Sustainable Elimination of Bonded Labour in Nepal
(SEBL) — IPEC/Declaration Project
| Time-frame |
Donor(s) |
Duration: 69 months
Starting date: December 1999
Completion date: August 2005 |
US Department of Labour (USDOL) |
The ILO has launched major initiatives against bonded labour in the subregion. The main project
addressing this issue is the ILO's Declaration and Social Finance Department Project on Prevention and
Elimination of Bonded Labour in South Asia (PEBLISA), which focuses on the prevention of bonded
labour and the rehabilitation of former bonded labourers in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan,
through various strategies, including micro finance. In Nepal, the ILO's International Programme on the
Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) has been undertaking, together with the ILO's In Focus Programme
on the Declaration, a programme for the sustainable rehabilitation of former Kamaiya bonded labourers.
Since June 2004, this project has been working in close collaboration with the PEBLISA project in Nepal.
Objectives
The joint IPEC/Declaration Project aims to rehabilitate bonded adult and child labourers and to prevent
them re-entering exploitative forms of labour.
Components
The strategy of intervention consists of:
- Direct action targeted at ex-Kamaiyas, their families, and children
in order to secure their effective release from bondage and to
sustainably reduce their poverty through training and education,
livelihood improvements, and service provisions;
- Capacity and alliance building among key actors — the Government,
workers' and employers' organizations, and civil society — for
policy development and programme formulation at the national and
district levels;
- Awareness raising campaigns among ex-Kamaiyas, their landlords,
and society at large. Another important component of the project
is to ensure sustainability through data collection, research,
and implementation of a tracking system.
Direct beneficiaries
The direct beneficiaries of the project are ex-Kamaiyas and their children under the Kamaiya system
and those still de facto in debt bondage or at risk of falling into bondage, in five districts of western
and far-western Nepal (Banke, Bardia, Dang, Kailali, and Kanchanpur). Since women and girls are at
high risk of bondage due to the prevailing gender discrimination in these communities, the priority target
groups are Kamaiya women and girls.
Key outputs
The project has been successful in:
- Providing the Out of School Programme (OSP) to 2,812 children
(1,537 girls and 1,278 boys) and formal schooling to 6,116 children
(2,934 girls and 3,182 boys);
- Preventing 9,984 children (2,060 girls and 5,015 boys) and withdrawing
153 girl children from exploitative work;
- Convincing almost all former Kamaiyas to send their children
to school;
- Providing basic literacy to 3,512 adults (2,849 women and 663
men), vocational/skills training to 641 adults (185 women and
456 men), and income generating activities to 17 adults (11 women
and six men);
- Establishing various vigilance committees of freed Kamaiyas
in many villages by DECONT (Democratic Confederation of Nepalese
Trade Unions), GEFONT (General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions),
and NTUC (Nepalese Trade Union Congress) under the action programmes
to monitor the implementation of labour standards and incidence
of bondage and child labour. These committees have been strengthened
through training to discharge their roles and responsibilities
in the communities effectively;
- Raising awareness on the Kamaiya Prohibition Labour Act as well
as raising awareness on issues such as minimum wages, gender,
education, and micro enterprises;
- Initiating joint action with other agencies working in the field
for the construction of a water supplycum- irrigation project
at Lalmatiya in Dang district, as well as for the rehabilitation
of former Kamaiyas in five Kamaiya prone districts.
Another IPEC project focusing on bonded labour (Community Action for the Elimination of Child Bonded
Labour from Exploitative and Hazardous Work — Phase III) has been mainstreamed into the Nepal Time-
Bound Programme (TBP). Approaches undertaken by this project are now also being taken over on a
larger scale through the IPEC/Declaration Project on sustainable elimination of bonded labour. In order to avoid duplication, the community action project in its third phase (July 2003-June 2006) has developed
new interventions for addressing the issues of some other forms of debt bonded labour relations, like
Hali, Harwa, and Charwa, which are not covered by the Kamaiya Labour (Prohibition) Act, 2001, while
also targeting children working under exploitative and hazardous conditions in stone quarries, brick kilns,
and hotels and teashops.
|
