Second phase of ILO's child labour project launched

November 30, 2004

Andhra Pradesh, India > Hyderabad, Nov 29 : The second phase of International Labour Organisation's Child Labour project was launched by the British Secretary of State for International Development Hilary Benn here today.

The Rs 40.2 crore project, is jointly funded by Department For International Development (DFID), UK and Andhra Pradesh government. The first phase of the project, entirely funded by DFID, had concluded in March this year.

The project would be implemented over the next three years focussing on elimination of child labour through a series of initiatives including skills development and strengthening civil societies' efforts against child labour.

Speaking on the occasion, Benn complimented the state government, NGOs and employers' associations for their well-coordinated efforts to build an environment for elimination of child labour.

"About 15 years ago, there were an estimated 1.6 million child labourers in the state. The number is now coming down significantly due to the efforts of various organisations. It is unacceptable for any society to have their children working," the British Minister said.

Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy said his government would take lead in building a social movement against the "shameful practice" of child labour.

"We will strive to put every child in the state to school and end child labour in the next four to five years," Reddy added. PTI

Source: http://www.123bharath.com/news/index.php?action=fullnews&id=40159

Child labour rife in Morocco

November 30 2004 at 02:17AM

Rabat - About 11 percent of Moroccans between the ages of five and 14 years - nearly 600 000 young children - have jobs, the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) said in a study released on Monday.

A large majority of working children, nearly 87 percent, live in rural areas, according to the national study carried out by the Moroccan employment ministry in partnership with IPEC, an initiative of the United Nations International Labor Organisation.

Some 58 percent of child labourers in the north African country are boys, the study found.

Morocco's overall population was around 29 million in 2 000, of whom 16 million were urbanites, according to official figures.

Source: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=68&art_id=qw1101765962398M622

Using Children in Conflicts is a Third World Disease

The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
November 25, 2004
Posted to the web November 24, 2004

By Samuel Olara
Kampala

An international children rights body The United Kingdom-based Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers on the 15th November 2004 released its report "CHILD SOLDIERS GLOBAL REPORT 2004", citing Uganda as one of those countries undermining progress in ending the use of children as soldiers.

The Ugandan government is reported to be recruiting children into the regular armed forces and into local defence units deployed inside Uganda, as was the case in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and currently Southern Sudan.

The report goes on to say that until May 2003 when the UPDF supported armed political groups in eastern DRC, it extensively recruited child soldiers.

The report said that children are fighting in almost every major conflict of the world, in both government and opposition forces. They are being injured, subjected to horrific abuse and killed. The report also points out that the armed rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has killed and tortured people in northern Uganda since 1986, dramatically increased its abduction of children since the launch of "operation Iron Fist" Out of an estimated 20,000 children who have been abducted by the LRA, nearly 10,000 were taken since mid-2002. The report also says children coming out of LRA captivity were in most cases forcefully recruited into government armed forces or forced to take part in operations against the LRA.

The use of child soldiers in conflicts can be underpinned to the reason that children are physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, they typically make obedient soldiers. They can be a lot more brutal than an adult, for the simple reason that there understanding of what is wrong and right is limited to what they are being told by the adult.

Many are abducted or recruited by force or through intimidation and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. Others join armed groups out of desperation. As homes and families break down during conflict, leaving children no access to school and driven way from their homes, with no family income, many children perceive armed groups as their best chance for survival. Others seek revenge for family members who have been killed.

The Coalition report accused governments at the European Union, G-8 and UN Security Council of a failure of leadership. It called for the immediate enforcement of a ban on the use of child soldiers. With a plethora of international legal orders and domestic laws outlawing the use of children in armed conflicts, it is hard to understand why the act has remained widespread; perhaps the recognition and implementation of these laws by the states concerned is what is lacking. Many of the African leaders, who came to power through military means in one way or another, used children as a means to attain state power.

Without the initial recognition of such laws; it is hard for such a leader to even think of implantation.

The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child is the only regional treaty in the world which addresses the issue of child soldiers. It was adopted by the Organization of African States (OAU, now the African Union) and came into force in November 1999. It defines a child as anyone below 18 years of age without exception. It also states that: "States Parties to the present Charter shall take all necessary measures to ensure that no child shall take a direct part in hostilities and refrain in particular, from recruiting any child" (Article 22.2).

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 1998 establishes a permanent court "the International Criminal Court", to try persons charged with committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. In its definition of war crimes the statute includes "conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities" (Article 8(2)(b)(xxvi)); and in the case of an internal armed conflict, "conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities" (Article 8(2)(e)(vii)).

When drafting the treaty, delegates agreed that the terms "using" and "participate" would prohibit not only children's direct participation in combat, but also their active participation in military activities linked to combat such as scouting, spying, sabotage, and the use of children as decoys, couriers, or at military checkpoints. Also prohibited is the use of children in "direct" support functions such as carrying supplies to the front line. The statute also defines sexual slavery as a crime against humanity (Article 7(1)(g)).

The 1995 Ugandan Constitution Article 17 (2), requires every citizen "to defend Uganda and to render national service when necessary", and every able-bodied citizen "to undergo military training for the defence of this Constitution and the protection of the territorial integrity of Uganda whenever called upon to do so". Under the same Article 17 (1)(c), it is also the duty of every Ugandan citizen "to protect children and vulnerable persons against any form of abuse, harassment or ill-treatment". The constitutional provision Article 34 (4) also states that children under the age of 16 years "are entitled to be protected from social or economic exploitation and shall not be employed in or required to perform work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with their education or to be harmful to their health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development".

Even for an army whose composition was over 50% child soldier (Kadogos); the National Resistance Army Statute 3/92 and Conditions of Service Regulations of 1993, states that, recruits must be aged between 18 and 30. However, the Uganda Defence Forces Bill brought before the Parliamentary Defence Committee in early 2004 did not specify a minimum age for recruitment.

Ugandans were told that one of the aims of the military's "Operation Iron Fist" was to rescue abducted children, but also to dislodge the enemy from their hideouts in Sudan. There is no denying that a number of children have been "rescued" by the UPDF, some escaped from captivity in their own capacity; many still remain in captivity and are being forced to fight by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

The governments' increased resorting to military action to end the conflict; has meant that many children died in battle and to this day remain buried in the terrains of Uganda, Congo and Southern Sudan. A growing number of LRA child soldiers and other children born in and accompanying LRA groups, some as young as five, were killed in encounters with the UPDF.

In his coverage of the war in Northern Uganda early this year, the BBC African correspondent Callum Macrae, portrayed a very cruel, chilling and disturbing aspect of the conflict in "A day of War; Uganda's Fallen Child Rebels", (BBC, 8 April 2004). The coverage which is still available on the BBC website displays a photo of a dead rebel soldier from the Lords Resistance Army ( LRA), a five year old boy riddled with bullets from helicopter gunship, with his head sunk deep into the mud, bare chested, in shorts, most likely born in captivity, his world had come to an end.

In Africa, The use of child soldiers has also been prevalent in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where both government troops and rebel groups such as the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) have massively recruited children into their armies. The United Nations Children's Fund says both sides in the conflict in Liberia have given weapons to children and that up to 60 percent of the armed fighters are under 18 years old.

