Remarks to
Child Labour Coalition Conference
Washington DC
June 22 - 23, 2000
Child labour violates human rights norms in
many ways but I shall focus particularly on the right to education. Article 26
of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, states Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least
in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be
compulsory. This was followed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child
which goes further in outlining educational rights. More recently at the 10th
anniversary of the Jomtien Education for All Conference held in Dakar a
statement was adopted committing governments to provide free, compulsory
education for all by the year 2015. This is a backwards step from Jomtien in
1990 where the target for universal education was 2000. The word free has
however re-appeared in the declaration adopted in Dakar. It disappeared from
education policy discussion after the Jomtien Conference in 1990 not by accident
but by design. The Platform of
Action adopted at the 4th UN Conference on the Status of Women in
1995 had a special focus on the girl child. We know and understand that
exploitation, poverty and patriarchy will prevail for millions of young girls,
denying them the opportunity to achieve their potential, and ensuring a
continuation of poverty for them, their children, daughters and sons if they are
not educated.
Education International is opposed to all
child labour. Unashamedly, unequivocally opposed. Without any ifs, buts or
exceptions. By child labour we mean any work that endangers a child’s
physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development or that interferes with
his or her education.
Let me make it clear. We are not speaking
about children who are required to help out at home, nor do we believe that
chores after school harm a child. We know that children gain a great deal by
helping out and working with others. It is all part of growing up. But when work
harms children rather than helps them it is child labour. When work stops a
child from attending school, when it leaves a child too tired to work
effectively in school it is child labour. A study from Paisley University notes
a decline in student performance when a child works more than ten hours a week.
At this conference we are dealing with children who I am sure would settle for
ten hours a day.
If we are going to put child labour into
context we must recognise that school is the work of children. Play too should
be their work.
Education International believes it is
possible to build a world where every child can grow up healthy within families
where adults have work enabling them to feed, clothe and house themselves and
their children. For us the last twenty years have been a nightmare with the
growth in child labour, poverty, adult unemployment and cuts in public spending
hitting the poor hardest in almost every nation, industrialised and developing.
We hope that the message is being received by decision makers that civil society
is no longer prepared to accept the fallout from child labour to unemployment
that has been a nightmare for so many millions.
But let me be clear. There will be no end to
child labour without the political will to bring it to an end. Unfortunately the
children of the poor who are the vast majority of child labourers are also the
children of the politically disenfranchised. whose lack of education
marginalises them from the very
process that would help them change the
society that treats them with such contempt. We also note that racism, religious
intolerance and sexism rear their ugly heads in child labour as in other aspects
of society. Children of ethnic minorities, migrants and religious minorities are
most vulnerable and of course girls suffer disproportionately unless
interventions are specifically designed to assist them.
We all know that if we are to end the
exploitation of poverty, we must improve the situation of women and in this
respect we must begin with ensuring the education of girls. We must improve both
access to and the quality of education. We must include in early childhood
programmes as part of a strategy to combat child labour. We also know that no
agency acting alone can make a real difference and there is no place for
inter-agency rivalry. The job to be done is too big for egos to get in the way.
Without partnerships that treat child labour as an important transverse theme in
all fields of policy development we will fail. Without the recognition that
policies devised to deal with girls and child labour that do not begin with the
the girl child in her own right will fail.
A social alliance to end child labour is not
only a moral but an economic and social imperative. For those who would like to
have this millenium begin on what might be considered a civilised note, there
would be no better start than to end the scourge of child labour that demeans us
all and condemns millions of the most vulnerable to a living hell.
EI has been involved in research projects on
child labour with IPEC/ ILO and the information we have gathered from the
country studies shows that eliminating child labour and improving the
accessibitilty, availability and quality of education go hand in hand. The first
will not happen without the second.
The UN Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right
to Education is very clear where responsibility lies for the provision of
education. The State has the responsibility to fulfill the human rights
provisions for its citizens. Funding for education is therefore the
responsibility of the state. Currently we know that at least 125 million
children get no schooling at all.
