boot polish! saab boot polish saab!
Boot Polish! Boot Polish!”, he yelled. The 10 or 12 year old boy spotted us on the railway station platform getting off the train and walking to the waiting Navy jeep in Cochin. He shrieked louder at my dad “Saaab boot polish saab!” We just quietly walked past. Days later when I had to choose a subject for a “fancy dress competition” in school I decided to be a “boot polish wallah”. I was in 4th standard. I put boot polish on my hands and face like the boy I saw. I wore an old shirt and shorts and tore them up in quite a few places. Roughed up my hair and added a bit of dirt and mud all over my legs. I got quite a few laughs out of my act. But I don’t think I captured how focused the boy was on trying to make a few paise and how important it seemed to him that someone get a shoe shined. I wondered why he had to work? Who made him work? I wonder where he is now and how he is doing. Did he ever get a break. Did he get a chance to go to school?
June 12th marked the World Day Against Child Labor. The statistics as I read them are staggering. Nearly 250 million children work around the world. An estimated 12.6 million of these children are in India. I suspect there are quite a few that these official statistics are missing. 8.5 million work in slavery conditions. Even in places like Europe thousands of children are forced into prostitution. In Africa thousands of children are child soldiers and combatants. While the numbers in themselves are terrifying it is important to zoom in and see the story of each child caught in this web to understand the true terrifying aspect of this.
I wonder when I go to India if the food I eat, the clothes I wear or the things I buy for cheap are being produced by some half fed, half naked, enslaved and entrapped child. When I was in 7th and 8th grade we had a little boy at home who was brought from a far off place to work as a domestic servant in our house. It was bad for him. He was younger than me, so little, and he had to do all the work in the house. Sweeping, cleaning, dusting. And ofcourse learning A B C from me which he hated.
I am sure all of us have seen children work in India in so many many different industries. Restaurants, tea shops, laundry and as domestic help. I’d say those were probably the “cushy” jobs. There are so many horrible things that happen to many other children. Working with chemicals, making matches, making fireworks, being forced into prostitution, pornography, moving hazardous and heavy loads.
Some of the organizations I found that work in the area of combating child labor and which anyone can contact to get more information on this subject are Global March against child labor, Bachpan bachaao Aandolan, Butterflies, International Labor Organization, Human Rights Education Associates, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes).
Today the eight most common forms of child exploitation in the world
are:
• Trafficking – 1.2 million children, $31.5 million business, prostitution, sold for adoption, forced into marriage
• Prostitution – 1.8 million children
• Forced Labor in Agriculture – Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, 170 million in agriculture,
• Forced to work in Mines - 1 million in mines (Africal Asia, South America),
• Children sold to settle debt
• Children in combat – 300,000 or more are in armed conflict as combatants, messengers, cooks, wives etc.
• Forced into marriage – 100 million girl children (Indian, Nepal, Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa). In some places it is due
to fear of rape.
• Domestic help (or rather slavery or servitude)
The ministry of labor and employment of the Government of India gave out statistics on how many prosecutions have been made and that in 21 districts of five states they are trying to tackle the problem of child labor through a project called Indus. Would you be interested in filing an RTI application with the Embassy of India or simply writing to them to find out about this and how effective it has been and what the next steps are?
In a 1986 legislation, the parliament identified 57 occupations and banned child labourin them. In September 2006 a ban was placed on domestic child labour and child labour in eateries and ‘dhabas’ in India. The Indian government has prohibited the employment of children below the age of 14 years in 15 hazardous occupations under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986. Despite all this a large number of children are child laborers. A significant number of these 170 million of the children worldwide (70% of the 250 million) work in agriculture. This comprises 132 million girls and boys aged 5 to 14 years old.
So this year this day is being marked as a ‘Stop Child Labour in Agriculture’ day.Each year this day focuses on one of the worst forms of child labor listed in the UN worst Forms of Child Labor Convention (1999). Previous years focused on child trafficking, various categories of child domestic work, children in mining etc.
The conditions are terrible for these children working in agriculture. Long hours in heat and rain, using sharp tools that are actually designed for adults, bearing loads too heavy for their frail bodies and operating dangerous machinery that they aren’t trained to handle and which their small bodies cannot handle. Planting, cutting, harvesting, spraying pesticides, tending livestock, weeding, picking (even in the United States!) are some of the aspects of their work. Ofcourse there is no training or protection. There are no cautionary warnings. And healthcare… forget about it.
Children, as we know, have weaker immune systems. In agricultural jobs they are exposed to harmful chemicals all the time, like pesticides, insecticides, fertilizers. Neither do they know what they are dealing with and what harm it can cause them nor do they know how to protect themselves against the hazards. Poverty, hunger and forced labor mean that they have no choice but to agree to do this work. “More the number of children in a family the more the number of hands that can work” is a commonly seen misconception. But each child suffers even more. There is always less food, none or very little education, abuse, slavery.
So what can we … us in AID Dallas/Austin/wherever do to reduce and prevent this in all the areas of the country that we are working in. Let us introduce an element in every project we do and every fundraising/outreach effort we make to educate and create awareness about this and seek to stop child labor in every region we have a project in. May be you can talk about more ideas in the next CSH?
The young minds of these children do not even have an idea if there are any other choices available and their being young means that they aren’t given the power to make such a choice by us adults. But as Aravinda said at the 2007 AID conference, “The moment a child is born, s/he starts to make choices and decisions. Every child no matter how young should be treated as a person and should have the right to be heard, right to question, and right to information”.
Thanks for reading.
6/12/07 On World Day Against Child Labor….
Nice post!