Saturday 12 June is World Day Against Child Labor, a day organized under the auspices of the UN. Three days ago, Unicef and the International Labor Organization pointed out in a report the increase in the number of children forced to work in the world due to the effects of the pandemic. Children’s rights NGOs warn of the physical, health and economic consequences of these forms of exploitation for minors.
The majority of them are between 5 and 11 years old. According toa report published by Unicef and the International Labor Organization (ILO) On Thursday, June 10, 2021, 160 million children in the world will be forced to work. And that number would only grow under the influence of the pandemic. Child labor risks will affect another nine million children by 2022, or even 46 million, according to UNICEF’s simulation model. The economic upheavals of 2020 and 2021 have driven millions of them to leave school prematurely. “Their parents lost their jobs or could not sell goods. Sometimes the children saw them struggling to buy food. For them, it was obvious that they had to work for their families to survive, “says Jo Becker, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.
Between January and May 2021, researchers from Uganda, Nepal and Ghana interviewed more than eighty child workers for NGOs, who also published a report in the wake. “Due to the epidemic, the schools had to close. Many no longer had access to free lunch. And if they did not have distance learning, some thought it was better to work rather than do something at home. According to Jo Becker, child laborers are largely ‘poor, migrant or marginalized children’ and live mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The majority of them work in agriculture (70%), in the service sector (20%) and a smaller share in industry (10%).
Inhalation of toxic products
“They will sell food on the streets, weave carpets in factories, collect gold in mines,” the humanitarian said. And this under often deplorable working conditions: “Some people hit the stones on the gravel with hammers in the quarries. They risk getting bitten in the eyes. Young boys also carry very heavy loads on construction sites, and that ten hours a day “, regrets Jo Becker.
Nothing new in itself, because NGOs have been repeating it for a long time. As early as 2013, Human Rights Watch warned in a report on the case of child gold breakers: “[Ils] risk of cave damage and tool accidents, as well as long-term health problems from mercury exposure, dust inhalation and heavy loads. ”
The mixture of mercury with ore, which they then burn to recover the gold, is, according to the NGO, the “simplest and cheapest method [les travailleurs] has. “However, it is ‘a toxic substance that attacks the central dangerous system,'” the organization condemned. “Premature aging, malnutrition, depression and drug addiction …”
The consequences are such that political leaders, such as Dominique Ouattara, the First Lady of Côte d’Ivoire and a member of the National Committee for the Supervision of Measures to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, Exploitation and Labor (CNS), have done so. Their workhorse to the press andforeign organizations.
79 million children perform dangerous work
According to the report published on Thursday, June 10, 2021, half of the 160 million exploited children perform dangerous work daily, defined by Unicef as “work that may be detrimental to their health, safety or moral development.”
The two organizations have seen an increase of 6.5 million children working in dangerous conditions compared to 2016, which represents 79 million minors worldwide.
The little girls carry more weight of this even more: “When the schools were closed, some had to take care of their brothers and sisters or clean the houses. They receive less pay than boys and are sometimes exposed to sexual violence, says Jo Becker. “[Ces violences] are sources of early pregnancies and contractions of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV / AIDS “, stressed Plan International NGO network 2019.
The most serious consequences for these children are long-term: “The more these children are in school, the less likely they are to return. In some cases, even when schools reopen, children continue to work. Because their families still need them. to pay for food, school fees or debts, she continues.
Marion Libertucci, head of advocacy for Unicef France, speaks of a “vicious circle of poverty: these children will not have access to later activities that will allow them to have a decent income.”
“Child labor is not an inevitable repercussion of the pandemic”
As the pandemic has left thousands of children orphaned, many of whom now have to support their families, NGOs are urging governments to respond. “Before Covid-19, many had made progress on the issue. From 2000 to 2016, the proportion of children who were forced to work decreased by 40%, says Joe Becker. There were 90 million fewer children. “But the arrival of the virus triggered a snowball effect: the closure of schools, businesses and the slowdown in global economies. To drag millions of children and parents into a situation of extreme poverty. “It’s a huge pressure. In some countries the number of child workers was already large, for example in India. With the exponential cases of Covid, this problem will become really worrying, ”she says.
To stop this plague, Human Rights Watch, like UNICEF and the ILO, advocates the establishment of cash transfers to disadvantaged families. This is to provide additional income each month to the most vulnerable families. A study conducted in 2020 by the ICI Foundation (International Cocoa Initiative), however, has shown that “the use of these transfers to increase household income does not automatically lead to a reduction in child labor.”
The authors note that in cases where this did not work, these transfers were “too small to cover school costs.” In other cases, “families invested the money in farms or farms. Family businesses, which required extra support from the children.”
The three NGOs for children’s rights also recommend the expansion of campaigns to attract new children to school, the establishment of social protection systems,4 billion people are exposed to shocks, according to the ILO and Unicef, strengthening the labor inspectorate. With the ILO’s goal of eradicating all forms of child labor by 2025.
