Child Labour denies fundamentalhumanrights such as the right to education, right to rest and leisure and free from the country's unfair working conditions, such rights are imperative to the living standard of children are upheld by international conventions.
The International Convention on Economic Social Cultural Rights (ICESCR) was ratified in 1987 and The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was validated in 1990 with both conventions ensuring that Uganda must adhere to these conventions andpromote, preserve and protect human rights. Humanium strives to make children's rights happen.
ImportantCharacteristicsofChildEmployment
Worldwide, the majority of child labour is found in the agriculture sector (71%). Today, 108 million boys and girls are engaged in child labour in crop production, livestock, forestry, fisheries or aquaculture, often working long hours and facing occupational hazards. Child labour violates the rights of children. Despite centuries of efforts against forcing children to enter the workforce, child labor remains a major problem internationally. In many countries, children are made to work in such dangerous jobs as logging, mining, and fighting in wars, as well as exploiting them as beggars, household servants, and even for sexual purposes. The world is set to boost efforts to stop children working as 2021 marks the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, amid concerns that COVID-19 has fuelled the practice.
Hazardous child labour or hazardous work is the work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children. Guidance for governments on some hazardous work activities which should be prohibited is given by Article 3 of ILO Recommendation No. The rise in child labor also compounds other threats to children resulting from the global recession. Hunger now threatens far more people in many parts of the world than it did a year ago.
Children are three times more likely to be employed than city children with child employment rate in rural areas at 34% compared to 11% in urban areas.
For instance, in Kampala only 3% of children are employed compared to eastern region 30%, western region 31% and central 45%.
Child Labour is categorized into four sectors:
- Children working in industry sector: making bricks, quarrying stone and mining.
- Children working service sector: vending, street work, working as porters, collecting and selling scrap metal.
- Children working in the agriculture sector: tobacco, coffee, harvesting sugar cane, herding cattle. Nearly 96% of employed children between the age of 6-13 work in the agriculture sector, the remaining fraction 4% are distributed across the other sectors.
- Worstforms: commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, forced labour in agriculture, using children for illicit activities such as smuggling and stealing due to human trafficking.
The final category is mainly attributed to the Lord's Resistance Army(LRA) which has been active since 1987. It is known that the LRA kidnap children and force girls to become sex slaves and boys to become soldiers. 80% of members LRA are children; from 1987 to 2009 it has been reported that 38,000 children have been kidnapped. 25% of girls are forced to cook and be sex slaves for Kony soldiers while boys are faced with the choice to kill or be killed.
Effects &ResponsetoChildLabour
- In 2012 Uganda made minimal advancement in efforts to eliminate worst forms of child labor. The government launched National Action Plan (NAP) for the elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor and created a Counter-Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) office and an inter-ministerial Task Force to coordinate anti-trafficking efforts.
- The objective of the NAP is to eliminate the worst forms of child labour and at the same time lay a firm foundation for children's rights to be respected, protected and fulfilled.
- Ugandan legislation prohibits the employment of children under the age 12. National labour law prohibits the involvement of children 12-13 in any employment except for light work carried out under the supervision of an adult aged over 18 that does not affect the child's education.
- It is clear the legal framework has left a gap between the age to which education is the compulsory and minimumage of worklabour inspections are not carried out in rural areas.
- Children continually engage in the worst forms of child labour primarily in hazardousforms of agriculture and domestic service.
Challenges for Youth
Child Labor In
More often Ugandan young people face a number of challenges entering the labour market. Highproportion urban youth who have not completed necessary education is therefore at risk of socialmarginalization.
Challenges for Youth
Child Labor In
More often Ugandan young people face a number of challenges entering the labour market. Highproportion urban youth who have not completed necessary education is therefore at risk of socialmarginalization.
Most if not all youth jobs are in the informalsector, therefore, meaning the youth have limited access to social or job security.
However between 2006 & 2012 school attendance increased by 8%, while the labour force participation decreased by 4%.
KeyPolicyImplications
Directaction would play a crucial role in Uganda given the large size of the child labour population and country's limited resources.
Direct action is desperately needed to ensure the removal, recovery and reintegration of working children whose rights are most compromised.
Follow-up actions ensuring that rescued children are provided with a full range of needed social services are also crucial.
Essentially a set child-centredpolicies which will promote schooling as an alternative to child labour. This will provide children with basic and life skills needed to further learning and practical living.
- Education& SecondChanceLearning: early childhood education programs can promote learning readiness, increaseschoolenrollment and school survival and help children away from underage employment. Support for second chance policies is critical to avoid large numbers of children entering adulthood in a disadvantaged position permanently harmed by early work experience. They should be offered a bridge to successfully integrate or reintegrate into formal school class.
- ExpandSocialProtection: social protection instruments will serve to prevent vulnerable households from having to resort to child labour as a buffer against poverty. The government has prioritized social protection expansion and started a social protection program known as the Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE) 2011.
- PromoteGreaterPublicAwareness: child labour is a clear example which both socialnorms and economicconsiderations are important and strategic communication efforts need to be designed with this in mind. A mix of conventional e.g. radio, TV and print media and non–conventional e.g. religious leaders, school teachers, healthcare workers. Providing information on national child labour legislation in terms that are understandable.
- PromoteSocialMobilisationAgainstChildLabour: social actors including NGOs, faith-based organizations, teachers, teacher's organizations, the mass media have important roles to play in the broadersocietaleffort against child labour.
- StrengtheningChildLaborInspections& Monitoring: Employment Act No.6 2006 requires districts to appoint labourofficers to provide technical advice to employers. The government's actual capacity to monitor formal workplaces is limited;30/90 districts have recruited labour officers to enforce labour legislation.
- An advocateofPoliticalCommitment: atalllevels is also needed to ensure that child labour reduction actually happens. The government released NAP & CTIP reflecting their commitment to eliminating child labour.
Child Labor Cons
Read more about child labour on Humanium's website: www.humanium.org/en
References
Child Labor Tn
Written by: Igi Nderi
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Estimates by the Association of Farmworker Opportunity programs, based on figures gathered by the Department of Labor, suggest that there are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the United States. Many of these children start working as young as age 8, and 72-hour work weeks (more than 10 hours per day) are not uncommon.
Agricultural work is demanding and dangerous. Children are regularly exposed to pesticides, greatly increasing their risk for cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that children are three times more susceptible to the pesticides' carcinogenic effects than are adults. Environmental conditions (particularly extreme heat) and dangerous farming tools are even more immediate threats. A report by the Government Accountability Office suggests that 100,000 child farmworkers are injured on the job every year and that children account for 20 percent of farming fatalities.
And yet, these abuses are, for the most part, legal under current U.S. law. The United States' Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) prohibits those under the age of 14 from working in most industries, restricts hours to no more than three on a school day until 16, and prohibits hazardous work until 18 for most industries. However, these regulations do not apply to agricultural labor because of outdated exemptions based upon an agrarian society largely left to the past. Today's farmworker children are largely migrant workers who deserve the same protection as other youth working in less dangerous occupations.
Visit In Our Own Backyard, the AFT's Web site on the hidden problem of child farmworkers in America, to learn more.
