| Archived articles | » All articles, March 1997 |
Commercial sexual exploitation of children has become an issue of global concern, and appears to be on the rise. Children are increasingly being bought and sold across national borders by organized networks for work in sweatshops and brothels. The ILO has launched a new programme to eliminate the practice.
In Asia, trafficking in children both between and within various countries is on the increase. In recent years, large numbers of children from Cambodia, China, Laos and Myanmar have been forced to work as prostitutes in Thailand. Both girls and boys from poor rural areas are lured by professional recruiters and traffickers with promises of legitimate jobs in Thailand's booming economy. The trafficking routes are well known, but are difficult to close down. Girls from Myanmar are brought into Thailand through various border checkpoints. In Cambodia, they arrive via several transit points into Thailand. Girls from south China enter by way of Myanmar, and children from Laos are brought across the Mekong River into various provinces in north and northeast Thailand.
According to the Thai Police Crime Suppression Bureau, more than half of the girls and young women removed from brothels in Thailand over the last few years were from Myanmar and China. In October 1994, 80 out of 152 girls removed from brothels in Bangkok were from Myanmar. In February 1995, 10 out of 23 rescued in Khon Khaen Province came from Myanmar and China. So did 17 of 19 girls brought out of brothels in Chiang Mai Province in March 1995. Aside from prostitution, children from Myanmar are also commonly found in Thailand near the border with Myanmar working in construction sites, gas stations, restaurants and on fishing boats.
But child trafficking is by no means restricted to south-east Asia. In south Asia, thousands of Nepali and Bangladeshi girls and women are reportedly sold every year to brothels in Calcutta, Bombay and Delhi. The Government of Nepal estimates that in 1992, at least 200,000 Nepalese women and girls were working as prostitutes in India. In fact, the governments of both of these countries acknowledge the problem. In Bangladesh, the Government estimates that several thousand women and children have fallen victim to trafficking for work, including prostitution, in south Asia and the Middle East. Other reports suggest that the problem may also exist in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, among others; child prostitution in Sri Lanka, mostly of boys, has also emerged as a serious problem.
In the face of the increasing evidence of child trafficking, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has launched a new programme aimed at eliminating child prostitution and other intolerable forms of child labour in ten Asian countries. It specifically targets children under 18 who are at risk and are victims of trafficking in the Mekong Basin and in south Asia. Priority is given to girls, children from ethnic minorities and tribal populations, and to children under 12 years of age. The programme, carried out by the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) (see box p. 23) cover Cambodia, China, Thailand and its neighbouring countries and Vietnam, as well as Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
IPEC has initiated several activities in the field, which will be the basis for this programme. A 1995 child labour workshop in Nepal included child trafficking in the national framework of action, and assistance has been provided to NGOs in undertaking preventive measures against such trafficking in follow-up action on the Stockholm Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (August 1996) and in the formulation of a draft national plan of action. In Bangladesh, IPEC is preparing a project document for joint activities of the Government with the ILO and UNICEF. The problem of child prostitution was highlighted at a national workshop on child labour held in Sri Lanka in September 1996.
The ILO considers child trafficking to be a form of forced labour, in flagrant violation of the ILO's Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29). This international standard calls for countries to "suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms within the shortest possible period". All of the countries covered by the new ILO-IPEC programme, except China, have ratified this Convention and are bound by its terms. The ILO is also calling for the adoption of a new international convention focusing on the most intolerable forms of child labour, including hazardous occupations, slavery, servitude, forced labour, bonded labour, serfdom and prostitution.
The aim of the ILO-IPEC programme is to develop and strengthen special task forces on child trafficking at the national and provincial levels in each of the participating countries. These task forces will be composed of governmental and non-governmental organizations, and the ILO will assist in the formulation and adoption of national plans of action. All aspects of the issue will be covered, including prevention, monitoring and enforcement, the provision of assistance to potential victims and their families, awareness-raising campaigns, and the social protection, rehabilitation and repatriation of the exploited children.
January 1997 saw the beginning of the first phase of the programme, thanks to the financial support of the Government of the United Kingdom, and will last six months. This phase will involve the preparation of country reports, including facts and figures on the scope and magnitude of the problem, an analysis of existing legislation, enforcement practices and gaps, and an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of existing responses. Model strategies will be developed and two subregional consultations will be carried out, in Thailand and Nepal, to design and adopt a comprehensive coordinated programme to stop child trafficking in each subregion. Organizations already active in the field will participate in these consultations, as will potential new partners in the public and private sectors, and experts in key technical areas such as legislation, law enforcement, education and social services.
The trafficking of children for their commercial exploitation in prostitution or other illegal sexual practices, together with the use of children for the production of pornography, has been condemned by the ILO as an "affront to the conscience of humankind" which cannot be tolerated in any society. The IPEC programme and the proposed Convention on child labour are two new weapons in the ILO's arsenal for dealing with these problems.
Launched in 1992, the IPEC programme is designed to help countries build up a permanent capacity to address the problem of child labour. It fosters the development of an effective partnership between government services, employers' organizations, trade unions, non-governmental organizations and other interested parties including universities and the media.
IPEC activities are aimed at three priority groups:
* children working under forced labour conditions and in bondage;
* children in hazardous working conditions and occupations;
* very young working children (under 12 years of age) and girls.
ILO-IPEC is now operational in 27 countries around the world: Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, the Philippines, Peru, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Venezuela.
The number of working children around the world remains elusive. Because it is often illegal and clandestine, child labour lies beyond the reach of conventional demographic or labour statistics.
But change is on the way. New survey methods are penetrating the screen of obscurity which has concealed the problem from public view for too long. The findings of ILO surveys testing a new and more accurate methodology reveal a desperate situation, in magnitude far beyond what was earlier supposed:
* Some 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working in developing countries - 120 million full-time, 130 million part-time.
* About 61% of these children, or nearly 153 million are found in Asia, 32%, or 80 million, in Africa and 7%, or 17.5 million in Latin America.
* Child labour exists in many industrialized countries as well, and is emerging in East European and Asian countries whose economies are in transition.