Businessline
reported, in its June 13 issue, on India's
decision to support the International Labour
Organisation's move to ban the worst forms of
child labour at the ILO convention (June 2-18) in
Geneva. Ms. Janaki Murali, in her report from
Bangalore, said this was another milestone in the
efforts towards the elimination of child labour
in the country.
However, India hoped to make it clear that the
proposed ILO convention, once passed, ought not
to be used by developed countries to curb the
trade of the developing countries.
This is particularly relevant as this move comes
in the wake of the developed countries trying to
refer the issue of labour exploitation to the
World Trade Organisation (WTO). ILO took the
initiative to address the worst forms of child
labour to pre-empt efforts to pass on the mandate
to the WTO and amidst fears that this would
weaken the ILO and affect the trade of the
developing countries.
ILO members studied the recommendations of the
sub-committee on child labour and the agenda for
action document - an end product of three
international meetings at Amsterdam in 1997, Oslo
in 1997 and Geneva in 1998 and three regional
conferences in Brazilia, Lahore and Pretoria, and
many national consultations.
The 87th session of the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) in Geneva was attended by
representatives of 174 countries. It concluded
with a programme for a multi-year global effort
to build an international consensus for a new
convention and with a recommendation targeting
practices such as child slavery, forced labour,
trafficking, debt bondage, serfdom, prostitution,
pornography as well as other forms of hazardous
and exploitative work.
However, Ms. Nandana Reddy, Director,
Development, Concerned for Working Children
(CWC), felt that there was no need for a new
convention. She said: "What is needed is to
make the ILO Convention 138 effective with a
focussed strategy coupled with a viable and
holistic action plan. In addition, if mechanisms
to implement and monitor the action plan were
developed and set in motion, Convention 138 has
the potential to be an effective tool to address
the problems of child workers."
ILO Convention 138 is a minimum wage convention
adopted in 1973. It aspires to address a fairly
wide group of working children and includes those
working children who will be excluded by the new
instrument.
According
to Ms. Reddy: "If the scope of the new
convention is narrowed to cover only those
sectors of child labour which are already highly
visible, it is only a disaster management
technique and not a 'milestone
intervention'." Strategies are more
important and sufficient attention needed to be
paid to the operational aspects, Businessline
says, quoting Ms. Reddy who added: "In
effect, the convention must come up with
something that is 'doable'."
The paper points out that India has joined the
rest of the nations of the SAARC region in
setting a deadline - year 2000 - for the
eradication of child labour and children in
hazardous occupations, and by 2010, all child
labour. India has the dubious distinction of
having the largest number of working children.
UNDP has given the number of child labour in
India as anywhere between 14 and 100 million. |
