EDITORIALS & ARTICLES
The Problem of Child Labour Needs More Than One Solution
The true extent of the impact of the COVID19 pandemic on child labour is yet to be measured but all indications show that it would be significant as children are unable to attend school and parents are unable to find work.
Statistics on Child Labour
- Around 152 million children around the world are still in child labour with 73 million of them in hazardous work as the world enters the third decade of the 21st century.
- The Census of India 2011 reports 10.1 million working children in the age group of 5-14 years, out of whom 8.1 million are in rural areas.
- UNESCO estimates based on the 2011 Census record 38.1 million children as “out of school” (18.3% of total children in the age group of 613 years).
- The Rapid Survey on Children (2013-14), jointly undertaken by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and UNICEF, found that less than half of children in the age group of 10-14 years have completed primary education.
- The child labour in India decreased in the decade 2001 to 2011 which demonstrates that the right combination of policy and programmatic interventions can make a difference.
Causes of Child Labour
- Large number of children in India remains vulnerable: A Government of India survey suggests that 95% of the children in the age group of 6-13 years are attending educational institutions.
- The children in India are facing numerous physical and psychological risks to a healthy development.
- Closure of schools and challenges of distance learning: The children may drop out of educational institutions and leaving little scope for return unless affirmative and immediate actions are taken by the government.
- Increase in digital divide: The Household Social Consumption on Education in India suggests that in 2017-18, only 24% of Indian households had access to an Internet facility, proportions were 15% among rural households and 42% among urban households.
- Poverty and unemployment levels are high: Poor children and their families may rely upon child labor in order to improve their chances of attaining basic necessities.
- Access to compulsory, free education is limited: The United Nations report estimated that achieving universal education for the world's children would cost $10-30 billion i.e. about 0.7%-2.0% of the annual cost of global military spending.
- Existing laws or codes of conduct are often violated: The manufacture and export of products often involves multiple layers of production and outsourcing, which can make it difficult to monitor who is performing labor at each step of the process.
- Laws and enforcement are often inadequate: The laws around the world are often not enforced or include exemptions that allow for child labor to persist in certain sectors, such as agriculture or domestic work.
Implications of Child Labour in India
- Risk to healthy development of children: It may produce long term and devastating consequences for their education, their skills acquisition, and hence their future possibilities to overcome the vicious circle of poverty, incomplete education and poor quality jobs.
- Children belong in schools not workplaces: Child labour deprives children of their right to go to school and reinforces intergenerational cycles of poverty.
- Child labour acts as a major barrier to education, affecting both attendance and performance in school.
- Threat to national economies: The continuing persistence of child labour and exploitation poses a threat to national economies.
- It has severe negative short and long-term consequences for children such as denial of education and undermining physical and mental health.
- Increase in incidence of child trafficking: Child trafficking is also linked to child labour and it always results in child abuse.
- Trafficked children face all forms of abuse-physical, mental, sexual and emotional and are subjected to prostitution, forced into marriage or illegally adopted.
Initiatives adopted towards curbing child labour
- Convergence of schemes related to poverty and education: The policy interventions such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) 2005, the Right to Education Act 2009 and the Mid-Day Meal Scheme have paved the way for children to be in schools along with guaranteed wage employment (unskilled) for rural families.
- National Child Labour Project: The Concerted efforts towards convergence of government schemes are also the focus of the implementation of the National Child Labour Project.
- Ratifying International Labour Organization Conventions: The Indian government further demonstrated its commitment to the elimination of child labour by ratifying International Labour Organization Conventions Nos. 138 and 182 in 2017.
- Platform for Effective Enforcement for NO Child Labour: The Ministry of Labour and Employment operated online portal (PENCIL portal) allows government officials, law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organisations to share information and coordinate on child labour cases at the national, State and local levels.
Measures to be adopted to address India’s cycle of child labour
- Teachers should be frontline supporters to protect children: It can alert other stakeholders such as social workers to situations where children display signs of distress or indicate they work long hours.
- Listening to children is vital to achieving success: A key message in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is that children have a right to voice their views on matters affecting them and to have these taken into account.
- Children have the power to play a significant role in preventing and responding to child labour because they are key actors in child protection and can give valuable insights into how they perceive their involvement.
- Identification of hazardous work: Each country creates a list of hazardous activities by consulting with workers’ and employers’ organizations (social partners).
- It describes types of work that must not be carried out by children, focusing on work that is likely to harm their health, safety or morals.
- Carry out workplace risk assessment: The businesses have a key role to play in the elimination of child labour, in particular by assessing and controlling safety and health risks in the workplace.
- The risk assessment plays an important part in protecting workers and businesses, as well as complying with the laws of many countries.
- Apply a safety and health management system: An Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) helps employers prevent accidents, injuries and diseases in the workplace in a continuous manner.
Road ahead
- The challenges are significant and manifold but it is not impossible to meet them if the right level of commitment among all the relevant stakeholders and the right mix of policy and programmatic interventions are present.
- It is through strategic partnerships and collaborations involving government, employers, trade unions, community-based organisations and child labour families that we could make a difference building back better and sooner.
- India needs a strong alliance paving its way towards ending child labour in all its forms by 2025 as countries around the world have agreed to in Sustainable Development Goal 8.7.
- The governments, employers, unions, civil society organisations and even individuals must rise and pledge to ‘Take Action against Child Labour’ as a part of the UN’s declaration of 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.
- The Child labour and other forms of exploitation are preventable through integrated approaches that strengthen child protection systems as well as simultaneously addressing poverty and inequity.
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