of the judiciary and the executive. As several other children were trapped, it sought a direction to the Central Bureau of Investigation to raid all the circuses in order to liberate the children and check for violation of human rights.
The NGO wanted the court to lay down guidelines for banning the employment of children below 18 years in a circus in any form and to make the exploitation of children by circus companies a cognizable offence with a provision for adequate compensation.
http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=253136&cat=India
Liberian rubber plantation workers strike over conditions, pay, child labor
10 Feb 2006
IRIN
Angry workers have downed tools at Liberia's largest rubber plantation, owned by Bridgestone/Firestone, saying that wages are so low that children as young as seven years old are being forced to help their parents meet production quotas.
Staff at the million-acre plantation told IRIN that 6,000 workers had stopped work since Monday to demand improved living conditions and wages. The strikers comprised 4,000 casual workers who score the rubber trees' bark to tap them of their latex sap, and 2,000 administrative and domestic staff.
"We are living in the plantation beyond human imagination," said 57-year old Lawrence Tamba whose mud hut has no electricity or water. "Most of the housing units us tappers live in are dilapidated."
According to workers at Harbel, which is just outside the capital Monrovia, each laborer is required to tap 650 trees per day in return for US $3.38, leaving many tappers to rely on their children's unpaid labour to meet quotas.
"Every morning at six I wake up and without eating enough go straight to the rubber plantation to tap latex with my father," said Junior Fayiah, a skinny lad of 12 years old. "I tote the latex bucket on my head every day. Right now, as I speak to you my neck hurts."
Latex has been Liberia's top export since the United Nations imposed a ban on the country's sales of timber and diamonds during the regime of former warlord turned president Charles Taylor.
The Harbel plantation was hacked out of lush forest under the supervision of company founder Harvey Firestone. Established in 1926, Firestone, now part of the Bridgestone group, is best known for making car tires, and latex from the Liberian concession was used for Henry Ford's first mass produced car, the Ford Model-T.
In December, a group of Liberian human rights groups in partnership with the US-based International Labour Rights Fund (ILRF) filed a lawsuit in the United States against Bridgestone/Firestone, saying "thousands of workers, including minors, toil in virtual slavery at Bridgestone/Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia."
According to ILRF, Bridgestone/Firestone has issued a directive that child labor would no longer be permitted on the plantation.
"I have six children and they were all born here in the plantation," Moses Diah said this week. "I wanted them to be educated, but there is no proper schooling for them and four of my children [including a seven-year-old] are forced to help me tap latex every day."
The plantation has a school, but workers complain that it takes in children up to 14 years of age only and that standards are low.
After 14 years of civil war, Liberia has a new elected president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who faces the Herculean task of rebuilding the war-ravaged country. International donors have pledged millions of dollars of aid money for putting up schools, hospitals, roads and electricity projects.
Some 80 percent of Liberians are unemployed and illiteracy rates soared during the war years as schools were destroyed and millions of people were displaced in a conflict in which children fought on the front lines.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/b0a5248950dd899fe5785e58a8661efb.htm
Young Pakistani quake survivors turning to child labor
7 Feb 2006
IRIN
Ayaz, 14, is not quite sure where to throw the large black rubbish bag he is lugging down a small street in a suburb of the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
This is the first time Ayaz has been in Lahore, and certainly the first time he has worked as a domestic in a kitchen.
"I have never chopped onions before, or washed pots and pans. Until the 8 October earthquake, I simply attended school in Muzaffrabad, and was preparing for my matriculation examination," Ayaz told IRIN.
But, like so many others, Ayaz's life has changed dramatically since the quake. His elder brother and a sister died in the disaster, along with at least 80,000 others. His father, who had worked in the same kitchen where Ayaz now labors for up to 10 hours a day, says he must stay in Muzaffarabad to care for his wife and two young daughters, now living in a relief camp.
Ayaz's mother suffers acute depression, and her husband is afraid of leaving her. Instead, Ayaz has been sent down to work in Lahore, taking on his father's job so the family can earn some money. Ayaz says it was a "big favor" on the part of his employers to give him the job, given his lack of experience or training, though he adds, "I really want to learn and do well."
