Focus on efforts against child labour

Child labour has, in a relatively short span of time, grabbed international attention to the extent that on 12 June, the International Labour Organization is celebrating the first World Day Against Child Labour. West Africa, already home to socio-political unrest, civil wars and economic difficulties, is coming to terms with this new scourge. Regional governments have doubled efforts to eradicate child labour and several initiatives are underway to fight the problem, especially since 2001 when the Etinero boat was intercepted carrying slave children off the region's coast. The boat incident highlighted the problem.. One of the latest initiatives was the signing in May of an agreement between West African cocoa-producing countries, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association and other cocoa-industry stakeholders to prevent the use of children in cocoa farms. The comprehensive memorandum of cooperation, drafted in collaboration with the ILO and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) lays out a series of common actions that stakeholders hope will culminate in the adoption of international norms for the cocoa industry in 2005. "By 1 July, 2005, the industry in partnership with other major stakeholders will develop and implement credible, mutually-acceptable, voluntary, industry-wide standards of public certification, consistent with applicable federal law that cocoa beans and their derivative products have been grown and/or processed without any of the worst forms of child labor," the protocol says. However the cocoa industry is not the only industry where children are employed. Sexual trade, mining, wholesale and retail trade, construction and manufacturing, restaurant and hotels, and domestic work all constitute areas where minors are exploited. Minors are boys or girls who are less than 18 years old, whose employment is banned by ILO under two conventions, 138 and 182. Efforts to prohibit child labour should not focus on the cocoa industry alone, because children are also mistreated in other sectors, UNICEF official Jean-Claude LeGrand told IRIN. A focus on the cocoa industry alone, will not only fail to reduce the problem but will instead drive those who are culprits towards less public sectors, LeGrand, regional advisor in child protection, said from UNICEF’s regional office in Abidjan. Throughout West Africa, thousands of children work every day as domestic hands, street vendors, and servants in small restaurants. The exact number is unknown but the ILO estimates the number at between 3,000 and 4,000 in several countries in the region. It is in recognition of the problem that the ILO, through its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), launched a new initiative, ‘Combating Trafficking in Children for Labour Exploitation in West and Central Africa’ in the year 2000. Participating countries include Burkina Faso, Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and Gabon. With the completion of the analysis phase in July 2000, the operational phase started in June 2001 and will last three years. Other regional efforts include the 2000 protocol between Cote d’Ivoire and Mali against child trafficking and a plan of action to ratify a West and Central African Convention against Child Trafficking in 2004. At the national countries, countries are also conducting education and sensitisation programs. Child labour and child trafficking often go hand in hand. Regional experts, meeting in January in the Ivorian capital Yamoussoukro, defined child trafficking as "a phenomenon where an individual (called an intermediary), who for a fee and through violence or ruse, displaces within or outside a national territory an individual less than 18 years old for sexual or commercial exploitation, generally with the complicity of the parents". While the international community has focused mainly on cross-border labour, internal child labour also needs attention, LeGrand said. The "middle-men" opt for the internal market because it is less costly and less risky, he added. Yet both have the same negative impacts. In Cote d’Ivoire, the authorities have instituted urban associations (Equipe d’action socio-educative en milieu ouvert- EASEMO) whose objective is to take child labourers off the streets. "I have never seen a child working in big factories or corporations," Koffi Gnagoran, an official of EASEMO in Bouake, the second largest city in the country, told IRIN. However he had seen thousands of under-age labourers working as vendors at the bus stations, shoe-shiners, "handy men", he said. Of all the factors that lead to child labour, poverty and economic deprivation appears to be the most influential, regional experts say. According to Gnagoran, poverty is often the first answer given by minors when asked why they work. Factors conducive to this situation include constant demand for manual labour, high birth rates, porous borders and lack of appropriate legislation. In the case of the cocoa industry, higher wages for farmers would help. Over the past decade, revenues to farmers have dropped drastically, a situation that has forced them to cut costs in order to stay in the trade. One of these cost cutting measures has been to hire child labourers who are paid much less than adult workers. According to LeGrand, solving child labour is not a problem of financial input because as he says "even rich countries cannot stop child labour." It needs to come through political will. To this, Gnagoran adds that "national and international laws that are drafted should not stay in the drawers". "Donors will fund specific projects but we need to address the root cause, poverty, which is more complicated," said LeGrand.