In Sudan, thousands of boys have been forcibly recruited into military units on both sides of Sudan's civil war. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers cites Sudan as having one of the worst child soldier problems in the world. Other prominent places include southern Lebanon, where boys as young as twelve years of age have been subjected to forced conscription by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), an Israeli auxiliary militia. When men and boys refuse to serve or flee the region to avoid conscription, or desert the SLA forces, their entire families are expelled from the occupied zone.

Although the UN Security Council has condemned child soldiering and monitors those using children in war, some members have blocked real progress by opposing concrete penalties for violators. In its recommendations, The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said that the Security Council should take immediate and decisive action to get children out of conflicts by applying targeted sanctions and referring child recruiters to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.

Despite the numerous documentations over the years, efforts to stop the use of child soldiers have not yet bore any fruits. The recruitment of child soldiers continues around the world, those responsible for their recruitment escape justice, and many governments continue to resist efforts to establish and enforce the prohibitions necessary to end the use of children as soldiers.

The writer is a Human rights advocate resident in the UK.

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200411240816.html

ILO moves to stem child labour in Ghana

General News of Wednesday, 24 November 2004

Accra, Nov. 24, GNA - About 1.27 million children in Ghana aged between five and 17 years are engaged in activities classified as child labour, Mr Emmanuel Otoo, an International Labour Organization (ILO) representative in Ghana said on Tuesday.

He noted that currently about 1.031 million children in child labour were under the age of 13 years.

Most of them are involved in activities such as prostitution, drug peddling, domestic work, farming, fishing, street hawking, stone breaking, sand winning, forestry, animal rearing, Trokosi and "kaya kaya" and are working in very dangerous and hazardous working environments.

Mr Otoo, who is the Country Programmes Coordinator (Capacity Building Project) of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) of the ILO, said this at the opening of a two-day Child Labour Workshop for 30 chief fishermen, drawn from the Greater Accra and Volta Regions to sensitise them against child labour.

The workshop, jointly organized by IPEC and the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council (GNCFC), is the first in a series of similar forums planned for fishermen, farmers, the Police Service, Parliamentarians and civil society organisations involved in child labour issues, to ensure that the fight against child labour was on course.

Mr Otoo said the workshops were planned to enhance the capacities of relevant stakeholders to adequately contribute meaningfully towards the progressive and sustainable elimination of child labour, through legislation, law enforcement and peer sensitisation.

He said according to the 2001 Ghana Child Labour Survey, 2.47 million Ghanaian children aged between five and 17 years were economically active.

Mr Otoo said Ghana had ratified a number of international protocols against child labour, including the ILO Convention and the African Union (OUA) Charter on the Rights of the Child.

In addition, the 1992 Constitution and the Children's Act of 1998 also guaranteed the protection of children's rights.

"Our focus and resource must now be on the operationalisation of the details of those conventions and laws. This is the responsibility of all stakeholders including the GNCFC."

Mr Otoo said experiences of IPEC-funded action programmes as well as research reports have cited several reasons as causes of child labour. These included poverty, loss of a parent or both parents, inability to pay school fees, working to gain experience and children being forced to work.

He noted that IPEC was assisting four civil society organizations in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale to physically withdraw 2,000 child labourers and reintegrate them into school by the close of the year.

This, he said, was being done in collaboration with their parents and guardians, who would benefit from micro-credit loans from ILO to undertake income-generating activities.

Nii Abeo Kyerekuanda IV, Executive Secretary of GNCFC and Chief Fisherman of the Ga State, cited poverty and the need for children to gain working experience at an early age as the reasons for child labour in the fishing industry.

He noted that in the past it was not illegal to send children fishing on the high seas, as fishing was seen an occupation for illiterates. Moreover the high seas were not as turbulent and unsafe for children as they are now.

"Now the high seas are very turbulent and fishermen fight on the high seas, which is not safe for children. Moreover children's education and health have become paramount these days so we need to sensitise our people to stop engaging their children in fishing at that tender age." Nii Kyerekuanda said as chief fishermen, "we can only advise our members to stop abusing the rights of their children but the Government should ensure that laws against child labour are properly enforced so that when we catch any of our members violating the law and send him to the Police, he would be dealt with."

Source: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=70415

Combating Child Trafficking With Radio

Population Media Center (Shelburne)
PRESS RELEASE
November 22, 2004
Posted to the web November 22, 2004
Shelburne

Population Media Center-West Africa (PMC) began airing its radio serial drama Cesiri Tono ("All the Rewards of Courage and Hard Work") on Thursday, November 11, 2004 over the Africa Learning Channel.

Written in the local languages of Dioula and Bambara, Cesiri Tono will address child trafficking and exploitation issues in the three countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast.

UNICEF estimates that as many as 200,000 children in West and Central Africa alone are smuggled across national borders every year to provide forced labor in neighboring countries. This does not include children that are sold or traded within their own countries. Boys are often used as farmhands or for physical labor, while girls are trafficked as sexual slaves or domestic servants

Contrary to popular opinion, however, the children that are trafficked are not kidnapped by malevolent strangers. In the majority of cases, parents "give" their children to distant relatives or people with connections to their village, in the hopes of providing them a better life. They are often unaware of the harsh working conditions that their children will face.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that the majority of trafficked children come from rural, poorly educated families with more than five children. Thus, PMC's radio serial drama, Cesiri Tono, will show how unplanned childbearing can lead to poverty and, in turn, to child exploitation. Additionally, the PMC program will describe in graphic detail the harsh reality of the working conditions to which children are subjected. Most importantly, the PMC program will show how family planning can help families to break the cycle of poverty that can lead to the exploitation of children.

The drama, distributed via WorldSpace satellite, will be broadcast three times a week in Mali and Burkina Faso by community radio stations and government radio. Stations in Ivory Coast will begin broadcasting the program, as soon as the situation of civil unrest stabilizes.

Population Media Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to the stabilization of human population numbers at a level that can be sustained by the world's natural resources and to lessen the impact of humanity on the earth's environment. Its work emphasizes the benefits of small families, elevation of women's status, promotion of gender equity and encouragement in the use of effective family planning methods.

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200411221695.html

Ivory Coast Echoes Child Soldier Global Report

19 Nov 2004 15:55:00 GMT

Save the Children staff visiting children demobilised and re-united with their families along the Ivorian border of Liberia have found that around a quarter have been re-recruited by the warring factions to join the conflict there. Many of the children have been recruited for the payment of cash or a few bags of rice.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers global survey launched yesterday, underlines how for every step forward in ending the use of children in conflict there is a step backward somewhere else meaning the total number of children associated with armed forces remains virtually unchanged. Nowhere is this process better illustrated than in Ivory Coast where there are clear signs of the Government recruiting children recently demobilised over the border in Liberia

"This constant re-recruitment of children underlines the need for a regional solution to the problems in Ivory Coast and neighbouring countries. It also highlights the failure of UN peace-keeping operations in the area where there has been little investment in re-integration and a failure to prevent the repeated movement of children across borders to join armed groups and forces." Commented Toby Porter, Director of Emergencies of Save the Children UK.

The new report shows how despite the adoption of the Optional Protocol on child soldiers, governments and opposition groups the world over are flouting the law and exploiting children as weapons of war.

"Ivory Coast is just the latest example of a conflict that is targeting and manipulating children. What hope can there be for future generations if the only education available is in fighting. It is time to stop the use of children in war and start prosecuting those responsible for this exploitation of children." Porter concluded.

Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/11008802241.htm

Child Rights Day today

Thane, Nov. 23. (UNI): Boys are mostly employed in units requiring skills, while girls end up working as domestic helps, according to a survey, conducted by social organisation Media Matters recently.