In any case, Ayaz's school has not yet opened and he is uncertain when classes will resume.
Ayaz is not alone. Families from earthquake areas who have reached Lahore and other major cities in Pakistan, have, over the past three months, been desperately seeking work. In cases where the family's main breadwinner has died or been injured, it is the children who must earn money. Sometimes, even when their father is alive, families no longer feel able to send children to school and have instead put them to work. The fact that hundreds of schools have yet to reopen, or are operating on an ad hoc basis in tents, fuels the trend.
"My mother felt it was not safe for me to stay on at the camp in Shinkiari, as she herself had to go out to bring back food and so on. I was sent to Lahore and now work in a house here," says Zareena, 12, who tends two young children as they play in a park. Her father works as a driver for the same family from Peshawar, capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
Zareena also cites other examples of children from quake-affected areas being taken on as domestic help by wealthier families, often in the belief that by employing them they will be assisting the victims of the disaster. Most of the children work inside homes, or at small workshops, restaurants and shops.
According to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), and other agencies working in quake-hit areas, there has been a marked increase in children at work since the disaster.
"This increase in child labor is a concern for us and we are trying to assess the situation," Zafrin Chowdhury, a spokeswoman for UNICEF in Pakistan, said.
UNICEF has opened up over 200 tent-schools in quake-hit areas and distributed thousands of kits, including copy books and stationery, but remains worried about more and more children joining the labor force.
There have also been reports that orphaned children, taken in by relatives, have been put to work, with the families not able to support them. "It's a cruel situation. Children were taken in immediately after the disaster by members of their extended families, or other villagers. But now these families worry about feeding them, or are simply greedy for more money. Children as young as eight have been put to work," Fahim Khan, an NGO worker who has spent over three months in the Balakot area, told IRIN.
Over the past two months in Lahore, there has been a visible increase in the number of young children from quake-hit areas working in roadside cafes or small hotels.
"There are many such children seeking work, and many are willing to work for low wages," Badr, an owner of a tiny tea stall on Lahore's busy Abbot Road, said.
Child labor remains common across Pakistan. According to official figures, 3.3 million children under the age of 14 are a part of the workforce in the country.
Unofficial estimates put the figure at closer to 8 million. The Islamabad-based NGO, Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), has stated in its reports that over 23 million children across the country remain out of school, of which a large number form part of the workforce.
The fact that many of these children work in the informal sector - as domestic workers or as waiters - also means they remain hard to control under labor laws – which in theory bar child labor.
So far, aside from the ban placed on adoptions, there is no official policy covering children affected by the quake. Strategies to counter the difficulties families face as a consequence of deaths, injury or instant impoverishment have not been put in place – and the result is that many families, fending largely for themselves, have been forced to send children out to work – either in the quake-affected areas themselves, or in larger cities where they may earn a slightly higher wage.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/6146f8eb49d95ff326be9dd68a4788cf.htm
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The Hidden Legacy of War
5 Feb 2006
Mary Anne Fitzgerald
As the sun set behind the mud hut, four young boys and their teenage sister sat around the dying embers of a cooking fire.
"I was standing next to my uncle when they shot him dead. They set fire to the house. There were flames everywhere," said eight-year-old Toum. It was the first time he had spoken of the day, after a year of silence, when armed militia known as janjaweed razed his village to the ground as part of an ongoing campaign of genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.
The attack had orphaned the children and left them dispersed and separated from each other for a couple of months before they were reunited in a refugee camp in eastern Chad. Toum, who had the matchstick limbs of severe malnourishment when he arrived last and alone, had offered no explanation as to where he had been or how he had managed to trudge over one hundred miles across an arid wasteland with little or no food or water.
Other survivors, unlike Toum, can speak of the horror visited on family and acquaintances. It is possible that Toum witnessed brutal acts being perpetrated on the parents or sisters of his classmates. What is certain is that the markers of his daily routine - his school, the mosque, the room where he slept - were destroyed. On that morning, the world as he knew it was viciously wrenched away from him.
