PROTAGONISM

WORKING CHILDREN AS PROTAGONISTS

Bhima Sangha

When working children realised that they were not recognised as workers by the State, legislation and trade unions, they decided to form their union to fight for their rights as workers and as children. Bhima Sangha (sangha - union) is an independent association of, by and for working children supported by The Concerned for Working Children, Karnataka, South India. Launched in 1990, Bhima Sangha is currently active in the State of Karnataka in India, with a membership of 13,000 working children which is still growing. Members of Bhima Sangha reach out to other working children to inform them of their rights, of the means to change their situations and the power of the union. Members of Bhima Sangha believe strongly in the protogonism of working children. They recognise themselves as social actors and not as passive receivers of welfare.

Bhima Sangha views CWC as an agency to provide services, skills and informations as and when requested by Bhima Sangha to do so. Bhima Sangha also uses CWC in the area of capacity building of its office bearers and members.

MEMBERS OF BHIMA SANGHA FEEL THAT THEY ARE THEIR OWN FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE AND SO HAVE THE RIGHT TO ORGANISE THEMSELVES. THEY ALSO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE PROTAGONISTS AND CAN IMPACT ON SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC STRUCTURES IN ORDER TO MOULD THE SOCIETY CLOSER TO THEIR VISION.

Members of Bhima Sangha have interfaced with ministers of state, government officials and the police to bring about changes which have bettered their lives. They have formed enquiry commissions and conducted in-depth studies collecting first hand information on circumstances of accidents which have proved fatal to other working children. These children have had a tremendous impact on other social actors such as the media, policy makers and the community at large. They have inspired their parents and adults in the community to form unions and to act together to solve their problems and demand services. They have recognised the need to participate in political processes and have chosen and supported candidates for local elections. They have received political recognition in eight local governments (Panchayats) and are playing an active role in the micro planning of their Panchayats.

Makkala Panchayat

Members of Bhima Sangha have launched the Makkala Panchayat (Children's Panchayat) in eight panchayats of Karnataka, India In order to have a voice in development process of the village, children identified a need to have children's forum to participate at the level of their Panchayats.

Makkala Panchayat is a parallel local government by, for and of working children. It is presently in Udupi, North Kanara and Bellary districts of Karnataka. Its electorate consists of all working children (6-18 year old) in the village, with representation for all children. Its office bearers include the President, Vice President and Members (12-18 years old). All the children of the village (0-6) are registered in the Makkala Panchayat roles and this provides valuable data on the status of all children in the village.

The Makkala Panchayat enables working children to participate in the local government and to raise issues concerning them; it enables children to plan their village in a way that it relieves them from their burdens and is more child centered and friendly; and prepares children to participate in local government as adults.

"The idea originated with the emergence of the Shishu Panchayat in West Bengal, India. We felt that if we have a representative in the Panchayat it would be of great help to us. Also, when adult representatives are elected, they are not able to fulfill the aspirations of the electorate. It is difficult to even meet or talk to them. When they (the elected body) become big people, they do not remember us."

"All the members in the elected body do not have a clear picture of the functioning of the system. They do not recognise us (the children). The Toofan Programme provided us a gateway to participate in the Task force. Two to three children were official participants and they were able to carry with them the needs and problems of a larger group. Our voices were heard, but then as it was an adult's Panchayat, our needs were taken into consideration only if they conformed in part or whole to the need of the adult group. It was a combination of these factors that led us to the creation of the `Makkala Panchayat'. The Children's forum presents the views and opinions on the development process of the village. This will help to address the root cause of working children's problems." -Nagaraja Kolkeri, President Namma Sabha and a founding member of Bhima Sangha.

Bhima Sangha is one of the four members of the International Organising Committee of Working Children. They are currently planning the launch of an Asian Movement of Working Children and are actively working to enable the formation of working children's unions in India and other countries of Asia.

Bhima Sangha's stand on child labour

Bhima Sangha believes that it is possible to create a world where there is no child labour.
In order to do that, the basic causes of child labour need to be solved.
Working children themselves must participate in identifying the problem and identifying solutions and only then are these interventions likely to benefit children both in the long term and short term.
However in the immediate context, children working in intolerable situations need to be provided appropriate alternatives both for themselves and their families. These alternatives should be sustainable.
Other working children, working in relatively safe occupations have the right to work in dignity and be provided with tools and skills to change the structures that cause these situations.
Education should be seen as a part of the alternatives created, but in doing so, education has to be redesigned to meet with the requirements stated below:

Bhima Sangha's stand on education

Bhima Sangha believes that education is the right of every child, irrespective of whether the child happens to be working, differently abled or in a remote area.
The right to education is not abdicated by a child just because the child happens to be a working child. This is a universal right.
This right to education should be translated as a right to an appropriate and relevant education that is made accessible to us and which enables us to be agents of change.
This education has to be recognised as part of the formal system and should be given the same dignity and appropriate budgetary allocations to make this education of a very high quality.
If this is done then education, which is part of the child labour problem can actually enable working children to break the vicious cycle.