Organisation chief Anju Uppal said, "Boys opt for comparatively better skilled jobs with opportunity to travel, while girls end up as domestic helps, take up home-based piece rate jobs or, at the most, are employed in packaging units near their homes."

Thane, where the survey was conducted, is one of the fastest growing metropolitan suburbs because of its proximity to Mumbai. Closure of many industrial units in Thane has led to large-scale unemployment because of which even children have been forced to explore work opportunities in the unorganised sectors to augment the income of their families.

Media Matters have found children from the age of seven, and some times even less, working to contribute to the income of the family. Most of these children find employment in general stores, pan stalls, newspaper stalls, tea stalls, distributing milk, and such others, Ms Uppal said.

Ms Uppal pointed out that the ILO Convention on the Prohibition and Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour had recognised children in domestic work as a new form of slavery and as priority sector for removing children from work.

Media Matters is organising a programme today on the occasion of Child Rights Day. The event will witness children airing their grievances.

Source: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/002200411230312.htm

Children rights suffering

General News of Saturday, 20 November 2004

Accra, Nov. 19, GNA - Ghana on Friday observed that the breakdown in the extended family system was one of the major causes in the abuse of children's rights. A statement the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs issued to mark the International Day of Prevention of Abuse/Violence against Children said, "the past decade has seen disintegration of the extended family system with an increasing pressure on the nuclear family. "This has led to increase in divorce and separation; exposing children to problems such as child labour and trafficking all in the attempt to make enough money to make ends meet, since most children are not having access to their maintenance allowance"

The statement signed by Mr Fred Essilfie , Public Relations Officer of the Ministry said the rising number of cases on "Failing to supply Basic Necessities and Non Maintenance", which rose from 286 cases in 1998 to 2031 in 2003 was a proof that children were not being properly taken care of.

It said despite efforts of governments to protect the rights of the child through education, the establishment of Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) within the Ghana Police Service in 1998 and the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs, their abuse continued in the forms of violence against them.

The observance of the day calls to mind the need to intensify efforts to protect and promote the rights of the child so that they would have a better chance to be the future leaders that they should become for the nation.

The statement called for encouragement of children to participate in national issues and to explore their environment to build their own concepts about life.

It said "we should at all times seek the welfare of children in whatever we do, it is only when this is done that we will see the Ghanaian child reaching his or her full potentials."

Source: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=70152

Child jockeys still being smuggled to UAE

November 22, 2004

Staff Report

KARACHI: Children continue to be trafficked from Pakistan to be used as camel-jockeys in the UAE. The use of children as jockeys in camel racing is highly dangerous and can result in serious injury and even death, disclosed the Center for Research and Social Development (CRSD) on the occasion of International Children’s Day.
The CRSD recently completed a comprehensive research study on child trafficking entitled “Child trafficking for camel races: a perspective from Pakistan” which highlights this heinous crime in the name of sports.

The CRSD has urged the governments of Pakistan and the UAE to take action to stop the inhuman practice. The barbaric practice of using little children as jockeys in camel races has been going on as usual, even after announcing internationally ban on the use of children below the age of 15 years. Even the enforcement of the human trafficking ordinance in Pakistan has made no major change in the trend of child trafficking.

Reported cases in past six months of deported and repatriated children prove this phenomenon further. Once in the Gulf, the children are treated as no better than the animals they ride. Many of them suffer serious mental and physical injuries, even deaths in being used as camel-jockeys.

As recently a young child’s death was reported. Kaleem Hussain died after falling from a camel during a race on Sept 28. His body was flown back on Oct 13 and buried at his native town in Dera Ghazi Khan. The boy and his brother were sold to an employer. The other boy was deported on Oct 21 following the tragic incident.

Some children are also abused by traffickers and their employers. The children’s separation from their families and their transportation to a country where the people, culture and usually the language are completely unknown leaves them dependent on their employers. The trafficking of children for use as camel-jockeys is prohibited by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and by the ILO Conventions 29, 138 and 182 — all of which have been ratified by the UAE.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and also the Chairman of the Emirates Camel Racing Federation, promulgated Order No1/6/266 on July 22, 2002, which prohibits children under 15 or weighing less than 45kg from being employed in camel racing.

It also specifies that all camel jockeys must have proof of their age through their passports and be issued with a medical certificate by the Camel Racing Federation. The minister announced that the ban would come into effect on September 1, 2002. A fine of 20,000 dirhams (US$5,500) will be imposed for a first offence and a second offence will lead to a ban from camel racing for one year.

A prison sentence of three months along with a fine of 20,000 dirhams will be imposed for subsequent offences. Since the promulgation of the order of 22 July 2002, use of child as jockeys is still continuing and rules are being violated. So far more than 60 children have been repatriated from the UAE through government departments and NGOs. A recent report aired few weeks ago on HBO’s Real Sports includes footage of appalling living conditions at camel-training camps and alleges that boy camel-jockeys - some as young as three – are kidnapped or sold into slavery, starved, beaten and raped.

The report said HBO received a letter from unnamed UAE officials who said that they were “shocked that this is happening” and that they “are adamantly against it.” The Government of Pakistan has no data how many Pakistani children have been serving there as camel-jockeys. The CRSD’s research study has shown that the issue is multi-dimensional and requires multi-sectoral approach, therefore successful implementation of local, international laws, conventions and protocol is the main thrust of the issue.
Similarly implementation and interventions as highlighted in the section of consequences and strategic interventions need to be address and implemented in the light of local experiences and culture. The research study suggested a few focused recommendations at different levels as strongly recommended by the Anti-Slavery International, at different forums and platforms of the Government of the UAE:

Carry out regular unannounced inspections to identify, release and rehabilitate any child who is being used as a camel-jockey. The government must ensure that all those responsible for trafficking, employing underage jockeys are prosecuted under the existing laws; provide details of the number of prosecutions brought and the number of successful convictions obtained with details of the sentences passed against those trafficking and employing camel- jockeys since September 1, 2002; introduce, as a matter of priority, legislation that prohibits and punishes the employment of children under the age of 18 in hazardous work or work that could jeopardise their health or safety, including as camel-jockeys; ratify and implement the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000), supplementing the Convention on Transnational Organised Crime.

Source:http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-11-2004_pg7_30

13 girls rescued from South Africa prostitution

22 November 2004

[World News]: A major child prostitution network has been smashed in South Africa, and 59 Nigerian men have been arrested, police say.

According to BBC Thirteen girls have been rescued from criminals who had forced them into prostitution, said the head of the Johannesburg child protection unit.

He said some of the girls had been kidnapped, while others had been sold to the criminals by their parents.

Police believe the ring is part of a nation-wide child sex syndicate.

Superintendent Andre Neethling, head of the child protection unit in Gauteng, said the girls had been locked up and given crack cocaine, which had made them dependent on their captors.

He said that some of the girls said they had been working as prostitutes since they were just 11 years old.

Source:http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=43928

Seven-Year Olds Pick Uzbek Cotton

14:16 18-11-2004

Desperate to obey government orders, local officials are turning to young children to bring in the crop.

Children as young as seven have been ordered to Uzbekistan’s cotton fields as part of a last-ditch effort by local authorities to hit state production targets.

Farmers say there is no cotton left to harvest, but IWPR spoke to primary school students from the Pap district of Namangan region, in the Fergana Valley, who are spending their autumn holiday working in the cotton fields.

