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Articles: Business | World Economy & Child labour
- Mr. T.R.Sridhar Prasad. Uppalapati.
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Large numbers of children are involved in all types of undertakings ranging from small- and medium-sized family farms, to large farms, plantations, and agro-industrial complexes. Historically, child labour, either as part of “family teams” or as individual workers, has played a significant part in employment in plantations and commercial agriculture around the world. Girl child labour in agriculture forms a significant part of the workforce. Key gender issues include how girls combine work in agriculture with domestic chores, resulting in reduced educational opportunities for them.
Children around the world become farm labourers at an early age. Most statistical surveys only cover child workers aged 10 and above. However, many children begin work at an even earlier age. Rural children, in particular girls, tend to begin work young, at 5, 6 or 7 years of age. In some countries, children under 10 are estimated to account for 20 per cent of child labour in rural areas.
The work that children perform in agriculture is often invisible and unacknowledged because they assist their parents or relatives on the family farm or they undertake piecework or work under a quota system on larger farms or plantations, often as part of migrant worker families.
Agriculture is historically and traditionally an under-regulated sector in many countries. This means that child labour laws – if they exist – are often less stringent in agricultural industries than in other industries. In some countries, adult and child workers in agriculture are not covered by or are exempt from safety and health laws covering other categories of adult workers. Children, for example, are generally allowed to operate machinery and drive tractors at a younger age in agriculture than in other sectors.
In rural areas especially, household income is insufficient to meet the needs of families. Children work as cheap labour because their parents are poor and do not earn enough to support the family or to send their children to school. Working children represent a plentiful source of cheap labour.
All of the above factors give agriculture a special status and make agricultural child labour a particularly difficult one to tackle. But it is precisely because of these factors – large numbers, girl child workers, hazardous nature of the work, lack of regulation, invisibility, denial of education and the effects of poverty – that agriculture should be a priority sector for the elimination of child labour. Unless a concerted effort is put in place to reducing agricultural child labour, it will be impossible to achieve the ILO goal of elimination of all worst forms of child labour by 2016.
For agricultural and rural development to be sustainable, it cannot continue to be based on the exploitation of children in child labour. There is growing consensus that agriculture is a priority sector in which to develop and implement strategies, policies and programmes to combat child labour and to put agricultural and rural development and employment on a sustainable footing, including promoting decent youth employment in agriculture.
To boost its work in this sector, In order to scale up work on eliminating child labour in agriculture, the ILO has launched a new global landmark International Agricultural Partnership with key international agricultural organizations including farmers’ organizations (employers) and agricultural trade unions (workers). IPEC is also mainstreaming agricultural child labour into current ILO work on youth employment, and rural employment and development.
Armed conflict (child soldiers):
The number of children involved in armed conflicts has increased significantly over the past decade. In 2001 it was estimated that 300,000 children were serving with armed units around the world (of which 120,000 in Africa, 120,000 in Asia/Pacific and 30,000 in Latin America and Caribbean). While many are older children, aged 15 or more, there has been a dramatic trend towards recruiting younger children. The presence of children fighting in both government forces and opposition armed groups has received publicity in Sub-Saharan Africa, first in West Africa, and more recently in Central Africa. However, both teenagers and younger children have also been involved in fighting units in other parts of the world, most notably over many years in Sri Lanka.
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