Toum is one of uncountable millions of children who have witnessed death and torture or who have been raped, wounded, trafficked, enslaved, displaced and orphaned because of war. For these children, the beliefs, values and relationships that underpin their emotional development have been shattered, sometimes over the course of just a few hours.
Communities and families are key to putting a child's world back together. Preschoolers, who have an incomplete understanding of death, need the attention of calm, supportive caregivers. Teenagers, on the other hand, put great store on the opinions of their peers. They fare well when given a private space where they can discuss their feelings of shame, guilt and anger over what they perceive to be their failure to protect their families from armed invaders. All children benefit from having a place where their achievements at play and study are reinforced with praise so that they feel they are regaining some control over their lives.
Children demonstrate a remarkable resilience that helps their recovery once normality is restored. But what happens when they continue to live in a highly stressful situation?
In Africa in particular, the ebb and flow of fighting means that children can be displaced several times. Right now, Toum and his brothers and sister face an extremely uncertain future. Last month, 170 aid workers who oversee the welfare of some 75,000 Darfur refugees were evacuated because of an insurgency in eastern Chad that is coming to a boil.
The reality of today's world is that violence spreads and mutates like a virus and that the international community is becoming increasingly less able to control and contain it. As a result, children suffer ongoing distress and anxiety because they have no sanctuary. As both witness and victim of horrific experiences, these children live with a sense of transgression, desolation and foreboding.
UNICEF, Save the Children Fund and other organizations have begun to create recreational spaces as part of their response to emergencies. However, engaging children in play and sport by itself is not sufficient to restore the inner equilibrium that will help them withstand the vicissitudes that face them down the road.
Culturally appropriate activities must be directed by community members who have been trained to recognize and to ease deep-seated distress. To have a long-lasting effect, this healing process must take place over a prolonged period of time.
It would seem that a child's security and happiness is a no-brainer. But this is not the case. The protection of children remains of secondary concern during conflict. To ask overstretched humanitarians to do one more thing when they are struggling to provide food, water, shelter and health care can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Donors, too, shrug their shoulders. They do not see the attraction of funding programs where the results are intangible.
Trauma is the hidden legacy of war that undermines a society's ability to reconstitute itself. The effect of leaving tens of thousands of children stranded in a state of unresolved distress will reverberate through the generations.
When dysfunctional children grow up to be dysfunctional adults, they cannot impart to their own children the nurturing love and value systems that lay the foundation for cohesive and peace-loving communities. Mothers who live with the memory of rape have trouble bonding with their babies. Young men perpetuate the violence by taking up arms to avenge their families.
Banishing the mistrust and despair of war-affected children is comparatively simple and low-cost. And the yield on investment is high. Do we really need more discussion before doing something? Seeing the horror that haunts the eyes of youngsters is sufficient to know that they will be damaged for life if their problems are not addressed.
http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?id=7119
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Desperate Farmers Resort to Child Labor
5 Feb 2006
Caiphas Chimhete
The labor crisis bedeviling Zimbabwe's agriculture sector has fuelled the employment of children on farms, labor experts say. They said thousands of children, a large number of them driven out of school by high fees and the government's so-called clean up exercise, now constitute the bulk of farm workers in the country.
The children, below the age of 16, are forced to work for long hours a day in poorly ventilated tobacco barns and are given low wages to supplement dwindling family incomes.
In Chipinge district, children who cannot pay their school fees are sent to "Earn and Learn" schools. The schools offer free education but first the children have to work on the tea or cotton farms.
General Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union (Gapwuz) secretary general, Getrude Hambira, said child labor had increased due to the general shortage of manpower on the farms.
The problem is compounded by the fact that many children who were displaced by government's so-called clean-up exercise and thrown out of school are now working on farms.
Hambira said due to the worsening economic crisis the new farmers were failing to pay stipulated wages and, as a result, opted to employ desperate children.
She said of the estimated 200,000 farm workers in the country, 10 % of them were children below the age of 16.
"Child labor has always been there but this time the problem is going out of hand. There are more than 20,000 children working on farms," said Hambira, whose organization represents the interests of farm workers countrywide.
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) secretary general, Wellington Chibebe, said new farmers were "enslaving" children.
