07 July 2007 (07.07.07) marks the midway to the international community’s commitments for creating a better world for its citizens. It has been 7 years since the world leaders committed to the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the commitments for Education For All (Dakar Framework of Action), and 8 years since the ILO Convention 182 of the worst forms of child labour was unanimously accepted by the world. Overall progress on these commitments has been slow and patchy.

Think About It: Broken Promises 8-year-old Hari works in a zari unit in Delhi. His work involves attaching beads and zari to clothes, which are then sold at high prices in the markets. The beads are small and the work causes eyestrain. But he is paid about Rs.10 a month, if at all. He works in an ill-lit small room with many more children like him. All of them eat there and sleep there at nights. At summers the temperature is high and they often suffer from heat boils. They are not allowed to go out. If anybody tries to run away, he is beaten severely.

There are so many pressing human needs - it is hard to prioritise them. We need to combat HIV and other epidemic diseases, as well as terrorism, drug trafficking, and military conflicts. We need clean water, sanitation, health care and immunisations, and adequate nutrition - not to mention environmental protection and an adequate standard of living. The list goes on and is daunting. But, we ought to think of not only how many human rights issues are linked to child labour, but how many of these issues can be addressed by redirecting millions child labourers to school - for example, HIV education, immunisations, nutrition, etc. Quality education can make an important contribution to a culture of global tolerance and world peace and security.

Child Labour:
While the ILO Convention 182 has been ratified by an overwhelming 163 countries making it the fastest ratified convention. One out of seven children in the world today is involved in child labour that is damaging to his or her mental, physical and emotional development. This translated to 218 million children toiling in the world and 126 are engaged in the undeniably worst forms of child labour. There are 22 million fewer child labourers in the world than in 2002.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest incidence of economically active children – 26.4 per cent of all 5-14 year-olds, compared to 18.8 per cent for Asia and the Pacific and 5.1 per cent for Latin America. It ranks second behind Asia in absolute terms, with 49.3 million children working. All are children who have no fair chance for a real childhood, an education or a better life. Child labour persists even where it has been declared illegal, and is frequently surrounded by a wall of silence, indifference and apathy. The persistent challenges of widespread and extreme poverty, high population growth, the AIDS pandemic, recurrent food crises, and political unrest and conflict clearly exacerbate the problem.

Graph 1: Estimates of various forms of child work

There are some 317 million working children in the world in the age group 5-17 years, an incidence rate of more than 20 percent of the child population in the age group. Unsurprisingly, in the fragile conflict ridden Sub-Saharan Africa one in every four children below 14 years of age is economically active which is also home to nearly half the worlds out-of-school children. This is the only region where the number of children workers has actually increased since 2000. There has been progress in eliminating child labour, but it is still modest.

Boys slightly outnumber girls amongst working children in the world in the ILO estimate. In fact it is generally accepted that the number of working girls is often underestimated by statistical surveys; however, reality says that a large proportion of children involved in child labour are girls, especially when the unregulated, informal sector such as domestic work is concerned.

Graph 2: Regional trends of children’s work

The graphs 1 and 2 clearly depict the gravity of the child labour situation in the world. Approximately, 40 per cent of all working children in the age group 5-17 years and 5-14 years are engaged in the most hazardous forms of child labour that is detrimental to their physical and mental wellbeing. Further, one in three child labourers are in hazardous occupations.

El Salvador, Nepal, and the United Republic of Tanzania were the first three countries to implement Time Bound Programmes for the elimination of child labour. Three other countries, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and the Philippines, started implementation during 2002-03. Several additional countries have since begun the process, including: Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Ecuador, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mongolia, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, Turkey, and Yemen. More than 30 ILO member countries have already set time bound targets to abolish the worst forms of child labour.

Graph 3: Children out-of-school and child labour: Snapshot of ILO Time Bound Countries

ILO study on the costs and benefits of eliminating child labour says that economic benefits would outweigh costs by nearly seven to one. Reduction of child labour is expected to help both the child’s educational achievements including the efficiency and capacity of the education system, and help reduce poverty. This does not include the incalculable social and human benefits of eliminating the practice: nearly thee-fourth of working children are engaged in the worst forms of child labour, including trafficking, armed conflict, slavery, sexual exploitation and hazardous work. Thus, tackling child labour will have positive effects beyond the individual child.

