Ridding the global economy of child labour (23 October 2000)

BANGKOK AND DHAKA (ILO News): How can we banish child labour from the global economy.   The answers received across Asia over the past decade through the efforts of governments, employers, workers, parents, teachers, and national and international organizations will be shared by experts from 16 countries* at a three-day regional meeting**  to open at Dhaka (Bangladesh) on Tuesday 24 October under the aegis of the International Labour Organization (ILO) with financial support from the Government of Japan.

To avoid sending thousands of destitute child workers into the streets and leaving them there without assistance means giving them and their families viable alternatives, says an ILO report. Pioneering work on giving child workers valid alternatives to work began five years ago in Bangladesh when the country's garment manufacturers' and exporters' association (BGMEA) agreed with UNICEF and the ILO to an integrated plan involving:

• a monitoring system;

• an income-replacement scheme for former working children and their families;

• the establishment and supervision of learning centres (in a country where some 48 per cent of children were not attending school according to 1996 government estimates);

• and the provision to adults in the child worker's family of micro-credit and skills and entrepreneurship training.

In only four years some 27,000 children were withdrawn from BGMEA member factories and the percentage of children working in those factories dropped from 40 per cent in 1995 to 5 per cent in mid-2000. Basic education, stipends and skills training have opened avenues of hope to thousands of children and the country's leading export industry was saved from the threat of a crippling boycott by importers.

Other industries, such as soccer ball assembly (Pakistan) and footwear and fisheries (Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand), have created similar strategic alliances under the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) to move children out of the workplace into training and the prospect of a better life.

The challenge in today's global economy is to reach out to what the ILO calls the Ainformal sector, made up of smaller concerns employing 10 people or less. In Bangladesh this sector draws on as many as 90 per cent of the labour force in agriculture, manufacturing and services. In many parts of the world it is an important source of employment and income. However, few workers in the informal sector have any social protection.

Whatever the sector, central to the successful withdrawal of child labour is the process of monitoring, on which the Dhaka meeting will focus. 

"Monitoring is first and foremost a matter of understanding and commitment", explains Mitsuko Horiuchi, the ILO's Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific. "It requires cooperation between employers, workers, educators, parents, government authorities and dedicated organizations to see that child workers are identified, that their immediate needs B which may include greater safety at the workplace B are met, that their family's economic needs are fulfilled without the child's earnings, and that the children acquire essential knowledge and training."

As an organization of governments, employers and workers, the ILO is uniquely placed to tackle a problem like child labour which requires co-ordinated efforts from a wide range of players. Its Atripartite structure makes the ILO the only UN organization with civil society at the table.

The ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) was launched in 1992 to help states combat child labour through action programmes, research, policy development and advocacy. From a core of less than 10 countries IPEC has grown into a global alliance now operating in 65 countries in all regions of the world.

* Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam

** ILO/Japan Asian Regional Meeting on Monitoring Child Labour at the Workplace, Dhaka Sheraton Hotel, 24-26 October 2000.