This is the same number as the number of 6 to 14 year olds in Europe and North
America. Can you imagine the uproar there would be if the children of Europe and
North America were not provided with education? No government would survive and
rightly so. The figures we use when we speak of child labourers are our best
estimates. We really do not know how many children are not in school because
there are still countries where children are not registered at birth The first
right that should be implemented if good planning is to take place is to give a
child a legal identity.
UNICEF provides us with information that
· 39% of boys 45 % of girls in Sub Saharan Africa
· 15% boys and 24% of girls in the Middle East and North Africa
· 2% of boys and 4% of girls in East Asia and the Pacific
· 25% of boys and 37% of girls in South Asia
· 11% of boys and 10% of girls in Latin America
are
not enrolled in primary education.
Why do you
believe there are such differences between East Asia and South Asia? By
international standards South Asia's investment in education is low. In
Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh less than 3% of GNP is invested in education. In
India it is around 3.5%. It requires a minimum of 6% of GNP to really make a
difference in education. In South Asia however high military budgets are the
norm and recent budgetary allocations have provided significant increases for
military spending. Education as a political priority is obviously not as strong
as it is for other
In many countries the growth in child labour
has been paralleled by a decline in education funding. One of the disturbing
factors
Girls always suffer most when choices are made
about who will go to school. If we look at the funding of even primary education
in the 1980’s and 1990’s we should not be surprised with the fact that
progress in the enrolment of girls in schools has suffered a setback. Retaining
girls in school is also a problem for a number of reasons that range from costs,
to distance from home, lack of toilet facilities, early marriage, need to care
for siblings, requirement that girls help fund the education of their brothers,
to lack of relevance and quality in education.
We know that overcrowded classrooms are not
conducive to encouraging children to stay in schools and that in such situations
girls are often relegated to the sidelines.. Pupil teacher ratios do matter but
I appeal to you to look behind the statistics. Pupil teacher ratios allow for
classes as high as 100 to 160 in poor parts of countries while providing classes
of 20 in areas where parents have political clout. They also permit or for
bloated education bureaucracies when all those involved in education are
included in pupil teacher ratios. There needs to be a concerted effort to end
the corruption that exists in some places associated with education. Nothing
makes teachers angrier than to hear about frequent absence of teachers causing
children to drop out of school. When we have looked at this issue we have found
situations of ghost teachers or political appointees who do not have to turn up
at school to get a salary. Those who are teachers are then blamed for trying to
do what they can in unbelievably difficult situations and not being able to do
it effectively. The other major issue we found for teacher absenteeism is
non-payment of salaries. There are many countries where the salaries are in
arrears for months on end. Teachers can no longer afford to send their children
to school and have to find other work to earn a living. In countries in
transition economies as well as in the least develop countries these are
becoming increasingly common factors. There is no group that would like to see
an end to these practices more than teachers.
To really make a difference we have identified
five strategic areas for action.
v
Comprehensive
legislation and effective enforcement including ratification
and implementation of core labour standards;
v
Mainstreaming
child labour concerns into all national policies;
v
Economic
policies that deliver jobs rather than destroy jobs for adults and that enable
parents to support their children;
v
Integrated
education policies that deliver the resources to provide good quality,
universal, free early childhood services, compulsory relevant primary and
secondary schooling; this must encompass transitional services and special
education services as well as vocational and higher education;
v
Improved
training, status and working
conditions for teachers and education support personnel.