Recent work from ILO, building on the initiative of Global March on triangular paradigm of development that child labour perpetuates poverty empirically concludes that, child labour can be eliminated and replaced by universal education within 20 years at an estimated cost of US$760 billion. The benefits of eliminating child labour within the next two decades will amount to an estimated US$ 5.1 trillion for both developing and transitional economies, where most child labourers are found.

An average cost of USD 55 billion per year during the first decade of the global child labour elimination programme amounts to a mere 11 per cent of the USD 493 billion of global military spending or 5.5 per cent of the USD 1 trillion in debt services. During the second decade, the average of USD 136 billion equals 28 per cent of the annual military expenditure and 14 per cent in debt services.

Education:
Education – and in particular, education of good quality up to the minimum age for entering into employment – is a key element in the prevention of child labour. At the same time, child labour is one of the main obstacles to Education for All (EFA), as involvement in child labour is generally at a cost to children’s ability to attend and perform in school. 77 million children across the globe are not going to school, majority of them are working children. This number is almost one in four - of the children worldwide in this age group. And many of the children who are in school may never complete their primary education or finish it without attaining even basic literacy skills. And, many more are dropping out before they complete primary school, in contradiction with the goal of EFA and Universal Primary Education.

Graph 4: Regional estimates of out-of-school children

Think About It: Broken Promises "I am Abou. I was abducted by the armed forces and now I am forced to work on the diamond mines in Koidu. I dig in search of diamonds. The work is tiresome and I also sustain many bruises due to digging with sharp instruments. If I find any, I have to return them to the soldiers, otherwise I shall be beaten badly. I don't want to do this work, I wish I could go home. I have never been to school, I would really like to”. Abou is only 12, some children as young as seven working in diamond mining in Siearra Leone.

Today there are 43 million children out of school in conflict affected fragile states, majority of the fragile states are in Africa.  Africa has the largest number of children who are out of school: 38 million. Four countries are home to the largest numbers of out of school children - India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Ethiopia (a total of 22.8 million out of school children).

Globally, more than one in five girls of primary-school age are not in school compared with about one in six boys. Of most concern are the wide gender gaps in primary education in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where almost 80% of the world’s out-of-school children live. In sub-Saharan Africa 42% of primary school age girls are out of school compared with 38% of boys. In South Asia the gap is wider with 29% of primary-school age girls out of school compared with 22% of boys.

At the current rate of progress, at least 75 countries will not achieve universal primary education by 2015 – many of them are so off-track that they would need nearly a century to catch up with their counterparts.

By 2015, approximately 19 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa will still be out of school if current trends continue. Africa’s share of the global out of school population will have increased to 40 per cent. Progress towards gender equity in primary education has been mixed. Of the 14 countries in the world where girls account for less than 80 per cent of primary school attendance, 11 are in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the current progress rate, Africa is off track the goal by more than a generation!

Table 1: Child Labour and Child out-of-school – A Brief Review

Graph 5: Children out-of-school and child labour: Snapshot of E-9 Countries

E-9 (nine most populous countries in the world) members are Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan. The population ages 0-14 in the E-9 countries, as a per cent of world total (2001), is 54.5 per cent, which means more than half of the world’s concerned population is concentrated in the E-9 countries. 94 per cent of out-of-school children live in developing countries (least developed alone account for over one third) and 47 per cent are concentrated in the E-9 countries.

Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo - are home to 57 percent of the children who do not attend school in the world.

Among the E-9 countries, the percentage of girls out-of-school varies from 44 per cent (China, Bangladesh) to 60 per cent (Pakistan).

Graph 5: Children out-of-school and child labour: Snapshot of FTI Countries

It is estimated that USD 9 billion external aid per annum in order to achieve the primary education goal and USD 11 billion to achieve all the EFA goals – this would require a tripling in aid for basic education in low income countries over the next 2-3 years. The total aid required is equivalent to around USD 13 per child in the developing countries. This is a small price for an investment that will last more than a lifetime in the history of mankind.

However, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) report shows that total aid commitments to basic education actually fell from a high of USD 4.4 billion in 2004, to somewhere below USD 3 billion in 2005. No signs as yet of reversing the trend with the recent lack of education aid by the farcical “Keep Our Promises” conference in the Brussels in May 2007.

Table 2: TBP, Big 5, E-9 and FTI Countries – Overlapping NOT

Of the countries with high percentage of child labour and out-of-school children not a single country has an overlap of time bound programme and fast-track action! As we know, it is mostly the out-of-school children who are child labourers or are at risk of becoming child labourers, thus making it imperative for a holistic approach to address the issue.