Tackling Child Labour through Education – Phase II

Speech by the Director ILO Office for the Pacific Island Countries

Statement | Fiji Islands | 19 February 2015
Speech notes By David Lamotte
Director, International Labour Organization (ILO) Office for Pacific Island Countries

DIGNATORIES PRESENT/ TO ACKNOWLEDGE:
• Hon. Minister for Employment, Productivity and Industrial Relations- Mr. Konrote
• European Union Ambassador and Head of Delegation of the EU for the Pacific- Mr. Andrew Jacobs
• Hon. Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation- Ms. Rosy Akbar
• Social partners from the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation- President (Howard Politini) and CEO (Nesbitt Hazelman)
• Social partners from the Fiji Trades Union Congress
• Permanent Secretaries; Deputy Commissioner, Police
• Directors, government officers and representatives from the various civil society organisations and the media
• UN, ILO and EU colleagues present
• Friends and colleagues.

Introductory comments
Good morning and welcome to this event.

Today together we launch the second phase of our child labour project in Fiji.

I stress that it is our project because the elimination of child labour requires a concerted effort by governments, international organizations, employers and workers’ organizations, NGOs, local communities, the children themselves and their parents.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of those individuals and organization on the Steering Committee.

We know from international and regional experience that Education is a crucial component of any effective effort to eliminate child labour. This is why we are very pleased as part of the European Year for Development 2015 to launch this project now when the monthly theme is “Education”.

Historically, child labour only began to be seriously questioned when industrialization and urbanization fundamentally changed children’s working relationships and multiplied the dangers. Although some governments began to intervene in the nineteenth century to protect children from the worst excesses of the factory system and the most dangerous activities, the major change came when governments’ commitment to education increased.

This historical experience teaches us two important lessons:
• the importance of governments taking a lead role to eliminate child labour by providing protective legislation along with universal, free basic education, and effectively enforcing both labour and education-related regulations; and
• the necessity for awareness-raising to bring about changes in the social climate, such as the recognition of children’s rights, and understanding of the long-term health impacts of early labour, which enables new laws to be enacted and accepted.

We define Child labour as work that harms the child’s well-being and hinders his or her education, development and future livelihood. Two ILO Conventions – the Minimum Age Convention No. 138, and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182 - provide the framework for national law to define a clear line between what is acceptable and what is not, including a minimum age for admission to employment or work.
These International Labour Conventions are part of a broader set known as the Fundamental conventions which cover

• freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
• the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour;
• the effective abolition of child labour; and
• the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
All member States of the ILO are required to respect, to promote and to realize the principles concerning the fundamental rights. This is an obligation of ILO membership irrespective if they have or have not ratified them.
Fiji has ratified all of the Fundamental Conventions.

Now let me turn my attention to our TACKLE project

Initially, the Tackling Child Labour through Education (TACKLE) project was a global project coordinated by the ILO and funded by the EU from 2008 to 2013. Globally, the European Union has been a major support of the international efforts to eradicate child labour.

The TACKLE project highlighted the importance of harmonising labour and education policy and practice, and demonstrated that progress towards eliminating child labour is possible when the political will to fight it exists.
Later this morning the TACKLE DVD will provide an overview of the project and some of the achievements, so I will not go into detail about TACKLE.

The independent evaluation tells us that the Fiji component of the project was successful. In Fiji, it led:

• Greater national and community awareness that child labour does exist and is wrong – Children should be in school
• You improved your national legal and regulatory environment
• Organizations implemented action programmes that remove children from work and got them back into school and other support services
• The Ministry of Labour and Industrial relations, establishment of a Child Labour unit
• The Ministry of education launched initiatives to make school more relevant to the world of work
However, the evaluation of the Fiji TACKLE project also said that while systems for identifying child labour and taking actions have been established from local to national levels, there is still need for:
• a more efficient system of coordination, monitoring, enforcement and referral that will result in reduced numbers of children in Fiji still in child labour, including its worst forms, who need to be withdrawn and provided with education, training and rehabilitation; and
• better linking and communication of data between different institutions.
This is why we are fortunate to have a second phase of this project. During this phase together we will
• Improve partnership, coordination, enforcement and monitoring. This will involve strengthening relations with the justice sector, especially Fiji Police, judges and lawyers, especially in targeting worst forms of child labour.
• Revise and test the current protocol on child labour monitoring and enforcement, ensuring that the role of each agency in the system is clearly specified, and the capacity of each of the partners are further strengthened through training.
• Promote policies for access to education or skills training for out-of-school children in child labour or at risk
• Strengthen entrepreneurship and careers counselling for young people
• Conduct additional research on emerging child labour to assess trends and gaps, implement direct actions to withdraw children especially from the worst forms of child labour and create more awareness of the issue.

TACKLE II provides Fiji with the opportunity to establish itself in the region as the technical “resource hub for child labour in the Pacific”. Already through the ILO’s Pacific sub-regional child labour and trafficking programme, we have been able to share much of the Fiji TACKLE experience here- for example processes for child labour inspections and designs for child labour research- with countries such as Kiribati, Samoa, PNG, Tuvalu and Solomon Islands.

TACKLE II also reminds us of the need to upscale the policy discussion on child labour to another level. To be able to fully eliminate child labour, we also need to address the broader social issues of poverty, youth unemployment, job creation and decent work for all.

We thank all our partners here who have been major ‘players’ in implementing TACKLE, and in particular, we sincerely thank the European Union for the opportunity to continue to provide the technical support to our Fiji tripartite ‘plus’ partners to sustain and upscale efforts to tackle child labour in Fiji.