Malawi child labour committees: Generating results in community-based child labour monitoring

The Malawi National Action Plan on Child Labour 2020-2025 further indicates that poverty was the major cause of Child Labour as most of the parents in the rural communities lack basic needs such as food, clothes, and shelter as well support to education to support their children with education. Most of these children rarely attend classes as they choose to look for job to support their parents with food and other basic necessities.
In addition, the 2015 National Child Labour Survey (NCLS) of Malawi found that 38 percent of children aged 5-17 were engaged in child labour (between 2.1 million). An examination of the survey trends since the first child labour survey conducted in 2012 indicated that the child labour prevalence had not significantly changed with the last survey reporting child labour prevalence at 32 percent.
To help address these challenges, the International Labour Organization (ILO) through the Addressing decent work deficits and improving access to rights in Malawi’s tobacco sector’ project (ADDRESS) has been working together with Centre for Youth Empowerment and Civic Education (CYECE) by establishing and strengthening the capacity of a community based structures that include Community Child Labour Committees (CCLCs) and Social Dialogue Committee (SDC) to own and take lead in identifying, monitoring, withdrawal and referral of children from Child Labour in worst forms of child labour. The project is working in Mzimba, Kasungu, Lilongwe and Mchinji districts.
Through this partnership several events and trainings were undertaken on child labour prevention and protection in Lilongwe, where CYECE in collaboration with Chadza Social Dialogue Committee in Lilongwe managed to prevent two children from being engaged in child labour following a monitoring exercise conducted in the months of December 2023 to January 2024 in Traditional Authority (T/A) Chadza.
The children from Chinyama village under T/A Chitekwele in Lilongwe, traveled on barefoot for about 80 kilometers to Traditional Authority Chadza in the same district of Lilongwe in search of piecework in tobacco farms. It was during this time that the SDC of Traditional Authority Chadza found the children loitering in tobacco farms looking for piecework in Lilongwe.
After sitting down with the children to identify why they were searching for piecework, 13-year- old Yamikani Dyless said that it was due to the challenges he was facing after his mother got married to another man.
“Me and my siblings lack a lot of things that made us to stop going to school and start searching for piece works in tobacco farms among other areas,” said Yamikani, who has four other siblings.
“In most of the cases my siblings went to bed on an empty stomachs, they had no shoes, clothes and school materials which made them to decide looking for piecework in nearby communities” added Yamikani.
Many other Child Labour cases similar to Yamikani’s have been brought to the attention of CYECE and referred to the Lilongwe District Child Labour Committee (DCLC) which managed to repatriate the children back to their homes and enroll them back to school.
CYECE through the ADDRESS project managed to support them with scholastic materials and other basic needs to help them in their education. Overall, CYECE through the ADDRESS project has identified, prevented and protected 501 children (263 Boys, 238 Girls) from child labour.
CYECE with the support from the ADDRESS as to continue working with SDCs projects and the Social Welfare Office to closely monitor the children to ensure that they were going to school and they would not go back to child labour. The chiefs surrounding the community were engaged to take part in sensitizing people in the area and hold every parent accountable.