CHILD LABOUR, CAUSES, EFFECTS AND THE WAY FORWARD

By: Nafisatu Osumanu Introduction When he was four years old, Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded servitude by his parents, a common practice of poor Pakistani families hoping to pay off debts owed to landlords and local merchants. For the next six years, Masih was forced to work in a carpet factoryusually chained to a loomfor up to sixteen hours a day, six days a week. A small, sickly boy, Masihs growth was further stunted by malnutrition, carpet dust, constant stooping, and beatings he received as punishment for his repeated escape attempts and occasional refusal to work. At the age of ten, however, Masih saw posters distributed by the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF), a human rights organization founded by labour activist Ehsan Khan. These posters revealed that bonded and child labour were illegal in Pakistana fact generally ignored by the local manufacturers and civil officials. Masih secretly contacted BLLF members, who helped him escape from the carpet factory. Soon afterwards, Masih joined the BLLF and worked with them to liberate 3,000 bonded children from textile, brick, and steel factories in Pakistan. Under the tutelage of Ehsan Khan, Masih became a spokesman for the bonded children of south Asia, and he travelled to the United States and Europe to persuade potential buyers to stop purchasing Pakistani carpets until the country enforced its child labour laws. In 1992, as a result of Masihs efforts, Pakistans carpet sales fell for the first time in twenty years. The boys success gained international attention, and in 1994, he won the Reebok Human Rights Youth in Action Award and a future scholarship to an American university. In 1995, however, twelve-year-old Masih was shot to death while visiting relatives in a rural village. Khan maintains that Masih was assassinated by the carpet

mafiamembers of the Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association who were eager to keep child labourers in their factories The above excerpt was a true story of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani, whose life and death brought more recognition to issue of child labour both within Pakistan and beyond. Though restrictions on child labour exist in most nations, many children do work. This vulnerable state leaves them prone to exploitation. The International Labour Office reports that children work the longest hours and are the worst paid of all labourers (Bequele and Boyden 1988). They endure work conditions which include health hazards and potential abuse. Employers capitalise on the docility of the children recognising that these labourers cannot legally form unions to change their conditions. Such manipulation stifles the development of youths. Their working conditions do not provide the stimulation for proper physical and mental development.

Child labour is still common in some parts of the world, it can be factory work, mining,
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prostitution, quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's

own small business (for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as: assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning. However, rather than in factories and sweatshops, most child labour occurs in the informal sector, "selling many things on the streets, at work in agriculture or hidden away in housesfar from the reach of official labour inspectors and from media scrutiny."

Definition of Terminology Child labour according to the Wikipedia encyclopaedia is the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. The Microsoft Student Encarta also defined child labour as

the employment of minors generally, especially in work that may interfere with their education or endanger their health. The international Labour Organization (iLO) conventions 138 (1973) and 182 (1999) define child labourers as all children younger than 12 working in any economic activities, children 1214 years old engaged in more than light work, and all children engaged in the worst forms of child labour in which they are enslaved, forcibly recruited, prostituted, trafficked, forced into illegal activities or exposed to hazards

Historical perspective The use of child labour was not regarded a social problem until the introduction of the factory system. During the latter part of the 18th century in Britain, owners of cotton mills collected orphans and children of poor parents throughout the country, obtaining their services merely for the cost of maintaining them. In some cases children five and six years of age were forced to work from 13 to 16 hours a day. Social reformers attempted as early as 1802 to obtain legislative restrictions against the worst features of the child-labour system, but little was done even to enforce existing laws limiting work hours and establishing a minimum age for employment. Conditions as bad as those imposed on pauper children rapidly developed in enterprises employing non-pauper children. Often with the approval of political, social, and religious leaders, children were permitted to labour in hazardous occupations such as mining. The resultant social evils included illiteracy, further impoverishment of poor families, and a multitude of diseased and crippled children. Popular agitation for reform steadily increased. The first significant British legislation was enacted in 1878, when the minimum age of employees was raised to 10 years and employers were required to restrict employment of children between the ages of 10 and 14 to alternate days or consecutive half days. In addition to making every Saturday a half holiday, this legislation also limited the workday of children between 14 and 18 years of age to 12 hours, with an intermission of 2 hours for meals and rest.

