DONATE NOW! YOU CAN MAKE A CHANGE NOW!
To whom it may concern:

When you are having three meals every day, could you imagine children in India are selling themselves for food? Would you allow a 10-year-old child to work 18 hours a day? (Faleiro) After reading “Children Who Sell Themselves” on The New York Times, I would like to draw awareness about the child labor issue in Bihar, India.  I feel sorry for the children who sell themselves for a living. Everyone should have equal rights and educational opportunity.

Sonia Faleiro, a writer went to northern state of Bihar, which is an established source of children for trading networks. Apart from the expected stories of abduction, she also heard about sad and heart-breaking news about children as young as 10 had begun to sell off themself to traders, because they could no longer go hungry.

She interviewed 14 year-old Arun Kumar and heard his experience.

Kumar lives with his uncle and two younger siblings in Amni village, where it takes a day to travel by bus from Patna, the Bihar state capital.

Two days before they met, Kumar had brought back home by a local nonprofit organization, supported by Save the Children, from a rice mill in the state of Haryana. He had been working 18-hour, seven days a week. Do you think this is reasonable for a child to work that long? Are they supposed to work that hard at this age? Also, he had been paid only 800 rupees (a bit less than $20) a month. When the nonprofit organization first entreated, they threatened the factory owner with a huge crowd of noisy protest outside his mill. He then argued, “I paid for him”, before finally releasing Kumar. Do you think this is reasonable? Do you think the factory owner really “owns” Kumar even though he paid for him?


This was not the first time the organization had sent Kumar back to home. He had been brought back home from another rice mills last year. However, the police were not approached either time, as the police knew they are paid off by traffickers. Is it this fair to the children who are trafficked?

Better-off families in Amni eat twice a day. The village has never had electricity, running water or land to cultivate. There are no opportunities for education or employment. Poverty has led to feed child labor. India has an estimated 17 million child laborers. Many of them can be seen in roadside restaurants, bakeries and car repair shops. Urban Indians assume that these children are sent to work by their parents to a little extra cash. Do you think it is moral to allow these illegal and immoral trade to exist? The poverty of the country, the children’s needs, the public's blind eye and the profits of these illegal trades allowed these immoral networks to exist under India’s child labor laws.

I am very upset about how Kumar was made to return home not once but twice still does not destroy his wishes to work. This shows the despair of the children in Bihar and how desperate they need money for food. Therefore, I would like to ask for your help to save the children from the brutal owners and harsh work by donating to one of the biggest activist organizations – Save the Children. “Save the Children” is an international active non-governmental organization that promotes children’s right. They would organize mini-groups which bring the children who are working in work mills like where Kumar was back home. The money donated would provide food and teach them how to cultivate to make a living by themselves.

For more information, please visit: https://www.savethechildren.ca/sslpage.aspx?pid=298. 

It would make a real difference on the children’s life by providing them food and educating them. I kindly ask for your help. You can make a change to their lives by simply donating now!

Thank you for reading!

Yours sincerely,
Joyce Chow

Works Cited

Faleiro, Sonia. Children Who Sell Themselves. 6 September 2011. Electronic. 1 Marcch 2012.


KHETAN, P. (2012, 4 4). Retrieved from http://pradeepkhetan.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html


Siddiqui, A. A. (2012, 3 4). Patna, Bihar News and Photo Blog. Retrieved from http://viewpatna.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

Child labour shocker in Bihar

Child labour shocker in Bihar

This is a shocking news about the child labour in Bihar, where minor children were found washing plates -  not at a restaurant, but at a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) function. It was attended by the top leaders. However, what is even more surprising that the Bihar Labour Minister was also at the function. And when he was asked, he denied that he knew that they were working there. Also, there were child labour working around the scene. This shows how child labour is a significant issue in Bihar. 
Joyce Chow 

Please click HERE for a video on child labour brought to you by the International Labour Organization.

This short video effectively conveys the issue of child labour through emotional photographs of young children involved in the labour market, short words or sentence fragments to allow for easy following and powerful messages and background music that further support the atmosphere of the need for change.