WORKING CHILDREN'S PROTAGONISM - TRAINING WORKSHOP PHASE I
July 11-17, 1998

The Concerned for Working Children has been working with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in south India to promote the concept of working children's protagonism and working children's unions.

As part of this, a first phase training workshop was held at Namma Bhoomi, CWC's Regional Resource Center. Eighteen adult represtatives and 20 working children, drawn from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, participated in the week-long programme (July 11-18). The progamme included components such as understanding working children first as children, and then as workers, their situation, gender, education, profiles of child workers in their respective states, unionisation of child workers and its benefits, enabling working children's participation in identifying their problems and working towards solving them.

Separate sessions were conducted for both adults and children.

BHIMA SANGHA PARTICIPATES IN ONLINE GLOBAL JUNIOR SUMMIT

The Concerned for Working Children is happy to announce that seven representatives of Bhima Sangha, a union of, by and for working children, have been selected to be among the 1,000 child participants from 136 countries in the Junior Summit, a programme of the Media Cell of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA.

Bhima Sangha is one of the 19 participant groups selected from India. All the young representatives were chosen on the basis of their desire to change the world into a better place and also on what the children have already achieved in improving the life situation around them.

"This is not just to share our problems but also to share our achievements. We are sure that this will help us realise our dream of building a new world where there will be no working children," say the seven representatives of Bhima Sangha who are in Bangalore for the launch of the programme.

Under this programme, children from around the world have been selected to participate in a daily online forum for six months starting August 1, 1998, three months before and three months after the summit which is scheduled for late November 1998.

The goal of the online forum is to decide which of the ideas children write about can be turned into "action projects" - which will be led by children - to address important problems in the world, and then to determine ways to act on them. The forum will be an avenue for children to challenge society's assumptions on what children can do and to develop creative and radical ideas about how things can be done differently in the future, especially with support from new communication technologies.

The forum will be a showcase for technologies that encourage a multimedia, multilingual, online coummunity. Above all, the forum will be run by the children themselves.

Participants in the forum will select delegates to attend a week-long international summit from November 15-21, 1998, at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, all expenses paid. The other children on the online forum will particpate in the summit through video-conferencing and other communication technologies.

The participants from Bhima Sangha represent 5 different panchayats in Udupi district. They will communicate with their counterparts around the globe through a computer installed at the Regional Resource Centre (RRC) of the Concerned for Working Children (CWC). The RRC, called Namma Bhoomi (Our Land), is in Kanyana village in Kundapura taluk. CWC is also making efforts to seek the support of the Karnataka government for direct satellite uplinking for internet access.

Say Bhima Sangha's representatives: "Our involvement will have long-lasting benefits especially with regard to networking, data collection and process documentation relating to working children
in Udupi district. This process will enhance the nature and scope of our participation in planning for our own villages. This will also ensure that local governance will become increasingly effective and efficient. "These developments will contribute to comprehensive development in the communities which are involved in this process."

The Junior Summit will address pressing global issues such as children's rights and how to eliminate the barriers between the digital "haves" and "have-nots". Delegates will determine how to use a one million dollar working fund to initiate several action projects, and will present their ideas to an audience of global mediapersons, Nobel laureates and world leaders. The Junior Summit participants will also decide on the format and plans for the next meet, Junior Summit 2000.

By the time Junior Summit 1998 winds up, proposals will have been made to allow all children's voices to be heard, the way adults understand childhood will have been changed and children will have begun to play a bigger role in designing the future.

The Concerned for Working Children needs support to:

Uplink directly through satellite connections from Kanyana village to access the internet:
Instal computer networking among the five panchayats - Belve, Uppunda, Keradi, Balkur and Alur - and Namma Bhoomi at Kanyana village; and
Access 6 computer terminals which can be used by Bhima Sangha.