Some are only in the first year of school – seven years old. While it is standard practice for adolescents school pupils to be recruited for harvesting work, younger children appear to be being exploited more and more.

Each day they scavenge for between 1.5 and two kilograms of poor quality cotton, and local officials hope this will be enough to bring Namangan closer to its 270,000 tonne target. At the moment the region is still 12,000 tonnes short.

Official figure suggest 2004 has been a good year for Uzbek cotton, with nearly 99 per cent of the national target of 3.6 million tonnes gathered by November 9. Last year, the harvest was fell short of the same figure by at least 20 per cent.

Cotton is an important crop, and Uzbekistan is placed among the top five world producers. The country earns well over a billion US dollars a year, with annual exports of more than one million tonnes of cotton fibre accounting for about 45 per cent of the country’s total exports.

But while the government reaps substantial dollar revenues from the monopoly processing and export business, the industry is based on cheap labour provided by adults and children.

The practice of using child labour in the cotton industry dates back to Soviet times. Although children under 15 are forbidden by law from working, tens of thousands of pupils across the country gather cotton instead of attending classes throughout the harvest months.

Some schools have been closed since October, with students forced to spend their days picking the crop.

“We meet at school at 8 am, and then we go to the fields and gather cotton until 3 pm. We bring food from home,” said Rukiya Mamajanova, a fifth grade pupil from Namangan, who said she has been paid about 200 soms (20 US cents) for two months’ work.

At this late stage, many children are gathering whatever they can find, picking cotton that has failed to ripen or picking up wisps from the ground, often mixed with rubbish, and bringing it in to school where a teacher weighs it.

Muazzam Israilova, a second-grade pupil, talked to IWPR while walking to school, carrying one kilogram of cotton. “My brother gave me this cotton. He’s 12. If I don’t bring the cotton to school, my teacher will be angry,” said the eight-year-old girl.

Namangan residents say local politicians are desperate to meet state quotas at any cost, because failing to satisfy Tashkent-imposed targets could cost them their jobs.

“This cotton is absolutely useless,” said one teacher. “It cannot be processed and used. They just want to fulfil the plan with this rubbish. I feel sorry for the children.”

Mahfuza, a woman whose house is located near a school, has noticed that the children completing this year’s harvest are younger than ever before.

“School children were used in the past, but only from the senior classes, and now young children are being used. The holidays have begun for the children, but instead of having a holiday, they have to take cotton to school,” said Mahfuza.

A local government officer in Pap flatly denied that children are being used to gather cotton.

Headmaster Muminjon Salimov rejected claims that younger children from the second to fifth grades were being forced to work in the fields.

“Perhaps the children have gone into the fields voluntarily and are helping their parents, because the holidays have just begun,” said Salimov, when he was told that IWPR had actually spoken to the pupils.

Using children to pick cotton is just one tactic the Namangan authorities have devised to meet government quotas. Adults are also being targeted.

Twenty-nine-year-old Munovar Sultonova from the village of Sang told how she had a visit a few earlier from members of a local citizens’ group and a policeman, who ordered her family to collect hundreds of kilograms of cotton before the end of the “cotton campaign”.

“I explained that I couldn’t gather cotton because I’ve got a baby and two other young children, but they still forced me to sign a note saying I would commit myself to delivering 300 kilos of cotton,” said Sultonova.

She later discovered the delegation had visited every house in the village, extracting similar pledges from her neighbours.

But it is the employment of child labour that most concerns local people. One teacher, smiling bitterly and pointing to the thin-soled shoes on her pupils’ feet, said, “Children are children, and they don’t think about how months in the cold fields will affect their health. It’s for us adults to think about that.”

Source: http://www.akipress.com/_en_analit.php?id=65&AKI=f88419950b1fe7eda4bf07a11bfa21a0

Youth crusader warns on child sex trafficking

19 Nov 2004

Young people who lose their souls in the child trafficking trade are victims of sexual abuse and the adults who abuse them in this way should be treated accordingly, says Youth Off the Streets founder Fr Chris Riley.

"All too often the young people caught up in this type of activity are treated as criminals," he told the Catholic Weekly. "As a society we need to treat them with empathy and understanding."

Fr Riley, an advocate for children's rights for more than 20 years, says he "witnessed the astronomical levels of violence and exploitation experienced by children" in recent travels overseas.

"Children as young as 10 are literally forced into sexual slavery and routinely abused by men from wealthy western countries, including Australia," he told the fourth annual Youth Off The Streets conference.

Participants included Nobel Peace Prize nominee Fr Shay Cullen, well known for his campaign to save children from commercial sexual exploitation in the Philippines.

Fr Cullen said: "Australians must remember that these perpetrators don't leave their sexual appetites at the airport once they return home to Australia.

"Their appetites have been whetted and this makes Australian children more vulnerable."

Source: http://www.cathnews.com/news/411/115.php

Police rescue young girls from child-sex ring

November 18 2004 at 08:15PM

Police smashed a child-prostitution syndicate and rescued 13 girls, some as young as 10 years old, in Johannesburg and Durban on Thursday, SABC radio news reported.

Police said this was just the tip of the iceberg, and girls between the ages of 10 and 15 were across the country being kept locked up, and forced to have sex for money.

On Thursday, after a month of investigation, police swooped on the sex-syndicate and arrested 59 Nigerians. None of the clients have been arrested as yet.

The girls were either sold to the syndicate by their parents, had run away from home, or were kidnapped, police said.

They were given heroine, leading to addiction that made them dependant on their captors.

Police believe many more girls are still in the clutches of the criminals. The girls were being moved between Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Durban, making it difficult to track and rescue them, police said.

A special police unit started investigating the sex ring about a month ago, after receiving a tip-off from one of the girls' sisters.

She believed her sister was being kept in a building in Durban. Police swooped on the place and found the girl, the SABC reported. - Sapa

Source: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=qw1100801521196B265&set_id=

Over 100 000 child soldiers in Africa

November 18, 2004By

Meera Selva

More than 100 000 children have had their childhoods destroyed after they were recruited as soldiers to fight in Africa's long running civil wars.

In the last three years, many boys and girls were abducted from their families, tortured and sexually abused before handed rifles and taught to become killers. Many militias psychologically torture new recruits to indoctrinate them.

"Children are forced to go through orchestrated events that turn them from victims to perpetrators," said Geoffrey Oyat of Save the Children, part of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

Martin (13), abducted by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army, fighting a guerrilla war against the Ugandan government, said: "When my brothers and I were captured, the LRA said all five of us couldn't serve in the LRA. They tied up my two younger brothers and invited us to watch. Then they beat them until two died. They told us it would give us strength to fight. My youngest brother was nine." About 50 000 child soldiers in Africa fight in the Great Lakes region and 30 000 in the DRC.

Girls are also kidnapped and gang raped by soldiers. A girl (13) kidnapped by militias in Burundi said: "They would eat and drink, then call you. They were many. It was painful. If you refused, they whipped you. They all had sex with me ... I wasn't the youngest."

Militias and government troops in Sudan and Uganda have also used children to fight internal conflicts. Children as young as 14 have been recruited into the paramilitary government militias, the Local Defence Forces, in Rwanda.

Napolean Adok, recruited as a child soldier with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, said: "In Sudan, there are no street children ...the are recruited as child soldiers." Some child soldiers find it hard to fit back into normal society and rejoin militias. Girls were particularly vulnerable as they were shunned by their families if they were raped and left pregnant.

