CANKIRI, Turkey (Reuters) - Twelve-year-old Suna Kacar was until recently one of nearly 2 million Turkish child labourers who mostly work in the streets selling cheap goods or shining shoes to add a trickle to their family's income.

Her skin darkened from working long hours under the sun, the blonde, hazel-eyed girl is one of nearly 3,000 children in Turkey benefiting from a European Union project to eradicate the worst forms of child labour.

The 5.3-million-euro project aims to give working children like Suna, mostly from very poor families, the chance of a better life, sending many of them to school.

The scheme is one of many EU aid projects in Turkey and elsewhere, but comes as public support in Turkey for membership of the bloc has dwindled over the last year amid a perception existing members do not really want Ankara to join.

Since beginning accession talks in 2005, Turkey has come under fire from the EU over human rights issues and Cyprus, while nationalism is rising ahead of a presidential election in May and general polls scheduled for November.

"My mother wanted me to work and I didn't go to school in the past. I now see how good it is to go to school so I can have a profession when I grow up. I would like to become a nurse," said Suna.

The scheme in Cankiri province, 120 km (70 miles) northeast of the capital Ankara, is one of seven pilot projects across Turkey in operation to tackle child labour: 15-year-old Gani Gormez explained what it meant to him.

"I had been sent to work in the streets to earn pocket money and buy what the family needed. I understood when I started going to school how bad child labour is," he said.

While Turkey's economy has rebounded from a steep financial crisis in 2001 when many people lost their jobs, a quarter of all Turks live below the poverty line.

UNFAIR BURDEN
According to the UN International Labour Organisation (ILO), nearly a quarter of Turkey's 74 million population is made up of children aged six to 17 years.

One in 10 -- 1.85 million children -- are seasonal agricultural workers, or work in small companies or on the street.

"They need to work in the streets because of the misfortune they had from birth or after. This an unfair burden, which they cannot carry. For our future it is very important to eradicate this burden," said Ali Haydar Oner, governor of Cankiri province.

Under the project, the child workers receive benefits varying from education kits to basic food packages, Oner said. They are also monitored to make sure they keep going to school and do not return to work again.

At the Cankiri centre, Suna performed her own story for European Commission and media representatives as part of a drama lesson.

The play started with her selling cheap tissues in the street, then in her words "sisters" -- the project officials -- convinced her parents to grant her wish to go to school.

The show ended with a loud call: "No to child labour!"

PARENTS TARGETED
The project also targets the parents of children who work.

They learn to read and write and are encouraged to do vocational courses so that they can start to earn enough money to save their children from having to work.

"It is important not to leave parents out because the underlying cause is of course poverty ... It is important to create better employment opportunities for parents," said Holger Schroder, first secretary of the Commission delegation to Turkey on his visit to the Cankiri centre.

Dilek Kekec, a 32 year-old woman and mother of a 14-year old boy who once carried heavy potato and onion sacks at the town's bazaar, welcomed the chance of making more money for her family.

"I would definitely love to pursue a career. I am a widow with four boys. I sometimes work as a house cleaner but the money I make is not enough," she said.

Child labour is also fuelled by internal displacement, which is linked to poverty.

A study by the Hacettepe Institute of Population Studies shows nearly 50 percent of the population live in locations other than their place of birth.

Schroder said the EU planned to give more than 200 million euros to Turkey for human resource development projects such as creating new jobs and education improvement within three years.

"We hope at the end of this project child labour will be eradicated here in Cankiri, but we know that the fight against child labour will not be finished in Turkey," he said.

More than 30,000 children in Kenya are involved in commercial sex and a further 300,000 employed as domestic laborers, an International Labour Organization (ILO) report on child labour has revealed.

Speaking in Kisumu during a Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) child labour workshop, the Programmes officer, Norbert Oloo said high levels of poverty and the problem of orphans were some of the push factors that have continued to escalate the state of child labour in the country.

Oloo added that COTU was planning to involve child employers in their strategic planning and activities to help reduce the problem of child employment.

The Programmes officer also urged the media to play its role as the watchdog by exposing and reporting on issues related to child labour as this would help in creating awareness and educating the public on the ills of the practice.

According to ILO, an estimated 186 million children worldwide are engaged in worst forms of labour with 23% of them in Africa.

Here in Kenya, 3.4 million children are currently involved in child labour, with 53% of them being boys while 47% are girls.

A leading children's rights charity has called for "immediate and decisive action" to combat child slavery.
As Britain prepares to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, Save the Children UK has published a major new report which reveals the extent of child slave labour worldwide.