Until these systems are in place, CWC's office at Bangalore will provide Bhima Sangha access to internet.
Bhima Sangha's Introductory Letter Online
Dated 5th September 1998

Dear Friends,

We are working children from Bhima Sangha in Karnataka, India. We would like to share with you what Bhima Sangha stands for and also our individual introduction. But first about Bhima Sangha. Bhima Sangha is union of working children, who are in the age group of 6-18 years. The main objective of Bhima Sangha is to identify the problems facing us and to solve these problems by
ourselves.

Bhima Sangha has members in Udupi, Davanagere, Bellary, Bangalore and Uttara Kannada districts in Karnataka, South India. Why Bhima Sangha?

To organise ourselves and get recognised as working children by the society;
To identify our problems and find solutions by ourselves;
To fight for our rights;
In the present situation, it is inevitable for us work and earn our own livelihood. Therefore, we should be recognised as workers and respected for the work we are doing;
To get the facilities like less hours of work, education, leisure and protection;
To protest against exploitation, humuliation and violence faced by the children;
To draw the attention of society towards the problems of working children;
To have the right to participate in discussions where deecisions concerning working children are made - from the local level to the International level;
Bhima Sangha and the community should grow as political forces and influence the government;
To build a society where there is no discrimination of caste and gender, where there is no unemployment and poverty. In such a self-reliant society, no children will be forced to work; and
To build a new world.

Individual introduction of one of the members of Bhima Sanga who is a representative at the Junior Summit:

I am Bhavani, a 15-year-old girl. I come from Alur village in Kundapura taluk, Udupi district, Karnataka, South India. I studied in school till Class V. I had to walk 4 kilometers in the forest to attend school and also due to financial problems at home, I have stopped going to school. I have completed tailoring training at the Regional Resource Centre (RRC), Namma Bhoomi in Kundapura taluk, run by The Concerned for Working Children, an NGO in Karnataka. Now I am self-employed. I have passed the Class VII examinations (as an external candidate) and I am now planning to pass Class X. I am interested in taking part in plays and the local folklore, Yakshagana.

We will be sharing more about Bhima Sangha in the next e-mail. Waiting for your response.

Till next time,

From Ashoka, Preethika, Arun, Nagaraj, Manjunath, Vanaja and Bhavani from Bhima Sangha, Karnataka, India.

The following is a letter by a boy in the same home room

Hello! I am Nishanka Debroy and I am from India. I study in Standard X of Apeejay School, Saket, in Delhi. Delhi is towards the north of India and is the capital. I am 15 years old and will be taking my school leaving examinations early next year. I can understand English, Hindi and Sanskrit and Bengali. Therefore, I can translate from Hindi and Bengali (there may be someone from Bangladesh) into English. My hobbies are reading, writing and playing chess, which I have played at competitive level. I used to be the Delhi champion in chess in my age group,
but have given up playing competitive chess now. I think I would like to be a chartered accountant or a software person when I grow up, but I am not very sure about that.

Bye,

Nihshanka

CHILD LABOUR AND THE VALUE OF CHILDREN'S DECISIONS:
THE CHILD'S PLACE IN POLICY AND PRACTICE

ISPCAN CONGRESS. AUCKLAND 6 - 9 SEPTEMBER 1998

Nandana Reddy
Director Development, The Concerned for Working Children

Working children in many parts of the world are claiming their right to be protagonistsand have been participating as social actors for centuries. To resist exploitation is a fundamental right and children have found that organised resistance is more effective than any other. They did not wait for adult permission or for statutes to recognise this right.

Though children's participation has been quite extensively discussed these past years,it is apparent that the degree and level of participation of children in `adult affairs' depends on the extent adults enable it and are willing to open up space for children. It is ironical that though working children are the ones experiencing the problem, they are the ones who are the least involved in designing and developing the solutions.

This right of children to participate has thrown up a whole range of questions for us adults. It has challenged our paternalistic paradigm and confronted us with many of the mistakes we have made. It has set in motion the beginning of a new relationship with our children based on mutual accountability, respect and transparency.

As children become more empowered there will be less need for them to protest discriminations. The time will come for adults to listen to the perceptions children have of society as a whole, the proposals they have for making changes. There is a distinctpossibility that our children may open the door to a new world and their vision can save humanity from the ailments of the old.

This paper addressing the above issues is based on the work done over five years in 36 countries and the author's personal interaction with movements of working children in three continents.