The real issue In the early 21st century, child labour remains a serious problem in many parts of the world. Studies carried out in 1979, the International Year of the Child, show that more than 50 million children below the age of 15 were working in various jobs often under hazardous conditions. Many of these children live in underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Their living conditions are crude and their chances for education minimal. The meagre income they bring in, however, is necessary for the survival of their families. Frequently, these families lack the basic necessities of life adequate food, decent clothing and shelter, and even water for bathing. In some countries industrialisation has created working conditions for children that rival the worst features of the 19th-century factories and mines. In India, for example, some 20,000 children work 16-hour days in match factories. Child-labour problems are not, of course, limited to developing nations. They occur wherever poverty exists in Europe and the United States. A growing concern in recent years has been the increase in prostitution among youngsters in urban centres. Causes and Effects of Child Labour Child labour is most concentrated in Asia and Africa, which together account for more than 90 percent of total child employment. Though there are more child workers in Asia than anywhere else, a higher percentage of African children participate in the labour force. The root cause of child labour has been attributed to poverty but however there are other causes that pose threat to the issue. Below are some of the known causes of child labour globally; Over population: Most of the Asian and African countries are overpopulated. Due to limited resources and more mouths to feed, Children are employed in various forms of work.

Illiteracy: Illiterate parents do not realize the need for a proper physical, emotional and cognitive development of a child. As they are uneducated, they do not realize the importance of education for their children. Poverty: Many a time poverty forces parents to send their children to hazardous jobs. Although they know it is wrong, they have no other alternative as they need the money. Urbanisation: The Industrial Revolution has its own negative side. Many a time MNC's and export industries in the developing world employ child workers, particularly in the garment industry. Families leave the severity of agricultural working conditions for cities in order to search for economic opportunities that often do not exist. Increases in the rate of urbanisation coupled with worsening economic trends, force children and their families into urban poverty. Unemployment of elders: Elders often find it difficult to get jobs. The industrialists and factory owners find it profitable to employ children. This is so because they can pay less and extract more work. They will also not create union problem. Orphans: Children born out of wedlock, children with no parents and relatives, often do not find anyone to support them. Thus they are forced to work for their own living. Willingness to exploit children: This is one of the roots of the problem of child labour. Even if a family is very poor, the incidence of child labour will be very low unless there are people willing to exploit these children. Child labour does more than deprive children of their education and mental and physical development - their childhood is stolen. Child labour is both a cause and consequence of poverty and squanders a nations human capital. Immature and inexperienced child labourers may be completely unaware of the short and long term risks involved in their work. Working long hours, child labourers are often denied a basic school education, normal social interaction, personal development and emotional support from their family.

Beside these problems, children face many physical dangers - and death - from forced labour:

Physical injuries and mutilations are caused by badly maintained machinery on farms and in factories, machete accidents in plantations, and any number of hazards encountered in industries such as mining, ceramics and fireworks manufacture

Pesticide poisoning is one of the biggest killers of child labourers. In Sri Lanka, pesticides kill more children than diphtheria, malaria, polio and tetanus combined. The global death toll each year from pesticides is supposed to be approximately 40'000

Growth deficiency is prevalent among working children, who tend to be shorter and lighter than other children; these deficiencies also impact on their adult life

Long-term health problems, such as respiratory disease, asbestosis and a variety of cancers, are common in countries where children are forced to work with dangerous chemicals

HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are rife among the one million children forced into prostitution every year; pregnancy, drug addiction and mental illness are also common among child prostitutes

Exhaustion and malnutrition are a result of underdeveloped children performing heavy manual labour, working long hours in unbearable conditions and not earning enough to feed themselves adequately

The way forward Providing all children with access to education is every governments responsibility, as well as a practical response to preventing child labour. Free, compulsory, relevant and good-quality education services are essential School represents the most important means of drawing children away from the labour market. Studies have correlated low enrolment with increased rates of child employment (ILO1992). School provides children with guidance and the opportunity to understand their role in society. Therefore, many insist on immediately abolishing child labour in developing countries and requiring children to go to school. Yet this approach is unfeasible for a number of reasons. First, children will not attend these schools without an economic change in their condition. Schools must make it worthwhile for children to attend in order to make up for lost earnings. One necessary provision is that these schools be free. Another possibility is that these schools serve food supplements. Parents might view this nutrition as valuable and therefore keep their children in school. The quality of education can also be improved so that schooling is considered an important factor in the future success of a child. Another problem with complete abolition of child labour is that education and employment for children are not mutually exclusive. As mentioned previously, many children work and go to school. In fact, many children have to work to go to school; otherwise, they could not afford the tuition and other fees associated with attendance. This underscores the fact that child labour and education may work together in many cases. As mentioned above, specialization allows some children to acquire an education through support of their working siblings.