These five strategic areas address what we see as the main impediments
to the elimination of child labour, namely;
Ø
Persistent
poverty and deepening inequalities;
Ø
The
drive for increasing competitiveness in a deregulated environment which pushes
employers to seek the most malleable labour;
Ø
The
impact of widespread unemployment leading to a loss of confidence in the value
and relevance of education;
Ø Poorly resourced education services;
Ø
A
sense of powerlessness amongst communities, including teachers, parents,
children and young people;
Ø
Social
and cultural attitudes which perpetuate child labour;
Ø
Lack
of government commitment to comprehensive policies and programmes specifically
designed to prevent child labour;
Ø Lack of willingness to undertake an analysis of the impact of policies particularly but not exclusively education policies on girls and even less willingness to determine specific policies to identify the needs of poor girls
The work we have done in this area shows
clearly that action is required at all levels. Local initiatives must proceed
and proliferate with or without a national strategy. But without a comprehensive
government commitment and strategy, child labour may be marginally reduced in
some places, at least temporarily, but it will not be eliminated.
The elements of a comprehensive educational
strategy with the elimination of child labour at its heart also emerged clearly.
This requires;
¨
Quality early childhood services, community based and actively involving
parents, as one of the best ways to prevent children from ever starting work,
particularly girls;
¨
Quality in school matters – a quality curriculum which children can
see is relevant to their lives and which respects their culture, language and
experiences, quality teaching which can respond to the special needs of
children; class sizes which enable teachers to give students attention;
¨
No amount of quality can ever make up for lack of access, so education
must be free and readily available;
¨
As teachers are central to the experience every child has in school,
they must have good training (both pre-service and in-service), decent
conditions and decent pay; current trends to reduce teacher training are short
sighted. Teachers require more skills not less to make education relevant and to
deal with the issues we have identified;
¨
Flexible, quality, transitional services are required as an integral
part of the education system. They are an essential bridge to formal education
and to vocational training. At present they are largely provided by NGO,s and
are subject to being phased out with no replacement programme available thereby
leaving children in very vulnerable situations;
¨
Special preventive and rehabilitative programmes need to be targeted at
children at high risk of becoming child labourers. Each programme must be looked
at to see how it will address the special needs of girls. The needs of girls who
are among street children, are from the indigenous communities, from ethnic
minorities; from migrant families and girls who are being sexually exploited are
all different and require different responses. The same programme will not help
all. Affirmative action programmes are essential if this issue is to be dealt
with effectively.
¨
Integrated programmes are required targeted at destitute families. These
must provide adult education particularly for women, employment skills training,
and income replacement from children removed from child labour.
¨
Anti child labour and pro childrens’ rights materials should be
integrated into the curriculum. This should include the rights of girl children
adopted in the Beijing Platform of Action and further developed by the UN
Commission on the Status of Women in March of this year.
The studies we did provided numerous examples
of education programmes that contribute to the elimination of child labour. They
also showed examples of programmes that will perpetuate child labour while
merely modifying the most objectionable features. Such programmes highlight the
importance of rigourous monitoring of aims and outcomes. Accountability must be
built into the policies at every step. It is unacceptable that only those who
try to carry out programmes are held accountable. Those who design the
programmes, determine the resources, implement the programmes are all equally
accountable as are the policy makers. Most accountable are those who have the
power to act and do not.
There are those who say we are asking too
much. We believe free, universal, compulsory education of good quality is not an
optional extra to be dealt with if any funds are left over. It is a human right
applicable to all. We can no longer pretend that we do not know the social and
economic benefits that are derived from education particularly of women and
girls. It is the heart of development. Education is essential to break the cycle
of poverty in which child labour and adult unemployment flourish – each
feeding destructively off the other.
Full-time attendance at school reduces a
child’s availability for work and forces both families and employers to find
alternatives to the child’s labour. Compulsory education is the best hope for
the largely invisible child labourers in the informal sector, who are mainly
girls. It is particularly important for girls in domestic service, because it
makes them visible requiring that they are in school where they can be monitored
and where follow-up can be initiated quickly when necessary.
Teachers and their organisations are already
involved in many places in programmes to help get children into school. In
others there is no doubt they
could do more and everywhere, like
governments, they need to recognise the importance of a comprehensive integrated
approach. We are now working to have them become more active in helping
eliminate child labour. Central to the work we are doing is creation of a better
understanding of
the imperative of promoting the right of girls to education.