The video is organized in a very logical and effective manner. It begins with statistics on child labour, which introduces the issue and strikes the sympathy of the audience. These introductory facts are accompanied with photos of children labourers who are trapped in unfortunate circumstances and are seeking, but failing to achieve, a better future (notice how many are children looking towards the camera with blank or sad eyes). The mood then shifts as more positive information is given (“the world is changing”, many children have been removed from the labour market and are given access to education). This creates hope in the audience that something can be done to battle the issue. The video ends with giving the audience an opportunity to help in the fight against child labour through the question “Will you join us?”. This is particularly effective as, after hitting the ‘pathos’ of the three forms of rhetoric (which is the most reasonable approach given the characteristics of this global issue), the video then redirects to ‘ethos’ by gently challenging the ethics of the audience to recognize and do something about this issue or to ignore it. 

Child Labour Photographs

Labourer in Brick Factory, India, 1998 (International Labor Organization)

Liyakot Ali, 13, works in a silver cooking pot factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Akash)

Shaifur, 10, working in a door lock factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Akash)

Child Labour Cartoon Strip from 1924 (Minor)

An Indian woman holds the hand of her eight-year-old daughter after she hammered her finger while breaking rocks on a riverbank in Siliguri, India (Boylan)

Children at a brick factory in Fatullah, Bangladesh. For each 1,000 bricks they carry, they earn the equivalent of $0.90 US (Akash).

Children at a brick factory in Fatullah, Bangladesh (Akash)

Bahram of 12 years old working at a mill in Kabul, Afghanistan (Chung)

Child Metal Worker in India (Parker)

Jainal, 11, works in a silver cooking pot factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh for 3 years and is paid $10 US per month for 9-hour work days (Akash).

Zambian child labourer in the stone quarry (Deghati)

Child Labourer Moving Bricks in La Paz Centro, Nicaragua (Rauchi)

Sources:

Akash, G.M.B. Child Labour. 14 April 2009. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

Chung, Chien-min. Afghan Child Labor. n.d. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

Deghati, Manoocher. Child Labour Guide. December 2011. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

International Labour Organization. Child Labour. n.d. http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/child-labour/lang--en/index.htm. 3 March 2012.

Minor, Robert. Child Labor. 22 December 1924. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

Parker, David. Child Labor. n.d. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

Shaw, Jayanta. Child Labor Banned in India. 28 October 2010. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

Written by: Melissa

Organization Approaches Towards Child Labour

Child labour is a serious global issue that demands immediate action. The world currently holds around 215 million children labourers, more than half of which are involved in work in hazardous environments, illicit activities like drug trafficking and prostitution and involvement in armed conflicts. According to the International Labour Organization’s 2010 report, 115 million children under 18 are involved in hazardous work such as handling chemicals, carrying heavy loads, mining and enduring long hours (International Labour Organization). The many severe health and safety risks are particularly harmful to young labourers who absorb toxic material into their bloodstream more rapidly and require more sleep than adults. According to statistics, the child labour market is mainly concentrated in the Asia/Pacific region, which contains the highest number of children labourers of over 120 million, and Sub Saharan Africa, which holds the highest proportion of child labourers of around 25% of all children (International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF)). These research and reports have urged certain governments and groups to recognize the need to face the issue of child labour. Organizations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) have been formed to drive the formulation and implementation of plans to control, and hopefully eliminate, this removal of the rights of children. However, do the actions of these organizations effectively combat these enormous statistics and shocking reality?

A child carries unbaked bricks to a kiln at a brick factory in Raichak, India (Shaw)

Through my research, I have formulated two general anti-child labour groups: large, government-driven organizations and independent, “people-driven” groups. ILO is the most prominent example of the former. The goal of their International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour created in 1992 is to “strengthen the capacity of countries to deal with the problem” and “promote a worldwide movement to combat child labour”. It is the largest programme of its kind globally with operations in 88 countries and an annual expenditure that exceeds $60 million (International Labour Organization). However, its plans of action are very broad. Convention No. 182 on the worst forms of labour encourages members to take “immediate and effective measures to secure the…elimination…of child labour” and to “design and implement programmes of action” without any exact structure, guidelines or timeframes. It recognizes the need for effective elimination of child labour through immediate and comprehensive action, to support free basic education for these children and to provide rehabilitation and social integration following their disassociation from the labour market. The convention then goes on to define the term “the worst forms of child labour”, such as “work which…is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children” and “all forms of slavery…such as the sale or trafficking of children…and forced or compulsory labour” (International Labour Organization). Although it recognizes the issue, this convention hardly does anything to deal with control or elimination of the issue. There lacks a direct effect on child labour and a demanding push for governments to take stronger and stricter action towards it. In numerous countries, child labour is still too commonly accepted and not legally threatened enough to be facing extinction. However, I will give IPEC this: their programs do raise awareness of the issue and place it in national development agendas more effectively than any other organization currently.