The result of abolishing child labour would then be a reduction in the educational attainment of a population. A study in Bolivia found that children who were not employed actually had the lowest educational achievement (UNICEF 1992). Another study found that only 20 percent of children who dropped out engaged in paid

employment (Seetharamu and Devi 1985). Therefore, immediate abolition is not necessarily the answer. The relationship between labour and education is more complicated than expected.

Laws and regulations against child labour must be in place and rigorously enforced by governments. Time-bound national plans of action, as required by ilo Convention no. 182 on the worst forms of child labour, are crucial Article 32(1) of the convention on the rights of the child (1989) calls for the recognition of the right of children to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with their education, or to be harmful to their health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. Social programmes to support families in need and help them find alternative income to replace their childs employment will help prevent child labour. Such support is also needed for child-headed households, orphans and children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. Representatives from schools, churches, labour unions and nongovernmental organizations can be trained to assess the reasons why children work and to devise ways of making sure they get into school. Civil society and media engagement can change attitudes that condone child labour. Raising awareness of its harmful effects on health and development will help alleviate childrens vulnerability to abuse. Some activists caution, however, that humanitarian challenges to the use of child labour can backfire. For example, 50,000 Bangladeshi children garment workers lost their jobs in 1994 after news of Harkins Child Labour Deterrence bill aired. Many of these children then took on the more dangerous work of stone crushing or prostitution to make ends meet. According to Bangladeshi writer and activist Shahidul Alam, children factory workers in third world countries contribute needed income to their house- holds, and if these children are forced to leave their jobs they must choose between a life of increased poverty or a life of more exploitative, and often illegal, work. Childhood [in Bangladesh] is seen as a period for learning employable skills, writes Alam. Children have always helped out with family duties. When this evolves into a

paid job neither children nor their families see it as anything unusual. In poor families it is simply understood that everyone has to work. Alam contends that the complexity of the child labour issue must be re-examined if human rights activists truly want to improve the lives of working children. To avoid scenarios such as the one in Bangladesh, many activist organisations do not support the boycott of goods made by children. Instead, they demand safe and humane working conditions for children along with a serious examination of the socioeconomic conditions that require young children to work. At the first international conference of child labourers held in 1996 in Kundapur, India, child delegates from thirty-three developing countries drafted a ten-point proposal that rejected the tactic of boycotts and called for work with dignity, with hours adapted so that we have time for education and leisure. They also requested opportunities for professional training, access to good health care, and more actions that would address the root causes of our situation, primarily poverty. While human rights activists may disagree about the best approaches to ending the exploitation of working children, some analysts contend that Westerners should maintain a hands off stance toward child labour in the developing world. For one thing, critics argue, labelling programs such as Rugmarks are probably futile. Rugmark uses only eighteen inspectors to examine more than eighteen thousand looms, and, in the opinion of Columbia University professor Elliott Schrage, Without a video camera on every loom in every home where rugs are made, theres no way you can know if children were involved. Moreover, critics point out, inspectors could simply be bribed to lie about the use of child labour. Instead of trying to force overseas manufacturers to abide by seemingly more enlightened labour standards, argues economist Murray Weidenbaum, Western consumers should recognise that the use of child labour and low-wage workers is a natural stage in the industrial development of poor nations. As nations become more economically successful, Weidenbaum contends, they generally abandon exploitative labour practices. Such was the case for many national economies of the twentieth century, he points out: Japan moved from poverty to

wealth, as did South Korea in the last half of the twentieth century. . . . Nations in Southeast Asia are undergoing a similar transformation. In each of these cases, rising portions of the population advanced to better paying jobsnot as a result of idealism but from changing economic circumstances.

Concerns about the issue of child labour are likely to increase as corporate power continues to expand into multinational domains and as a growing number of companies come to rely on outside manufacturers. Child labourers, of course, are not the only ones who are exploited. Adult workers in many third world countriesand even in the United Statesface long hours, menial pay, and hazardous working conditions