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IRIN hat geschrieben:YEMEN: Political upheaval likely to increase child labour
06.10.2011 - IRIN

More parents are likely to put their children to work amid the upheaval caused by months of anti-government protests in Yemen, government and aid sources say.

Yemen is already home to one million child labourers, mostly employed in the fishing industry or agriculture, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour’s Child Labour Combating Unit.

With poverty being a key factor in child labour in Yemen, many more families are sending their children to work to boost family income amid increasing food prices caused by the unrest, Muna Salim, head of the unit, told IRIN.

“Streets of main cities are currently filled with children seeking work,” she said.

In addition, several thousand children have not been able to go to school because school buildings have either been used as bases by pro- and anti-government forces or are in high-risk urban conflict zones. Other children are unable to attend their schools because they are occupied by people displaced by a separate conflict between Islamist militants and the government in the south.

“These children are at high risk of joining any of the forms of child labour,” Ahmad al-Qurashi, chairman of the local NGO Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection (SOCP), told IRIN.

The political crisis has also affected government coffers. Oil exports have decreased; citizens are refusing to pay taxes; and municipalities are not paying water and electricity bills. The government has trimmed budgets in order to cope, cutting the annual funding for the Child Labour Combating Unit in half to YR1 million (US$4,500), Salim said.

A training programme for child labour field inspectors, which began in August 2010, initiated by the unit and the International Labour Organization (ILO), was halted in February due to political unrest and a funding shortfall. Another awareness programme for families, child workers and employers, which was meant to start in February with funding from the government, was also put on hold, she said.

Dangerous work

More than 90 percent of child workers live in rural areas, and children in these areas are five times more likely to be working than children in urban areas, said a 2009 report by CHF International.

Since 2001, the Child Labour Combating Unit - in conjunction with the ILO - has managed to rescue 4,200 children from dangerous jobs.

The risks typically involve exposure to pesticides, and operating dangerous agricultural equipment. Current labour law in Yemen defines a working child as a person under 15, but does not specify a minimum age of employment.

In its second phase from September 2008 to August 2011, the Access-Plus Project, run by local NGO Charitable Society for Social Welfare and Community Housing Foundation International, with funds from the US Department of Labor, currently has 7,363 former child labourers, or children at risk of being engaged in labour, enrolled in education programmes in the governorates of Hajjah, Taiz, Aden and Hodeidah, according to project director Roberta Contin.

Over 5,000 of them are aged 6-14 and enrolled in formal education; 750 are in vocational training, like sewing and embroidery; and 1,301 in literacy courses for those aged 14-17.

Some children have had to miss literacy and vocational training classes because of the political unrest. Other project activities have been delayed, reduced or cancelled.

Another 6,400 children have already gone through the Access-Plus Project during the programme's first phase from September 2004 to August 2008, which provides them with school uniforms, shoes, school bags and stationery; and exempts them from paying tuition fees.

Saudi pull

Children in Hajjah Governorate are particularly vulnerable, as neighbouring countries with higher living standards can be enticing to parents. “As the governorate is close to the border with Saudi Arabia, thousands of children stop going to school just to illegally migrate to Saudi in search of work,” project manager Jamal al-Haddi told IRIN.

The Access-Plus Project also caters for children with learning disabilities and has set up 24 classrooms for that purpose. “These classrooms, equipped with computers, educational games and other remedial education equipment, have proved effective in helping children with retarded mental growth read and write," al-Haddi said.

Lawyer Mohammed al-Rowaini told IRIN amendments to the labour law presented to parliament in October 2010 include stipulating a minimum age for employment, and forcing employers to get written consent from a parent or guardian before employing someone aged under 15, with sanctions against employers who fail to comply.

However, the current political turmoil has put paid to the amendment’s passage through parliament.

IRIN hat geschrieben:GUINEA-MAURITANIA: Worst forms of child labour still widespread
10.10.2011 - IRIN

The law does not necessarily make much difference when it comes to child labour: In Guinea and Mauritania the worst forms of child labour persist despite it being banned by law, leading child protection experts to call for a better understanding of the dynamics behind it.

