Child labor: "They carry heavy bags ten hours a day"
The pandemic is forcing millions of children to work.
© Reuters
Text by: Emma Chevaillier
8 mins
Saturday June 12 is World Day Against Child Labor, a day organized under the aegis of the United Nations.
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 because of the effects of the pandemic
.
Children's rights NGOs warn about the physical, health and economic consequences of these forms of exploitation for minors.
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The majority of them are between 5 and 11 years old. According to
a report published by Unicef and the International Labor Organization (ILO) on
Thursday, June 10, 2021, 160 million children are forced to work in the world. And that number would only grow, under the impact of the pandemic. Child labor risks affecting an additional nine million children by 2022, or even 46 million, according to the UNICEF simulation model. The economic upheavals in 2020 and 2021 have pushed millions of them to leave school prematurely. “
Their parents lost their jobs or couldn't 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
», Notes Jo Becker, children's rights officer at Human Rights Watch.
Between January and May 2021, researchers from Uganda, Nepal and Ghana interviewed more than eighty child laborers for the NGO,
which also released a report in the wake
.
“
Because of the epidemic, schools had to close.
Many no longer had access to the free lunch.
And if they didn't have distance education, some thought it was better to work rather than do nothing 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 part in industry (10%).
Inhalation of toxic products
"
They will sell food in the street, weave carpets in factories, collect gold in mines
"
,
describes the humanitarian.
And this in often deplorable working conditions: “
Some people hit the stones on the gravel with hammers in the quarries.
They risk getting pieces in the eyes.
Young boys also carry very heavy loads on construction sites, and that ten hours a day
”, deplores Jo Becker.
Nothing new in itself, because NGOs have been echoing it for a long time.
Already in 2013,
Human Rights Watcha warned in a report on the case of child gold miners: “
[They] risk injuries from collapsing galleries and accidents due to tools, as well as health problems. long-term exposure caused by mercury exposure, inhaling dust and carrying heavy burdens.
"
Mixing mercury with ore, which they then burn to recover the gold, is,
according to the NGO
, “
the simplest and cheapest method [workers] have.
However, it is about "
a toxic substance which attacks the central dangerous system
"
,
denounces the organization. "
Premature aging, malnutrition, depression and drug addiction ...
"
The consequences are such that political leaders, such as Dominique Ouattara, First Lady of Côte d'Ivoire and member of the National Committee for the Monitoring of Actions to Combat Child Trafficking, Exploitation and Labor (CNS), have made it so. their hobbyhorse
with the press
and
foreign organizations.
79 million children perform hazardous work
According to the report published on Thursday, June 10, 2021, half of the 160 million exploited children carry out daily hazardous work,
defined by Unicef
as "
work likely to harm their health, safety or moral development."
"
The two organizations have observed an increase of 6.5 million children working in hazardous conditions compared to 2016, which represents 79 million minors worldwide.
The little girls bear the brunt of this even more: “
When the schools closed, some had to look after their brothers and sisters or clean the houses.
They are paid less than boys sometimes face sexual violence
"
,
notes Becker.
"
[This violence] is a source of early pregnancy and the contraction of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV / AIDS
", underlined
the NGO network Plan International in 2019.
The most serious consequences for these children are long-term: “The
more these children are out of school, the less chance they will have to return.
In some cases, even when schools reopened, 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 the means to access later activities that allow them to have a decent income.
"
According to @ilo and @unicef child labor reaches 160 million - up for the first time in 20 years !!
# EndChildLabour2021
Read the latest global estimates 👉 https://t.co/habHR64ALC pic.twitter.com/RTxE1bJgiL
- International Labor Organization (@OITinfo) June 10, 2021
►Also read: A "global educational emergency": Unicef and Unesco sound the alarm
"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 provide for their families, NGOs urge governments to respond. “
Before Covid-19, many had made progress on the issue. From 2000 to 2016, the rate of children forced to work fell by 40%
, says Joe Becker.
That was 90 million fewer children.
But the arrival of the virus triggered a snowball effect: closing schools, businesses and slowing global economies. Dragging millions of children and parents into a situation of extreme poverty. "
It is a considerable pressure.
In some countries, the number of child laborers was already huge, such as in India.
With the exponential case Covid, this problem will become truly worrisome
"
,
if she alarm.
►
To read also
: in India, Unicef alerts on the tragedy of the orphans of the Covid
To stop this scourge, Human Rights Watch, like UNICEF and the ILO, advocate the establishment of cash transfers to underprivileged families. This is to provide additional income each month to the most vulnerable families. A
study carried out in 2020 by the ICI
(International Cocoa Initiative)
foundation
, nevertheless showed that “
the use of these transfers to increase household income does not automatically translate into a reduction in child labor.
"
The authors note that in cases where this did not work, these remittances “
were too small to cover school fees.
"In other cases,"
families invested the money in farms or family businesses, which required additional support from the children.
"
►Also read: Coronavirus: the pandemic is accompanied by an increase in child malnutrition
The three children's rights NGOs also advocate the deployment of campaigns to attract children back to school, the establishment of social protection systems,
4 billion people are vulnerable to shocks
, according to the ILO and Unicef, strengthening labor inspection.
With the objective of the ILO in view of eradicating all forms of child labor by 2025.
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