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The
concept of synergising efforts towards Education for All,
elimination of Child Labour and poverty alleviation got
a further boost with the success of the second Round Table
organized in Brasilia, Brazil on November 8th. The UN
agencies, governments from Southern as well as Northern
countries and civil society organizations once again joined
hands in the efforts to concretize the triangular paradigm
to address the issues of child labour, education and poverty.
The
key message of the round table was that poverty cannot
be eradicated without eliminating child labor. Free, quality,
meaningful and compulsory education is one of the most
effective, preventive, curative and sustainable rehabilitative
strategies to end child labor. Without ensuring education,
the menace of child labor cannot be wiped out. There is
always the danger of these children becoming trapped into
the worst situations.
It
was recognised that there is urgent need to break the
cycle of poverty by providing all children access to education,
eliminating the worst forms of child labour and raising
the minimum age to work.
There
was recognition by the participating governments of the
economic interest for the newcomers in the labour market
with a minimum level of education and good health will
be considerably more and longer productive workers
There
was agreement that while there have been commitments to
achieve EFA goals, eliminate the worst forms of child
labor, and reduce poverty, there have not been much institutional
or systematic efforts towards synergising the policies
addressing these three development areas. Throughout the
world the ministries responsible for the elimination of
child labor have little or no connection with achieving
quality education for a country’s children and vice
versa. The elimination of child labor is missing from
most educational schemes and plans. Finance ministries
lack adequate understanding of child labor and education
as prerequisites to development. It was felt that it is
critically important to harmonize the work between the
different ministries concerned with elimination of child
labor, education and poverty alleviation. This task should
be strengthened at the national level in the southern
world and also within the context of the international
agencies work on cross cutting issues.
It
was also the considered view that most of the Governments
present in the meeting that elimination of child labor
is critical to achieve poverty alleviation and education
for all goals, well demonstrated by large number of governmental
delegations participating in the round table. However
the governments expressed the view that bringing children
out of work requires urgently income transfer programme
for the poor, to ensure that the children can attend schools.
It was also suggested to compliment this with food programme
for the children attending schools, undertaking national
level efforts to identify and register children who are
vulnerable, to use a package of services including strengthening
the legal enforcement. It was strongly suggested that
the donor governments should come forward and support
the southern governments in this endeavor.
It
was also agreed that the innovative strategies involved
in elimination of child labor and bringing children to
schools, and alternatively the strategies from education
for all which have led to the elimination of child labor
in specific countries should be documented and brought
forward for dissemination and learning. This task should
be undertaken in the immediate future by the agencies
involved.
It
was agreed that International Labor Organization will
host a working group which will be with the representation
of all the all the organizing agencies until June from
Geneva and it will work out the details for the establishment
of the Global Task Force as a mechanism to follow up on
progress made in the elimination of child labor.
This
Round Table was jointly organized by the Global March
against Child Labour, UNESCO, ILO and the World bank.
It was co-hosted by the Government of Brazil and ICCLE,
the Northern Advocacy Office of the Global March, in conjunction
with UNESCO’s fourth EFA HLG meeting on November
8, 2004. The round table was chaired by Mr. Ad Melkert,
formerly Minister of Labor, Social Affairs and Employment
and presently Netherlands Executive Director, The World
Bank. The key note speaker was the Minister of Education
from Brazil and the Minister of Labor, Brazil. The other
participating Ministerial delegations where from Ministry
of Social Affairs, Brazil, and Education Ministry delegations
from India, Pakistan, China, Kenya, Guyana, Yemen. From
USA the representation was from the US Department of Labor,
Head of the Child Labor Education Initiative. The donors
were represented by the Governmental delegations from
Japan, Norway, Sweden, European Commission, Canada, Germany
from the Ministry of Development Cooperation and USAID.
Also present were the Senior Vice President of the World
Bank, the Head of the Education, World Bank, the Head
of the ILO-IPEC from Geneva, the Head of the UNESCO on
Education. The civil society was represented by the Chair,
Global March Against Child Labor and the Deputy. Secretary
General of Education International /Global Campaign for
Education.
It
was also proposed by the Government of the People’s
Republic of China that it will host the next round table
at Beijing in Nov 2005.
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