West Africa adviser for child protection at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joachim Theis told IRIN: “Until now there has been very little discourse which makes the links between strategies taken by parents to find a solution for each child in the context of informal employment, and the application of international norms.”

Mauritania

In Mauritania the law prohibits putting children under 14 to work, and penalizes those who are guilty of exploiting minors. But in reality, according to a late September report the International Trade Unions Federation (ITUC) under-14s continue to be sent to work, including some in “slave-like” conditions.

While most of the children are girls working as domestics for families, boys are often forced to beg; or are sent to work in the construction industry, on buses as money-collectors, or in criminal gangs. They are also forced to beg by Koranic teachers who are supposedly giving them a religious education - as is the case with hundreds of thousands of children across West Africa. In rural areas, boys work in the fields or herd animals.

Domestics work on average 10-hour days, according to a 2009 study by UNICEF and the Ministry of Welfare for Children and the Family; while those working as beggars or in agriculture may work as many as 16 hours. Of 265 children interviewed, just under half said they were beaten by their bosses.

A long tradition of slavery complicates the situation. A law was passed in 2007 forbidding slavery but it is not rigorously enforced, according to Mamadou Niang, head of external relations at the General Confederation of Workers in Mauritania.“The authorities are usually lax in these cases, and the administration often ignores them - in some cases they may dissuade the families of enslaved children from bringing a case forward,” he said.

One fifth of the Mauritanian population is affected by slavery in one form or another, according to a 2009 study by NGO SOS Slavery.

Guinea

In Guinea, despite legislation banning work for under-16s, “children carry out dangerous work in farms, in mines and in fisheries.” According to the ITUC, some children in artisanal mines work 15-hour-days, seven days a week, from age five.

Child trafficking is also a problem: Moving children across borders into forced begging and other activities is still prevalent, though it has declined in recent years.

ITUC calls on both governments to more rigorously impose child labour laws and penalize individuals and organizations that do not comply, while recognizing that capacity in ministries remains very low.

Grégoire Tonguino at the child protection and pre-school education department of Guinea’s Ministry of Children and the Family, told IRIN: “Guinea is good at developing laws, but applying them still poses some problems.” Few people other than child protection experts even know about child labour laws in Guinea, he added.

However, a gap in the law means that even with boosted capacity, it would be hard to crack down: the law does not cover children in the informal sector, where most domestics and agricultural helpers work.

Cultural reality

Child labour is commonplace in poor rural societies in West Africa, as it is a way of training children and assuring them jobs in the future. In Guinea, for example, "fostering" or giving a child to a family as an apprentice, is considered beneficial to the child.

Sending a child into work is part of a family’s risk-spreading strategy to combat poverty, said Theis.

As Olivier Feneyrol, regional adviser for NGO Terre des Hommes in West Africa once put it to IRIN: “Children have been moving around the region for centuries and working just as long. That is the cultural reality here.”

"The debate on this issue is contentious,” says Mariama Penda Diallo, head of international relations, solidarity and humanitarian action at the Trade Union of Workers of Guinea (USTG), “because people say that it’s better to place the child from an early age so they can learn how to work,” she said.

Most poor urban families have no choice but to send their children to work, added Niang in Mauritania. “With the rural exodus, many families have settled in slums with their children. In the absence of public strategies to look after them, poor parents have no alternative but to send their children to work.”

To make a difference to children’s lives, authorities need to better understand the context they are working in, said Theis: “It is important to understand the decision-making process that families go through because policies are not necessarily based on real situations that can have concrete results.”

For the ITUC the priorities are clear: it recommends investigating instances of children being forced into work to pay for their religious education; more prosecutions of those individuals who force children to work; turning the Mauritania anti-slavery law from theory into practice; and expanding Guinea’s child labour law to include children involved in unpaid, temporary, contract work.

But given the reality, just as important, said Diallo is to improve conditions for the thousands of children who will inevitably end up working, and to find a way to help them also attend school.