More than 218 million children aged between five and 17 are working as child labourers in the world today, with 126 million involved in hazardous work. Of those 8.4 million are trapped in carrying out the very worst forms of illegal, dangerous and degrading tasks.

The report, entitled The Small Hands of Slavery, presents an overview of the scale of child slave labour, and names the eight most prevalent forms affecting youngsters as child trafficking; commercial sexual exploitation; bonded child labour; forced work in mines; forced agricultural labour; child soldiers or combatants; forced child marriage and domestic slavery.

Compiled using information from Save the Children projects worldwide, the report reveals 1.2 million children are trafficked every year either within their own country or across borders.

An estimated 1.8 million are being sexually exploited for profit while agricultural work is a daily reality for 132 million children under 15.

And while it is illegal to recruit and use children under the age of 15 as combatants or in other roles in conflicts, more than 300,000 children, some as young as seven, are currently associated with fighting forces, the report says.

Poverty, threats, physical and sexual violence and family debt all play a part in child slavery, it found, forcing many into working long hours for little or no pay, in some cases for years on end.

Today, Save the Children called on governments worldwide to take decisive action by addressing the demand for slave-like child labour and the goods produced by child slavery to combat the problem.

The organisation also urged the public to lobby their MP to make the elimination of child slavery a priority, and to support fair trade initiatives that protect the rights of child labourers.

New Delhi, Mar 22: A three-week march by children came to an end here today at the Parliament to demand framing of a law to check child trafficking for bonded labour.

 The rally, culmination of a three-week march passing through several states, called for repatriation and rehabilitation of victims of child trafficking."Starting from Kolkata and via Nepal and the border areas of Bangladesh, we have reached Delhi. It is a very unfortunate thing that India will very soon become the biggest hub of child trafficking in the world," said Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson of Global March against Child Labour, co-organizers of the march.

"A lot of the children who are trafficked are also physically tortured or disfigured so as to be introduced into the begging racket. Many girls are forcibly wedded off, sold or abused. Children miss out on education and childhood. We pray that such acts do not happen and laws are framed so as to stop such violence. Children should be able to live free of fears of being trafficked," said Rani Kumari, a girl who hailed from Rajasthan.

Another rescued girl, Najma Boyoti from Bangladesh, had a touching story to tell.

"We are here to urge the Indian government to frame strong laws against child trafficking. I was brought into the trafficking while I was begging on the streets of India with my father. A restaurateur promised my father that if he let me work and stay with them, he will give me education and money. Neither happened and I was vulnerable to being mistreated," said Najma.

The International Labour organisation (ILO) estimates that in south Asia, there is trafficking in children both internally and across national borders -- from Bangladesh and Nepal to Pakistan and India, and from south Asia to south-east Asia and the Middle East.

ILO study reveals the victims end up in sexual and labour exploitation -- doing domestic work, working in factories, on the streets, and as jockeys in camel races.

An estimated 21.6 million children, aged between 5 and 14 years are working in south Asia out of a total of 300 million children in this age group.

NEW DELHI: The South Asian March Against Child Trafficking, which began from the India-Bangladesh and Indo-Nepal borders and covered States such as West Bengal, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, culminated in a rally at Jantar Mantar here on Thursday.

The march, organised by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and supported by the Global March Against Child Labour, United Nations agencies and several non-government organisations, saw victims of child trafficking rescued from forced labour playing an active role during its entire stretch.

Speaking at the culmination ceremony, Union Minister for Labour and Employment Oscar Fernandes said there was no dearth of laws against child labour but the Government now wanted to stress more on implementation.

Regular beatings
Earlier, a core team of around 100 rescued children, forming part of the march, was joined by several others at Jantar Mantar.

Recounting her days in slavery, 12-year-old Devli — one of the leaders of the march — said beatings were a regular occurrence at the stone quarry in Rajasthan where she and her family worked.

In a message read out at the function, a representative of the United Nations Development Project said an estimated 1.2 million children became victims of child trafficking and slavery every year and most of them were girls.

According to the BBA, traffickers lure parents with promises of better future and education for their children along with a chance to earn some extra money. They also pay some money to them and gain their confidence. Once the child is in the custody of the trafficker, he or she is sold to employers looking for cheap and bonded labour. They are sold for as less as Rs. 2,000 or Rs. 5,000.

These children were usually employed at brick kilns, stone quarries, carpet-making units, hotels and restaurants, said a BBA office-bearer.

He added that while the common understanding was that children were trafficked only for commercial sexual exploitation, that comprised only 20 per cent of the children trafficked. The remaining were hired as labourers and forced to work for long hours without even the basic amenities.