Countries can legally be tried for using soldiers under 15. The UN Security Council, meeting in Nairobi, has been called on to apply sanctions against countries that allow children to be recruited as soldiers.

Source: http://www.pretorianews.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=665&fArticleId=2304145

Global use of child soldiers slammed

Wednesday 17 November 2004 11:34 AM GMT

Governments in at least 10 countries continue to use children to fight on the frontline, according to a new report.

"Scores of armed political groups in most regions of the world continued to recruit children, force them into combat, train them to use explosives and weapons, and subject them to rape, violence, hard labour and other forms of exploitation," said the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

The coalition, which regards children as being under 18, studied more than 20 countries and territories where armed hostilities occurred between March 2002 and March 2004.

Despite highlighting a number of countries where children are THestill used in conflicts, it said much had been achieved in the last three years in establishing a legal framework for protecting children.

By August 2004, 77 states had signed an optional UN protocol setting 18 as the minimum age for the direct participation in hostilities, it said on Wednesday.

The United States ratified the protocol in December 2002, but at least 62 soldiers under the age of 18 participated in US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the report.

Named and shamed

The coalition urged the UN Security Council to ensure it did not just "name and shame" countries using child soldiers, but also took action to enforce its demands to end child-soldier use.

"If governments and armed groups perceive its resolutions as empty rhetoric, then the progress made in international accountability will be lost," it said.

Between 2001 and 2004, children were involved in armed hostilities in more than 20 countries.

The report listed the countries as Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea (DRC), India, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Indonesia, Liberia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, the Russian Federation, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

Governments using child soldiers were listed as: Burundi, DRC, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Myanmar, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and the US.

Some governments, like Colombia, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe did not directly recruit children but backed groups which used children to fight and kill, the report said.

For its global survey on child soldiers, the coalition used information from UN Children's Fund, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Save the Children among other rights groups.

Source:http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5A0310B0-BC69-4426-8B2F-206EBE85B49F.htm

New drive against child soldiers

Wednesday, 17 November, 2004

Recruiters of child soldiers should face prosecution by the international criminal court, a human rights group has said.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (CSUCS) has called on the UN to name, shame and pursue armies and militias which use children to fight.

Fighters under the age of 18 have been used in 22 conflicts in the last three years, it reveals in a new report.

It says the US and UK were among countries recruiting underage soldiers.

In the early stages of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, up to 62 children aged 17 were sent in by US forces, according to the report.

Prosecutions

In its detailed study covering five continents since 2001, it warns that while wars ending in Afghanistan, Angola and Sierra Leone led to the demobilisation of 40,000 children, over 25,000 were drawn into conflicts in Ivory Coast and Sudan alone.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed groups sexually abused and raped girls and forced children to kill their own relatives, the report said.

In Colombia, child soldiers of the FARC guerrilla group were ordered to execute other children for disciplinary offences.

Children have been used as informants, spies or messengers in hotspots such as Indonesia, Israel and Nepal.

"A world that does not allow children to fight wars is possible, but governments must show the political will and courage to make this happen by enforcing international laws," said Casey Kelso, head of the CSUCS.

The coalition is made up of human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights watch and charities such as Save the Children and World Vision.

Rachel Brett, of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, a member of the coalition, told BBC News that child soldier recruiters were already facing prosecution in conflicts including Uganda, the DR Congo and Sierra Leone.

"The first successful prosecution for using children in this way will have a huge impact," she said. "If these recruiters know they will be caught, it will force them to change their behaviour."

'No under-18s'

Ms Brett said governments and rebel groups were "remarkably sensitive" about how accusations of using child soldiers could harm their credibility.

"If governments are being named by the UN Security Council, then I think they will take that seriously," she added.

The CSUCS wants a ban on recruiting under 18s into the armed forces but most child soldiers are members of rebel groups, or government-backed militias.

Many are forced to take up arms, others volunteer to fight to take revenge, or to make a living.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4019087.stm

Actress Nandita Das with children at a screening of her two films in Bhubaneswar on Sunday

Monday, Nov 15, 2004

BHUBANESWAR, NOV. 14. As the nation paid tributes to the late Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, on the occasion of his birth anniversary, noted actress and social activist, Nandita Das, underlined the need for protection of children's rights.

``The problems facing the country's children, particularly child labourers, should not be discussed on Children's Day alone, but be taken up at various forums from time to time,'' Ms. Das said at a function organised to mark the national release of two public education films on children's right to education.

Underprivileged children, school children, social activists and film personalities witnessed the films, which were screened in the presence of Ms. Das and her husband, Soumya Sen.

Produced by the Leapfrog with the help of the Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) and the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the two films, ``Car Park'' and ``Jalebi'', have been directed by Ms. Das herself.
The films of one-minute duration, stresses the need for improvement in the quality of education. ``Encourage Creativity, Prevent Dropouts'' is the message. ``I hope the films would contribute a bit towards the improvement of education in the country,'' Ms. Das said. ``Mass media should be used more intelligently for social development,'' said Mr. Sen.

The film release function was organised by the CACL and its national convener, Ranjan Mohanty, was present.

While the CACL has taken 70 prints of the films for screening at theatres and other forums, Ms. Das and Mr. Sen have approached television channels for wider circulation.

Leapfrog, a two-year-old organisation being run by Ms. Das, her husband and others, earlier made a short film on water harvesting and another film for the United Nations Children's Fund.

The organisation, with the help of ActionAid, organised the visit of 30 underprivileged Indian children to Pakistan a few months ago. The children participated in some sports events that were aimed at bridging the gap between the two countries.

According to Ms. Das, Leapfrog will organise a visit of a group of underprivileged children from Pakistan to India next month. The children from Pakistan will visit several cities, including Kolkata and Hyderabad.

Earlier, Ms. Das inaugurated the `Sishu Mela-2004', a weeklong festival for children organised by the Bhubaneswar-based People's Cultural Centre.

Addressing the gathering, Ms. Das called upon the children to make efforts to do good things in life even if people around tried to discourage them. She talked to the underprivileged children and spent some time with them.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2004/11/15/stories/2004111501841500.htm

Poverty drives young kids to stone crushing

Siliguri, Sept 28

West Bengal's Siliguri District, it seems, continues to openly flout a central government ban on child labour.

This is starkly apparent at stone quarries in the area, where hundreds of children, driven by hunger and poverty, are forced to engage in stone crushing activity.

Under the Constitution, the employment of children under 14 years of age was first prohibited in 1948, and then in 1986, child labour was banned in 17 industries considered hazardous. These strictures notwithstanding, there are still close to 11 million children working instead of going to school.

In Siliguri, children aged below 10 spend eight hours a day by the riverside fishing out stones and breaking them into gravel with hand tools twice the size of their tiny hands. Most of these kids have either been abandoned or are orphaned, and some, are the crucial breadwinners for their even younger sibling.

The constant hammering ends up blistered hands and feet and the prolonged exposure to fine limestone dust leaves many with serious and possibly life-threatening respiratory disorders.

Scared and shy, they are fearful about speaking to strangers, lest they lose their jobs and source of livelihood.

"We break stones because there is no money at home. I am illiterate," Santosh, a young boy said.

Kavita, a girl labourer, said: "I do this for money. There is nothing to eat at home. My name was struck off the school list a few years back."