He said the low wages that the new farmers were offering to their workers were fuelling the employment of children.
"There is slavery on the farms. It's only that it is not being highlighted. It's rampant," said Chibebe.
Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) secretary-general, Raymond Majongwe, said the problem of child labor was rampant in tea estates and timber plantations in Manicaland.
"It's cruel for these farmers to prey on these children. It's disturbing because attendance by these children at schools has become sporadic," Majongwe said.
He blamed the government's so-called clean-up operation saying it contributed highly to increased child labor as most children dropped out of school.
Some of them, Majongwe said, work in hazardous conditions curing and administering tobacco chemicals as well as using potentially harmful chemicals. This was happening in Mashonaland East and Central.
But the president of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers' Union (ZCFU), Davison Mugabe, played down the problem of child labor.
"That's too far-fetched. It has never increased. In fact, new farmers are employing children to enable to raise their fees for their own betterment," said Mugabe, whose organization represents the interests of the new commercial farmers.
Child labor remains rampant in the country, despite the fact that Zimbabwe ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child in 1990 and the International Labor Organization (ILO) 182, which calls for the immediate prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor in 2000.
Chibebe said if the government continues to turn a blind eye on child labor, ZCTU would report Zimbabwe to the ILO.
If found wanting, Zimbabwe would be placed on a "Special Paragraph" meaning Zimbabwe will be labeled a rogue state and the international community will boycott farm produce from this country.
"This will force government to act," Chibebe said.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200602060096.html
Bangladesh pupils 'need toilets'
31 Jan 2006
Waliur Rahman
A study by the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) has revealed the sorry state of sanitation in Bangladesh's schools.
Published in the capital, Dhaka, the study says in some cases, nearly 500 students share one school latrine.
The government says it is trying to improve the situation and that universal school sanitation will be achieved within the next five years.
The study surveyed nearly 4,500 schools across the country, officials said.
According to the UNICEF study, Bangladesh averages one latrine to 152 pupils.
But in one of the worst cases, 479 students share only one school latrine. The study says the world average is 20 to 30 students per latrine.
UNICEF’s chief of water and environmental sanitation, Paul Edwards, said the task of achieving the world average is huge as Bangladesh has nearly 80,000 primary schools and there are secondary schools to cover as well.
The researchers found no latrine in 6% of the schools, while 13% had non-functional latrines.
A leading child specialist, Salim Shakur, said the survey results were bad news.
He said sanitary conditions in schools deterred students from going to the toilet, leading in some cases to urinary and kidney infections.
Louis-Georges Arsenault, the country's UNICEF representative, said access to water supply and sanitation facilities affect a child's ability to enroll and stay in school - especially for girls.
"Lack of access to safe water and sanitation causes poor health, irregular school attendance and diminished performance," he said.
Local government minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, who is in charge of national sanitation coverage in Bangladesh, acknowledged that progress in school sanitation facilities needed to improve as a key factor for children's health.
He said the government was committed to achieving 100% sanitation coverage by 2010 and all schools would be covered by then.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4667466.stm
Child laborers suffering health problems in Nepal
10 Jan 2006
Xinhua
Child workers working in factories and industries in Nepal have been found suffering from various health problems.
A recent study carried out on 10 factories in Katmandu Valley by Nepal Health Research Council revealed that the children in these factories have been found working with a minimum wage which they mostly spend on alcohol. This has caused many health problems among these children.
Out of total 545 workers in these factories, 135 were found to be child workers and 97 percent of them were illiterate, according to the study.
A majority of these children are found to be suffering from their work-related health problems.
About 53 percent of the children are suffering from hearing problem and those working in stone queries and brick kilns are found to have been suffering from worms and anemia, according to the study.
Most of the children working at the construction sites have been found suffering from hearing problem, says the study which called on the concerned sectors to pay attention to work-related health conditions that are affecting health of the child workers.
The study also pointed out the need for formulating a policy to check deteriorating environment as well as occupational risks in small and cottage industries which is posing health threat to children under 16 years of age working in such factories.
http://english.people.com.cn/200601/10/eng20060110_234148.html
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