Campaign against child labour

Benin has intensified a national campaign against child labour which has attracted at least 600,000 children in a population of 6.7 million people, the InterPress Agency reported on Thursday. Most child workers, IPS said, come from economically deprived families, work at least ten hours a day, six days a week and are poorly fed. In the northern cotton growing fields, two-thirds of all cotton labourers are at times children with no protection against the dangerous chemicals they handle, such as pesticides. Other children, IPS said, work on construction sites, in the fishing industry, in apprenticeship centers, buying and selling; or in homes as domestics especially in the south of the country. Among other activities, the Confederation of the Beninese Workers conducted a two-week media campaign in September to highlight the plight of child labourers. A former child labourer, Antonin Hounga, 21, and now President of the Association of Child and Youth Workers of Benin, was quoted as saying: "The issue is not fighting child labour but fighting those things that harm children while they work." The association is a member of the African Movement of Child and Youth Workers, which was formed in Dakar, Senegal in 1993. The movement fights for better living and working conditions for children and exploitation, saying "Children are not items to be bought and sold". In November 2000, Benin issued a decree banning children from certain hard and dangerous jobs. It has also ratified international conventions, including the International Labour Organization convention that defines the worst forms of work for children.