Employed through contract companies, they lose a sizable chunk of their money to middlemen, ultimately earning only Rs.50 a day, which is not enough to buy them even one complete meal.

Poor law enforcement has meant that their employers, who make huge profits from them, have gone unchecked.

Helpless parents say they have neither the courage nor the resources to rebel, and have accepted their sorry state as fate.

"What to do? We are helpless, there is no money to eat so we all have to work. I have no money to send my children to school. We have to work," Rekha, a labourer, said. (ANI)

Source: http://www.teamindia.net/news/index.php?action=fullnews&id=23325

Kerala boy fights child labour

[Kerala, India]: Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 12: Ten-year-old Mishal intends to highlight Kerala's rampant child labour problem by embarking on a 750-km cycle expedition across the state on Children's Day.

"I'm sad to see children of my age working in hotels and workshops. My main aim is to open the government's eyes and have this evil practice banned," Mishal told reporters here Friday.

He took up cycling when he was eight. He regularly cycles six kilometres to his school, Attingal Mother India International.

Mishal, who is also a gifted dancer and mimic, plans to visit a large number of schools en route and hold awareness talks to emphasise that children should not be engaged in any form of labour.

He expects to cover the entire distance in two weeks. Former chief minister A. K. Antony, Labour Minister Babu Divakaran and senior police officials are among those who plan to cheer the boy as he embarks on his mission.

Source: http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/?action=fullnews&id=42326

Rights Group Charges Sri Lanka Rebels Continue to Use Child Soldiers

Nov 11, 2004 New Delhi

The international rights group, Human Rights Watch, says Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels are still recruiting child soldiers, despite a ceasefire with the government.

The Sri Lankan government signed a ceasefire with the Tamil Tiger guerrilla group in February 2002.

Even though the fighting has stopped, Tejshree Thapa from Human Rights Watch says the rebels continue to abduct and illegally recruit children to join their forces.

"What is particularly disturbing, of course, is that despite the ceasefire, the recruitment seems to be continuing, and in government-controlled areas, increasing."

In a report released this week, Human Rights Watch estimates that at least 35-hundred child soldiers have been forced to join the rebels since the ceasefire -- often as a result of threats against their families.

Ms. Thapa says the rebels have used child soldiers for years as a means of increasing their ranks. But they also take children as a means of keeping the local population in rebel areas under their control.

A child soldier is classified as any combatant under the age of 18. The report documents children between the ages of 12 and 14 years old being deployed in frontline situations.

Ms. Thapa says even those who have not seen combat are badly mistreated and punishments are severe.

"Children who ask to see their parents, children who dare to run away, children who refuse to obey, children who collapse because they cannot keep up with the pace of physical training and military training are beaten, often beaten in front of others. Some children report seeing their comrades being beaten so severely that they were unable to walk afterwards."

The report comes as Norway's Foreign Minister Jan Petersen visits Sri Lanka to try to force both the government and the Tamil Tigers back to the negotiating table to hammer out Tamil autonomy in Sri Lanka. Norway brokered the 2002 ceasefire between the two sides and has facilitated the now-stalled peace talks.

Ms. Thapa of Human Rights Watch says, Norway and the rest of the international community should put pressure on the rebels.

"We believe that with adequate pressure from the international community … the Tamil Tigers can be given incentives to cease the recruitment… And we believe that with sustained pressure they will - and they should - be made to before peace talks can continue."

Twenty years of fighting between the government and the Tamil Tigers has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Source: http://www.politinfo.com/articles/article_2004_11_11_5106.html

Solvent drugs — a harmful new mode of intoxication

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

PESHAWAR: Solvent drugs, a relatively new mode of intoxication among the poor working class is highly injurious to health and can cause severe mental illness or death within one year of its regular use.

“These drugs include adhesives such as glues, petrol and by-products, such as varnish, thinner, benzene and gases like nitrous oxide,” said Dr Bashir Ahmad, a consultant psychiatrist at the Government Mental Hospital Peshawar.

He said that this form of addiction was more dangerous than smoking hashish and other narcotics. Six months to one year of regular use can cause severe mental illness and serious respiratory disorders, but a single high dose can also damage the brain or cause memory loss, he added.

Technically, solvent drugs are called ‘volatile substance abuse’ and have been defined as the “deliberate inhalation of gases, chemical fumes or vapours for mind altering and recreational purposes. It gives a high similar to that produced by alcohol. The drug helps release tension and the user feels euphoric and sleepy.

Inhalants can be breathed in through the nose or mouth in a variety of ways such as sniffing or snorting, huffing from a soaked rag stuffed in the mouth, spraying aerosols directly into the nose or mouth, he explained.

A majority of the solvent abusers (or users) he said were street children, including rag pickers and beggars or children working in motor mechanic shops and furniture industry.
Dr. Bashir said the government should take notice of this mode of intoxication, which was increasing by the day.

“The number of solvent drug abusers is increasing at an alarming rate and there is a dire need for taking measures to curb the menace at its emerging stage,” said Arshad Mehmood, deputy national coordinator for the Society for Protection of Child Rights (SPARC). A growing number of patients with addiction backgrounds are being reported in the various mental hospitals in Peshawar and other cities.

Arshad demanded the government include solvent drugs in its campaign against drug addiction, take measures for creating awareness among masses about this new and dangerous mode of addiction and ban the sale of solvent drugs to minor boys.

Dr Liaqat, programme manager of Darul Shifa Drop-in Centre, a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts operated by the NGO Dost Foundation, also believes that the number of solvent drug abusers is increasing.

In the last two years more than 20 street children have been sent in for rehabilitation, one of them went mad, he said.

According to a study conducted by the United Nations, the major problem reported among solvent abusers is respiratory tract infection, fever, and skin infections. Non-availability of the drug can lead to anger, agitation, restlessness, irritability and generalised aches according to the study.

The study also indicated a lack of clarity about detoxification of solvent abuse in the existing drug treatment facilities, compounded by no rehabilitation programme for the affected children.

The major factor to lead into the use of solvents reported by more than half of children was friends and peers. “There is an urgent need for the development of a comprehensive national strategy for the control and prevention of solvent abuse,” the study suggests.

Special emphasis should be laid on the rehabilitation of these children and various outlets in the shape of homes or drop-in centres need to be established in areas that are accessible to street children, it added.

Source:http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_8-11-2004_pg7_20

Asia takes aim at growing child sex trade

2004-11-09

Taiwan News, Staff Reporter / By Karishma Vyas

In a small brothel in northern Thailand, six girls, their bodies covered in bruises and cigarette burns inflicted by drunken customers, cower inside dark, grimy rooms.
It is one of the more horrific memories of Ben Svasti's time on the front line of the fight against child trafficking.

"One girl even had duct tape stuck across her mouth to stop her from screaming," said Svasti of anti-trafficking group TRAFCORD, which helped rescue the teenagers, most of whom had been smuggled across the border from impoverished Myanmar.

Despite much-vaunted efforts to stamp out child trafficking in the region, officials from the United Nations and 20 Asia-Pacific countries meeting in Bangkok yesterday admit that far from going away, the problem is getting worse.

"The forces driving the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children are stronger and more vigorous than in the past, despite changes in laws and government policy," said Gopalan Balagopal of U.N. children's body UNICEF.

"Children continue to be sexually exploited, particularly through the use of the Internet, promotion of sex tourism and a lack of education about HIV/AIDS which make some people believe sex with children can cure the disease," he said.

