From Africa Recovery, Vol.15 #3, October 2001, page 14
(Part of Special Feature: Protecting Africa's Children)

Child labour rooted in Africa's poverty

Campaigns launched against traffickers and abusive work

By Ernest Harsch

In some of the poorest provinces of Burkina Faso, villages are "haemorrhaging" their children, several local journalists reported after a recent tour through Sanguié, Nayala, Kossi and other parts of that West African nation. They uncovered a recurring story: countless children, mostly under the age of 14, have left their families in search of work elsewhere in the country or across the border in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire. Some departed "voluntarily" or at the urging of their parents to escape the severe poverty of their home areas. Others were ensnared by labour traffickers.

In almost all cases, according to some of the children who managed to return, they ended up in arduous and poorly paid jobs on plantations or in domestic service, often at great risk to their health, sometimes beaten or prey to sexual predators. Eric Bationo, a child in Réo, was kidnapped in 1997 and did not come back until three years later, suffering from gangrene, according to his mother.

Faced with a clear increase in "such abominable practices," stated Mr. Boniface Coulibaly, secretary-general of Kadiogo province, "the highest authorities of our country could not simply cross their arms or close their eyes." In May, the national government ratified Convention 182 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) prohibiting the worst forms of child labour. And like a number of other countries in Africa, it launched a campaign, supported by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other agencies, to oppose the practice.

Local government authorities, child welfare experts, community leaders and rights activists have begun educating parents about the dangers of child labour. According to the ILO, slightly more than 51 per cent of all children in Burkina between the ages of 10 and 14 work, even though the labour code bars employment under 14.

Across Africa, there are an estimated 80 million child workers, a number that could rise to 100 million by 2015. Since the problem is closely linked to the continent's poverty, and can only be eliminated with increases in family incomes and children's educational opportunities, UNICEF, the ILO and other groups are focusing initially on the "worst forms" of child labour. These include forced labour and slavery, prostitution, employment in the drug trade and other criminal activities, and occupations that are especially dangerous to children's health and security.

Targeting traffickers

In April, news reports circulated internationally that a Nigerian-registered "slave ship" carrying 250 children was sailing off the coast of West Africa. When it finally docked in Benin, no children were actually found on board. Nevertheless, the furor aroused by the reports helped "put a spotlight" on the reality of child trafficking in the region, notes Mr. Alec Fyfe, a senior adviser on child labour for UNICEF. "Trafficking is beginning to get on the policy agenda," he told Africa Recovery.

Because trafficking tears children away from the protection of their families and communities, it is especially perilous to their well being. An ILO study issued in June found that child trafficking in West and Central Africa is on the rise. Reports from Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Togo suggest that most of the children are sent to other countries for domestic service, or put to work on plantations, in petty trade, as beggars and in soliciting. The trafficking of children for commercial sexual exploitation was also reported.

Trafficked children, the study found, were working between 10 and 20 hours a day, carrying heavy loads and operating dangerous tools. They often lack adequate food and drink. Nigeria reported that one out of five children trafficked in that country died of illness or accidents. Others contracted sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Although parents were sometimes persuaded by recruiters to send their children away to earn some extra income, often neither the children nor the parents were paid.

In fact, many such children are "treated like slaves," according to Dr. Rima Salah, UNICEF regional director for West and Central Africa. In a paper presented to a pan-African conference on "human trafficking" held in Nigeria in February, Dr. Salah agreed with the ILO assessment that child labour trafficking has become a "substantial problem" in the region. Among the reasons influencing the phenomenon, the paper listed:

-- Poverty, "a major and ubiquitous causal factor," which greatly limits vocational and economic opportunities in rural areas in particular and pushes families to use all available avenues to increase their meagre incomes.

--- Inadequate educational opportunities. "The motive for moving children from the protective envelope of the family is often the search for education rather than the search for work."

-- Ignorance among families and children about the risks of trafficking.

-- Migration of adults from villages to urban slums, which exposes their children to greater risks.

-- High demand among employers for cheap and submissive child labour, especially in the informal sector.

-- Ease of travel across regional borders.

-- The desire of young people themselves to travel and explore.

-- Inadequate political commitment, legislation and judicial mechanisms to deal with child traffickers.

Over the past year, however, African countries have been moving more systematically to counter this trend. In Nigeria, the national legislature has outlawed human trafficking, while Gabon has set up a national commission against child trafficking, headed by the vice-president. Côte d'Ivoire and Mali signed a cooperation accord to combat cross-border trafficking, which should improve the detection and tracking of trafficking networks and the repatriation of children who have been rescued. Mali has opened a special transit centre in Sikasso to receive repatriated children and provide special services, including psychological care, before reuniting them with their families.

Some programmes also emphasize mobilizing key sectors of society. In Burkina, officials of various ministries are meeting with local authorities, traditional chiefs and other village leaders in the worst-affected provinces. They aim to set up community "vigilance" structures against child trafficking. At the end of September, two civil servants in Balé province spotted a large group of children travelling with several adults. Suspicious, they questioned members of the group, and quickly determined that the 69 children -- a few of them under the age of 10 and a big majority of them girls -- were being transported to work on cotton plantations in Burkina's Sourou Valley. A soldier who happened to be passing by on a motorcycle took the adult traffickers into custody, while the children themselves were taken to the provincial capital for return to their parents.

In late June, the International Federation of Transport Workers urged its affiliated road, port and sea workers' unions to be on the alert against trafficking networks. "Since the traffickers use public transport," said the federation, "the contribution of your unions will prove important in the struggle against this despicable and shameless exploitation of our children.... Together, we can defeat child trafficking and forced labour."