Ghlam-Mafus, 16, has been working for 8 years as a blacksmith apprentice in Kabul (Chung)

On the other side of the spectrum, Butterflies, a smaller, non-government organization in India, takes a “non-institutional approach” by working directly with street and working children. They hold monthly meetings where children and organization members discuss issues and find collective solutions, thus allowing direct communication and promoting democratic principles in that every person has a right to an opinion and the principle of freedom of expression. These discuss ion have influenced the forming of other groups organized by the children themselves, such as the newspaper Child Worker’s Voice. In response to statistics showing an increase in education and resulting decrease in child labour, Butterflies formed their Chalta Firta School, a mobile education programme which moves from community to community to teach children basic education like mathematics and reading. Their mantra of the Mobile Education is “If the Children cannot come to the school, let us take this school to them”. Although this is not the best quality of education, it would further promote the obtainable reality for the children to seek an educational path and obtaining a better, healthier life than the one many past child labourers have led. Butterflies also promotes children to attend a formal school; however, this proved difficult due to the organization’s limited influence. Out of the estimated 4,000,000 working children in Delhi (where the organization is focused in), out of which at least 45,000 children are living on the street with no adult support and financially self-supporting for food and other necessities, only 50 children have been admitted to formal schools through this organization. Another program Butterflies organize is a health care program consisting of two parts. The first is a project where a mobile health van visits certain areas on a weekly basis to provide medical treatment. The second is the health education curriculum, where children learn to better protect themselves from diseases, maintain a nutritional diet and give first-aid treatment (Butterflies Child Rights). Given Butterflies’ limited budget and the impossibility of it to always be accessible for medical treatment, I think their health care program is a very good idea as it provides easier access to treatment as well as allows the children to be able to treat themselves/others and avoid sickness. The organization is mainly focused in Delhi, lacking the resources and government power ILO possesses to develop and spread further. Thus, unlike ILO, it directly affects child labour and has immediate results in their fight against cruel treatments and conditions in child labour. Having said that, the magnitude of their results is limited as organizations like Butterflies hold only so much power and resources, something that ILO, through their large international influence, possesses.

Butterflies Mobile Education programme (Butterflies Child Rights)

Something I found very amusing was the Butterflies’ Elimination of Child Labour webpage. It spoke of the Government of India enacting the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act in 1986 against child labour in hazardous industries and condition regulations and later coming out with a notification banning a portion of domestic child labour. It then states, and it is simply too entertaining to reword, “It is easy to pass an order outlawing child labour; however, formulation of any plan for rehabilitation as well as guidelines and standards for rescue has been completely ignored by the government” (Butterflies Child Rights). Put bluntly and pointedly, this is in essence the dilemma in tackling the issue. Child labour is an issue that is recognized and fairly well-known, and many organizations have responded to the severity of the issue, however its statistics still remain bafflingly high. It is because of the approach organizations take. If larger-scaled, government-influencing groups like ILO and smaller groups which work directly with child labourer populations for immediate results like Butterflies combine, the progress towards the elimination of the worst forms of child labour would move much more quickly and effectively.

Sources:

Butterflies Child Rights. n.d. Electronic. 3 March 2012. http://www.butterflieschildrights.org/home.php

Chung, Chien-min. Afghan Child Labor. n.d. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF). Dutch fail to get issue of child labour on G8 agenda. 24 June 2008. Electronic. 3 March 2012. http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor/news/11615

International Labour Organization. Child Labour. n.d. Electronic. 3 March 2012.

http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/child-labour/lang--en/index.htm

—. "Convention No 182." Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Geneva, 1999. Electronic. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/relm/ilc/ilc87/com-chic.htm

—. International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC). n.d. electronic. 2 March 2012. http://www.ilo.org/ipec/lang--en/index.htm

Shaw, Jayanta. Child Labor Banned in India. 28 October 2010. Electronic. 5 March 2012.

Written by: Melissa