It is impossible to estimate the number of children trafficked each year across the world, although all estimates run into the hundreds of thousands.

In Thailand, welfare groups say the total could be rising by as much as 20 percent each year, earning the country the dubious reputation of being southeast Asia's human trafficking hub.

Thailand on U.S. trafficking list

Identified as a preferred transit point and destination for regional child smuggling rings, Thailand now sits on a U.S. human trafficking "watch list."

Thai police complain they are fighting an uphill battle against an increasingly sophisticated industry worth up to 100 billion baht (US$2.45 billion) a year, according to Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

Desperately poor young girls from Myanmar, Cambodia and China are lured into Thailand with promises of lucrative jobs, only to end up in massage parlors and karaoke bars where customers will pay as much as 30,000 baht for virgins.

Others are flown as far as Australia, Japan, South Africa and the United States to be kept as brothel sex slaves.

Given its long, porous borders and rampant police corruption, getting the children into Thailand is easy.

Panupong Singhara, a police commissioner in the northern city of Chiang Mai where the problem is most acute, said suspected traffickers have been alerted to police raids and government officials and police implicated in trafficking busts.

"Corruption is one of my biggest concerns," Panupong said. "If evidence is found against any government official either from police or any other agencies, the person will be immediately charged and prosecuted."

It is not only foreigners who get sucked into the dark world of child prostitution in Thailand.

Near Chiang Mai's historic Tapae Gate, Kwan, a 14-year-old boy who fled an abusive step-father two years ago, walks the streets until the early hours looking for clients for sex.
"I know this is not the right thing to do but when I need money I have to do it," Kwan told Reuters.

Svasti said it was time governments in the region paid more than just lip service to the problem.

"Child trafficking and sexual exploitation is a form of slavery and it's something that most people in the West feel is historical," said Svasti. "But when it comes to slavery and sex slavery, it's very much alive."

Source: http://www.etaiwannews.com/Asia/2004/11/09/1099965617.htm

Triangular paradigm for child labour issues

2004-11-06 19:58:31

Divisha Gupta

Ever wondered why the seven year-old who serves you tea at the neighborhood kiosk chose to take up the job that he is doing? Why that bright faced, shy looking girl carries a broom instead of a pencil? What forces many young children to drop out of their schools at a tender age to take up petty jobs for paltry wages?These are only some of the many unanswered, uncomfortably difficult questions, which stare the developing world in face. Behind them lie three crucial issues, which are common to all nations striving for a better, more developed tomorrow.

These three issues, namely, poverty, child labour and education will be the agenda of the second ‘Triangular Paradigm’ meet in Brazil on November 8 wherein the representatives from over 150 donor countries, education and labor ministers and heads of United Nations will brainstorm over future strategies for holistic development. This meet is a follow-up to the first one, which was held in New Delhi on November 18 last year.Poverty alleviation was taken up as a global agenda and one of the prime areas of focus were the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set to be achieved by 2015. The deadline for mid-term goals was set for 2005.

Another key focus area is education. The Dakar Framework for Action, drafted in the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2000 marks out definite objectives. They aim at achieving Education for All by the year 2015.

The third and one of the most crucial issues is child labour eradication. Over 150 nations have come together and are now obliged to eliminate the worst forms of child labour with any excuse for further delay.

This unique concept of Triangular Paradigm has been initiated by Kailash Satyarthi, India-based child rights activist, who had also led a team of journalists and activists in raiding a circus in Gonda in Uttar Pradesh state of India and rescuing over two dozen Nepali girls exploited there in June this year. A veteran child rights campaigner for over two decades, Satyarthi is also the Chairperson of Global March Against child labour. He is of the belief that those who are closest to the problems are closest to their solutions." The challenge, thereby, lies in devising a holistic technique to arrive at the solutions of these gargantuan problems.

In the prevalent scenario, the immediate concern lies in identifying the crucial linkages between child labour, poverty and education (or rather, the lack of it). This ingenious proposition establishes the relation between these three. It reinforces the fact that there exists a vicious circle of poverty and child labour and illiteracy and child labour. Unemployment among adults is another established truth in the developing countries.

None of these problems operate in isolation but are inextricably linked. The simultaneous cause and effect process among the three have contributed to the burgeoning of all three of them in their respective spheres, especially in the developing nations.

There are two aspects of the theory. The first is availability of children as a cheap workforce. Since adult unemployment in the third world is on the rise, children come in handy as they demand less and are willing to put in more work hours for a relatively lesser pay packet. The reason is that adults do not get easy employment in the first place, and even if they do, they cannot be provided the legal minimum wages. Studies reveal that a child works for five times lesser wages than those demanded by an average adult. Moreover, children are also forced into work by the families who are infested with abject poverty and a big family to feed.

Although education is a handy tool to tackle this problem, many countries have not integrated the ‘Education for All’ program in their poverty reduction efforts. Schools, learning centers, colleges are the gateways to a prosperous democracy, a smoothly functioning administration and for the effective execution of the various developmental policies. The lack of coordination between the various rungs of the administrative ladder has led to the ignorance of education as a tool for removal of poverty and child labour. Dakar Framework for Action and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will remain distant dreams if they are not put into action and remain restricted to papers.Satyarthi says that although a lot of nations are making serious efforts towards the eradication of child labour, almost none of them has taken into account the other two factors. Many nations do not even spend two percent of their income on education. However, despite spending about 17 per cent of annual budget in education in Nepal, the state of children’s education is not satisfactory at all.Another aspect of the issue is poverty. Poverty alleviation programs are being undertaken and are in full swing in many societies, both at the micro and macro levels. Nepal too has set poverty reduction as the main objective in its national five-year plans. But again, the programmers have failed to see the issue as the cause and effect of increasing illiteracy and hence child labour.

A narrow vision coupled with ineffective planning and implementation techniques at a macro level have actually led to the increase in magnitude of the issue instead of arriving at its logical solution. The need of the hour, as Satyarthi has said, is, therefore, to synergize the three issues into one and adopt an integrated approach towards dealing with them. It is imperative that the policy formulators do not lose sight of the others while dealing with one issue. He also suggests an active thread of coordination, both at the local and the national levels as also with international agencies like UNICEF and ILO.

The Triangular Paradigm is a highly implementable model in the existing circumstances in the Third World. But it will function only when set into action and is not just restricted to papers. Satyarthi strongly believes that this highly practical approach towards dealing with key issues will go a long way in providing satisfactory solutions to the challenging questions mentioned in the beginning.

Source: http://kantipuronline.com/kolnews.php?&nid=21625

NGO supports basic schools in Nadowli District

Regional News of Friday, 05 November 2004

Goli (UWR), Nov. 5, GNA - Sustainable Integrated Development Services Centre (SIDSEC), a Wa based non-governmental organisation in collaboration with Canada Feed The Children (CFTC) programme have embarked on an exercise to raise the standard of education in the Nadowli District.

For a start, the two organisations have rehabilitated several primary and junior secondary schools and constructed some new schools at Nator, Takpo and Goli all in the Nadowli District, while provision had also been made to furnish all the schools and provide the relevant books for learning.

Mr. Boye Bandie, Executive Secretary of SIDSEC announced this on Wednesday when he jointly inaugurated one of the newly constructed 180 million cedi block of classrooms at Goli in the Nadowli District.

