Friday was the tenth annual World Day Against Child Labor, a day on which NGOs and human rights organisations call attention to the plight of more than 200 million child labourers worldwide. Progress has been made over the past decade, according to the International Labour Organisation, but the economic crisis threatens to land many children out of school and in the workplace.

They work in agricultural fields, farms and houses, tea shops, hotels, cottage industries and factories. The ILO says many children, girls in particular, work in hazardous conditions threatening their health and security. It estimates some 1.8 million children have been forced into prostitution.

Unintended Consequences
Radio Netherlands’ Newsline focused the story on India, where the government says 12.6 million children are employed and unschooled. The real number is closer to 100 million, says Kavita Ratna of The Concerned for Working Children, an NGO operating out of Bangalore, India since 1980.

“We have seen actually increases in the number of children working, which is sad because a lot of resources ostensibly are going into trying to do things about it.”

One problem is the pressure placed on urban areas by economic transformations, Ms Ratna says. Rural areas are being neglected and the recession is exacerbating the situation. But Ms Ratna also says the crackdown on child labour in India has had unintended consequences, driving many children into hidden workplaces.

“A lot of civil society organisations basically say that you ban child labour and everything else will basically sort itself out. If schools are not working, children should go there and then the schools will start working. If the adults don’t have a job, children should get out of the jobs and then the adult labour force will be replaced. Things don’t happen this way.”

Ratna says Indian legislation to thwart child labour inadequate and she accuses the state of covering up the scale of the problem.

“The idea is that they will try and punish the employers and maybe try and give some piecemeal kind of support to children or their families, but the whole strategy is just not coming together. There is absolutely nothing which is happening in a focused way in terms of the families and the communities of the children.”

Social norms
The answer lies in education, says Naren Sankranthi of the MV Foundation in Secunderabad, India.

“Child labour and universalising education are two sides of one coin. If you want to eliminate child labour then you must see to it that every child in that area goes to school.”

The MVF Foundation fights child labour by launching awareness campaigns aimed at instilling the value of learning in a new generation of Indians. The notion that children leave school out of economic necessity is a myth, Mr Sankranthi says.

“There might be rare cases, but the normal situation is that children go to work because there is no norm existing which sends children to school directly.”

Area-based approach
Eliminating a practice as enormous as child labour in India may seem an impossible task. But MVF and CWC are setting out to tackle the problem one community at a time. Mr Sankranthi says it is the only effective strategy.

“(Eliminating child labour) is possible because we have an area-based approach. We take up area by area, all the children in that area. We try to send every child to school and see that they remain in school until they finish grade 10. This way you are preventing them from working and also giving them the right to education.”

The problem requires a unified commitment by community, government and civil society organisations, Mr Sankranthi says. And, adds Ms Ratna, it requires a human touch.

“For a particular child to leave the workforce, the child might need a scholarship. Another child might need a grandmother who needs to be put into a hospital, because the child is actually providing health care. So the strategy has to be decentralized and localized, and then it can work.”
 

Listen to the full interview with CWC's Kavita Ratna:

Images courtesy of the MV Foundation.