Ronel is twelve and works full-time in the
sugarcane plantations of the Philippines.
(Ronel Dagohey)
It’s hard work.
Sometimes we start at six or seven in the
morning.
Across the world 218 million children, as
young as five and six, are engaged in child
labour. Seventy per cent, over 150 million
work in agriculture.
While the good news is that child labour has
declined by eleven per cent in the last four
years, much more needs to be done in agriculture.
The ILO and its social partners from member
governments, and employers and workers organizations
have committed themselves to eliminating the
worst forms of child labour by 2016, including
hazardous child labour in agriculture.
But what is child labour?
Child labour does not include all work done
by children. Worldwide there are 318 million
children carrying out some form of work.
A third of these children are not considered
child labourers: they contribute to the family’s
wellbeing, helping out with tasks outside
school hours.
The remaining 218 million however are engaged
in child labour, 126 million of whom are involved
in hazardous child labour.
At the ILO, child labour represents work,
which by its nature or way it is carried out,
harms, abuses and exploits a child or deprives
a child of an education.
“Hazardous child labour” is work in dangerous
or unhealthy conditions
that could result in children being killed,
injured or made ill because of
poor safety and health standards.
In agriculture, child labourers are particularly
at risk. Agriculture is one of the three most
dangerous and under-regulated economic sectors
worldwide for all workers. And children are
at greater risk than adults when working in
the same situation because their minds and
bodies are growing and developing, and they
also lack work experience.
Some of the hazards child labourers face in
agriculture are:
- long working hours
- carrying heavy loads over long distance
- extreme temperatures
- dangerous cutting tools
- skin problems
- injury or death from heavy machinery
- loud noise
- handling of toxic pesticides.
- exposure to high levels organic dust
- injury or disease from livestock and wild
animals and
- injury or death from falling
The ILO’s International Programme on the
Elimination of Child Labour was launched in
1992. One of the first countries it focused
on was Brazil. ILO’s work here proves that
eliminating child labour in agriculture can
be done.
Hundreds of Brazilian children in Retirolandia,
in the state of Bahia, used to work in sisal
production. They no longer do. There was no
shortage of unemployed adults to do the job
but these children were cheaper, even though
the conditions they worked in - dusty and
hot - broke almost every rule in the book.
Children breathe more deeply and frequently
than adults. Regular exposure to organic dust
put these child labourers at greater risk
of developing allergic respiratory diseases,
such as asthma.
(Noé Silvestre Carneiro, president, Rural
Workers' Union)
The situation for working children in this
region is extremely dangerous. We have children
who have been blinded, because thorns from
the Sisal leaves went into their eyes. We
have children who have lost a hand in the
shredding machine. They work without any protective
clothing. So the unions are very concerned.
We are committed, not just here in Retirolandia,
but all across the country, to rescue the
children from this exploitation, to put them
into good schools, so they can have a better
future.
The majority of
children have since been removed from Retirolandia’s
sisal production due to the success of a “goat-to-school”
program.
Supported by the ILO, and promoted by the
National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture,
goats are loaned to families who can use them
for income if they remove children from work
and send them to school.
In the coffee and tea plantations of Kenya,
Tanzania and Uganda, the ILO has been working
with trade unions, employers’ organizations
and government to end child labour.
(Kenneth Kyamulesire, general manager, Mabale
Grower’s Tea Factory, Uganda)
The unions have been very active to try to
sensitize the employers that it is wrong to
employ children. You deny them a lot of opportunities
and I think it has made an impact.
In Tanzania, the government has scrapped school
fees and primary school is now mandatory.
Part of the national strategy to end child
labour has also been to establish community
child labour committees.
(Jumanne Maghembe, minister of labour, Tanzania)
This process has enabled the government to
withdraw more than 15,000 children out of
nearly 60,000 who were in the worst forms
of child labour in eleven pilot districts.
Much work remains to be done. Many children
still labour in the plantations of East Africa.
They face long, hot hours and are exposed
to toxic chemicals in the pesticides sprayed
on leaves.
Children are at greater risk of harm from
repeated exposure to pesticides than adults.
They have a higher capacity to absorb toxic
substances, whether through breathing or through
the skin.
In Cameroon, child labour is cheap labour
in the cocoa plantations. It is also hazardous
work
Children collect and carry dangerously heavy
loads of cocoa pods. An ILO study found that
18 per cent of the loads children were carrying
weighed over 30 kg. Heavy loads like these
can harm the development of children's bones,
joints and muscles and may result in permanent
disability.
The children themselves prepare the pesticide
mixtures and spray them onto the cocoa plants,
pesticides which can cause permanent nerve
damage. To make matters even worse they work
with no protective clothing or masks.
In Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and the Ivory
Coast over 150,000 children in 2002 were involved
in the handling and application of pesticides
on cocoa plantations.
The ILO and local NGOs have since set up a
pilot project to help Cameroonian children
leave the cocoa plantations and go to school.
(Beatrice Bime, ILO child labour project,
Cameroon)
Investing in a child today is better for the
future. And keeping the child out of school
is actually delaying the child’s future
and perpetuating poverty.
For now, the future of Ronel and his friends
in the Philippines remains the same: weeding,
cultivating, turning soil, cutting sugarcane,
harvesting, and
applying fertilizers and pesticides. Ronel
says his hands itch – a reaction to the
pesticides he handles daily.
In the Philippines, children in the sugar
plantations have been reported to work ten
hours a day, with only Sunday afternoons off.
They earn less than one dollar a day.
Ronel says he has no choice. But, like every
child, he has dreams and aspirations, and
they do not include being poisoned by chemical
pesticides and wounded from a sharp blade.
(Ronel Dagohey)
What do I want? I want to go to school.