He said apart from the classrooms, SIDSEC would also organise training workshops to upgrade the skills of teachers in the district to put up their best for the good performance of the school children in the area.

The Executive Secretary warned parents against the withdrawal of their children from school for marriages and child labour as that could impede the progress of the children.

Mr. Bandie gave the assurance that SIDSEC would soon introduce a supplementary feeding programme to retain the children in school and also institute an award scheme that would stimulate competition among the students in the district.

He said SIDSEC would also introduce a micro-credit loan scheme for parents to enable them to take good care of their children at school and advised parents to invest in their children so that they could become self-reliant in future.

Mr. Damanko James Dassah, President of the Goli Youth and Development Association commended SIDSEC and their Canadian partners for the projects as the school block had increased their enrolment from 60 to 100 students in the junior secondary school.

He appealed to the Nadowli District Assembly and other development partners in the region to consider motivating teachers with bicycles, decent accommodation and other items that could retain them in the rural areas to teach.

Mr. Jim Dahl and Madam Cathy Johnson, officials from the Canada Feed The Children project commended SIDSEC for implementing all proposed projects on schedule.

They, however, appealed to parents to send their children to school to justify the huge investment in the projects. 05 Nov. 04

Source: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=69217

ILO succeeds to help stop child labour in evening shift in city Inds

Saturday November 06 2004 00:39:51 AM BDT

The industrial establishments at Juginagar under Ward No 74 of Sutrapur thana in the city will not accept under-aged child workers in the evening shifts, owners and entrepreneurs pledged at a meeting in Dhaka on Wednesday, reports BSS.

Vice chairperson of the vigilance committee of the Juginagar Multipurpose Centre of the ILO-IPEC/WFCL action Programme and journalist Mrs Momtaj Bilkis Banu chaired the meeting.

Assistant programme coordinator of RIC Abdur Rashid, organizing secretary of the owner’s association of Bangladesh Engineering Industries Ali Akbar, local politician Tunu and member of the mosque committee Shamsuddin Ahmed Laskar, among others, took part in the discussion.

The speakers opined that the child labour should be eliminated from the high-risk areas in the hazardous industrial establishments. They urged all to come forward in elimination of this social problem.

Source:http://www.bangladesh-web.com/view.php?hidDate=2004-11-06&hidType=NAT&hidRecord=0000000000000000027363

40,000 children used as slave labor in the Middle East, Arab countries: Burney

8th November 2004

KARACHI : Pakistan's human rights activist Ansar Burney has said that some 40,000 innocent children, mostly from Asian countries including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, are being used in UAE and other Middle East and Arab Countries, as "camel jockeys" against their will and under most miserable circumstances.

Ansar Burney, by profession a senior lawyer, is Chairman of the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International, Prisoners Aid Society and Bureau of Missing and Kidnapped Children. He has already rescued hundreds of such children whose ages are from one and a half to six years old and rehabilitated them in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Sudan, Ethiopia and other parts of the world.

Last month a four year old boy from Pakistan was trampled to death while another lost his legs after falling off a camel in the UAE.

Burney says: "These innocent children of humanity are living in iron tents, without electricity, and in temperatures above 50 degree centigrade (over 100 degree Fahrenheit). Sexual abuse in this environment is all too common, even electric shocks. The children are purposely underfed so that their wieght is kept down." The agents are giving them electric shocks if any small boy will not work properly.

"The food they're given in the camps is very dirty and unhygienic. They have to feed the camels, but are beaten if they try to eat the animals 'good' food. They are allowed to eat only half a loaf of bread in 24 hours. They get up at 3:00 in the morning and go to sleep at 9:00 at night working for 18 hours a day," Burney said.

"They sleep in hot crowded huts made from corrugated irons sheets. It's boiling hot out in the desert yet they have to train twice or three times a day. It's hard and painful work and, after a while, the boys have permanent damage to their sexual organs from bouncing up and down on the camel".

"During training and in races they often fall down and are badly injured or crushed to death. Because it's illegal to keep underage jockeys they never receive medical treatment and some of them die very painful deaths. Their bodies are just buried out in the desert in unmarked graves".

Ansar Burney says the Rulers and Sheikhs of the ruling families own most of the camel camps.

The trafficking of young children for forced labour is one of the fastest growing areas in international crime. A study by the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International pointed out that child trafficking is not new but it is a current practice in most of the Middle East and Arab region. It has, however, gathered considerably momentum over the past few years. The use of children as jockeys in UAE from Pakistan, however, dates back to early 70's.

There are estimated 30,000 active racing camels and about 17 racetracks throughout the UAE. Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah, which are the centers of this activity, have five of the main stadiums near the Rulers Palaces.

The high-risk areas for child trafficking are Rahim Yar Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Southern Punjab, as well as some parts of Sindh and Baluchistan.

It is the work of international networks that have made it a sophisticated and well-organised human trafficking industry in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Ethiopia, Sudan and other poor countries. It has become a means to earn a living for those criminals who torture the lives of these innocent children and gain pleasure from their tears and cursing.

Camel racing in the UAE is an old sport but they do not using there own children as jockeys. During his work and research over several years on this particular issue Mr. Burney never found any Arab child being used as a jockey.

Why is trafficking of children so popular? The root causes are multiple and complex. Some are obvious such as extreme levels of poverty. It is far easier to persuade parents to part with their children when if they don't sell one or two of their children they will all die of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and ignorance. Inadequate legislation and weak enforcement of related laws also contribute heavily to the problem. Greedy organized groups have made this into a business at the expense of the lives of these children.

The trafficking of children for use as camel jockeys is strictly prohibited by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and by ILO Conventions 29, 138 and 182. All of these laws have been ratified by the UAE but the problem is still growing at an alarming rate.

Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister for Foreign Affairs and also the Chairman of the Emirates Camel Racing Federation promulgated Order No.1/6/266 on 22 July 2002, which prohibits children under 15 or weighing less than 45kg from being employed in camel racing. It also specifies that all camel jockeys must have proof of their age through their passports and be issued with a medical certificate by the Camel Racing Federation. The minister announced that the ban would come into effect on 1 September 2002.

A fine of 20,000 Durham's ($ 5,500) will be imposed for a first offence and a second offence will lead to a ban from camel racing for one year. A prison sentence of three months along with a fine of 20,000 Durham's will be imposed for subsequent offences.

During the last 9 months hundreds of children were deported and repatriated from the UAE, Muscat, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab and Middle East countries after working for more than two and three years as camel jockeys.

Recently the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International has made a video documentary film of more than 24 hours with a hidden video camera on the plight of these unfortunate children.

The children are attached to the camels back with Velcro fastenings but so rough is the ride that many of them fall off. One of the 'advantages' of using children as jockeys is that their terrified cries make the camels run even faster.

Many of the child jockeys have been kidnapped from their villages in countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Sudan. Some have been bought from impoverished families by agents. Others are lured from home with promises to their families that they will be employed as domestic servants in cities in their own countries.
In one recent case, a woman posing as the mother of three boys and two girls aged between two and seven was arrested at Islamabad airport in Pakistan. The children were allegedly being taken to Dubai to serve as camel jockeys.

Ansar Burney said that in Bangladesh reuniting the children with their families is a difficult task.Many of these children were trafficked at a very early age - perhaps between one and a half and five - and often cannot recognize their parents. Some can no longer even speak their mother tongue.

Source: http://www.pakistanlink.com/headlines/Nov04/08/06.html