'Poverty is the problem'

Child trafficking is only one of the more pernicious aspects of a much broader problem. Africa has the highest incidence of child labour in the world. According to the ILO, 41 per cent of all African children between the ages of 5 and 14 are involved in some form of economic activity, compared with 21 per cent in Asia and 17 per cent in Latin America. Among girls, the participation rate also is the highest: 37 per cent in Africa, 20 per cent in Asia and 11 per cent in Latin America.

It is no coincidence that Africa also is the poorest region, with the weakest school systems. And among African children, those from poorer families are far more likely to seek work. A 1999 Child Labour Survey in Zimbabwe, conducted by the ILO, found that about 88 per cent of economically active children aged 5-17 came from households with incomes below Z$2,000 (US$36) per month. As family incomes rose above Z$3,000, the participation rate dropped to less than 1 per cent. Parents and guardians of working children, when asked why they let their children work, most often responded "to supplement household income" or "to help household in enterprise."

In Tanzania, too, parents often see little choice but to have their children help directly on their own farms or in informal sector activities. Ms. Leila Sheikh, director of the Tanzania Media Women's Association, states simply: "Poverty is the major problem."

According to an ILO study on Tanzania, the incidence of child labour in the country has risen partly because of the deterioration of the school system, itself a result of economic decline. Poor infrastructure, low teacher morale and the introduction of school fees under the country's structural adjustment programme have contributed to higher drop-out and truancy rates. This has brought down Tanzania's once-high primary enrolment rate: from 90 per cent in 1980 to 77.8 per cent in 1996. Thirty per cent of all children between 10 and 14 are not attending school, and many end up working. In villages around mining sites, the school drop-out rate is around 30-40 per cent.

AIDS is another contributing factor in many African countries. By killing so many breadwinners, it has driven more families deeper into poverty, placing an even greater burden on the survivors, including children. Asked about child labour on Tanzanian tea estates, Mr. Norman Kelly, general manager of the Brooke Bond plantation replied: "The adult workforce is fast diminishing because of the high incidence of HIV/AIDS among many workers."

A UNICEF study of six countries in Eastern and Southern Africa found that the "dissolution of families from HIV/AIDS increases the likelihood of children being forced into exploitative labour.... Just when children should be in school, their burdensome new role as family breadwinner forces them to drop out."

Education and mobilization

Recognizing that the roots of child labour lie in family poverty -- and that it cannot simply be legislated out of existence -- the ILO draws a distinction "between normal family obligations and work which gives rise to exploitation and abuse." The UNICEF study on Eastern and Southern Africa similarly acknowledges that African culture allows children to work within the family and community, but economic hardships, HIV/AIDS and other disasters "have distorted traditional forms of child work into exploitative practices."

Since the conditions do not yet exist to end all types of child labour, the immediate challenge is to educate the public about the dangers to children of the most exploitative and abusive forms of child labour and to mobilize governments and societies to combat them.

Mr. Fyfe of UNICEF believes that this focus on the worst forms is useful in helping to set priorities and winning broad support from governments. He recalls that the ILO's Convention 138, which urged countries to set minimum ages of 14 or 15 years for regular employment, won support only slowly after its original adoption in 1973, with scarcely 40 governments ratifying it by the mid-1990s (a number that has since climbed to 112). But Convention 182 prohibiting the worst forms of child labour has won support very rapidly -- it has been ratified by 100 countries in just two years. "It has worked in that strategic sense, in getting a global consensus," he observes.

Mr. Fyfe cautions, however, that an excessive focus on the worst forms of child labour may "cast into shadow" the broader problem. "Too much of a focus on the worst forms may be at the price of neglecting the more fundamental things you need to do, in terms of the macroeconomic environment, education and changing attitudes, which would actually undermine child labour itself."

With its years of experience in children's issues in Africa, he says, UNICEF is well-positioned to address these broader contexts. In addition to its extensive work in children's education and health, it approaches the struggle against child labour as a children's rights issue. For several years, UNICEF has been campaigning for universal birth registration, which helps children gain admission to school and facilitates enforcement of minimum-age regulations. UNICEF's extensive presence in Africa has enabled it to play an especially active role in partnership with the ILO, which has relatively few offices in the region. In Rwanda, for example, UNICEF persuaded the government to ratify Convention 182.

Numerous national programmes are now under way in Africa, involving the ILO, UNICEF, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions and others. In Tanzania, a local project linked to the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour has made some progress in exposing the dangers faced by children working in mines, where they were often used in narrow tunnels to place dynamite for blasting. Thanks to the campaign, child labour has been virtually eliminated from the large mines, although it still exists in the smaller ones. The Tanzania Federation of Trade Unions has become involved in fighting for better and safer working conditions for children on tobacco, tea and other plantations. The federation also wants to reduce child labour, in part to safeguard the jobs of adult workers.

In Senegal, the national media has given extensive coverage to child labour issues and a number of NGOs have mounted campaigns. Three major Senegalese union federations have conducted investigations in all ten regions, focusing on sectors that are particularly risky for children -- including agriculture, fishing, transport and tourism. At a two-day workshop in late July, the unions cited the risk of serious injuries posed in some occupations, the potential of sexual abuse of children working in domestic service and the tourism trade, and the general psychological and developmental problems that face such "precocious workers."

The federations decided to establish an Observatoire Intersyndical ("Inter-union Observatory") to monitor and combat the worst forms of child labour. It will work with other labour groups, employers' associations, parents and civil society organizations to raise awareness about the problem. According to the Observatoire's vice-president, Mr. Macissé Lô, it also will take a longer-term development perspective, to elaborate "alternative programmes aimed at overcoming educational shortcomings and improving the incomes of families who feel obliged to let their children work in such occupations."

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