Dear friends,

As I flew into Auckland I had an aerial view of your beautiful country - a lush green island set in a jade sea. I know very little about New Zealand but I have always wanted to visit this part of the world. Of course even I, a child rights activist, have heard of the 'All Black', who has not? Their little routine is enough to intimidate any team and maybe that is the secret of their success.

I am fascinated by your culture, specially that of your indigenous people, the Maori. As legend goes the Naga, an indigenous people of my country, India, are said to have an affinity with the Maori. Though an island community, one of the idols that they worship is a boat suggesting that they arrived in that part of the sub continent by sea. All that lies between my country and New Zealand is an expanse of Ocean. Yet it is unfortunate that our two countries have had very limited interaction. We should try to change this.

It is not an easy task to be the last in a series of excellent key note speakers but I will try. I have learnt so much just listening to them. I therefore thank the organisers of this Congress and especially Dr. Robin Fancourt, for the privilege of having this opportunity to participate in this Congress, share my thoughts with you and to visit this part of the world.

I was delighted to see that children and young persons had been given some space to address us. We were all touched by their message and were witness to the power of children's voices. I congratulate ISPCAN and sincerely hope that you will take this initiative further and make this a practice. I hope that in the next Congress in Durban more groups of children will be invited to participate more actively in the main deliberations of the Congress. This will add a much needed dimension to the debate.

For the past three days you have been delving deeper into issues related to child abuse and neglect. You are an expert group. I admire your dedication and commitment. Each one of you is a master craftsperson, chiseling away at the problem and discovering new insights and ways to address them. I am here to speak to you about the value of working children's participation in decision making and the formulation of Policy and Practice. I wish to seek your indulgence to allow me to take you on this journey through the eyes of working children.

As you are an enlightened audience and time is short, I will touch on some of the important issues just briefly. Please forgive me for not going into details.

Since the first ISPCAN Congress that I was asked to speak at in Brazil, child labour has been on your agenda and I have watched the progress made on this subject over the years.

The economic exploitation of children is one of the largest forms of child abuse and neglect in the world today. The phenomenon of child labour is not new. Children have worked all through history. Child work is not just a developing country phenomenon. Children also work in countries such as the USA, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands. In the UK more than 50% of children have experienced work before the age of 14 years.

The projection of the child work issue has largely been the horror stories, the helpless victim image. This has led to gross generalisations on the subject - one of them being that all work that children do is bad. The truth is that all child work is not bad just as all education given to children is not good, but rather covers a wide spectrum or continuum from beneficial to the intolerable. We should recognise that there are no black and white situations in child labour, but several grey areas in between.

Many children see work as beneficial, as a means to escape dire poverty, as a ladder to improving their situation and that of their families.

Working children and their communities are constantly making choices based on their analysis of the present situation and an economic projection of the future. These choices are always in order to improve their situations or at the very least maintain the benefits that they have. The Concerned for Working Children, an NGO that I work with in India, learnt that interventions that do not preserve or improve the benefits will be resisted by children. An example of this is of a group of girls in a small fishing village, uppunda, on the west coast of India. While the boys in the village are involved with fishing, the young girls aged 10-14, have the responsibility of collecting fuel from the forest for their consumption.

These girls used to leave at 3 am and walk nearly 12kms a day. They were abused by the forest officers; they were made to pay fines - returning home with large loads on their heads at 3 in the afternoon. In all the listings that Bhima Sangha, a union for, by and of working children, made of the problems faced by them, the fuel problem always headed the list. Yet all efforts to solve this problem were resisted by the children themselves.

We couldn't understand why until, 13 year old Prema a very poised young girl and the President of Bhima Sangha, explained to us that the girls did not want to give up the advantages that the collection of fuel brought them. First of all the girls saw this as some amount of freedom in a very restricted society. They saw this as a means of going out of the house, having a chance to chat with their peers and be on their own for a little while.

Second, these girls also sold some of the fuel that they collected which gave them a little pocket money. Prema explained that a solution that would preserve or increase these benefits would be willingly accepted by her members. We were finally able to negotiate a solution where the girls were willing to trade off their cash benefits for education at an extension school where the syllabus was designed by them. At the centre they also saw that they had not only the freedom to go out of the house and meet together but also to discuss and plan strategies for change. The problem of availability of fuel was solved by the forest dept. who agreed to set up a fuel depot at Uppunda.

It is because the children pointed out their concerns that we could together arrive at an acceptable solution. Any strategy addressing the issue of child labour should be based on a cost and benefit analysis of the children's situation and ensure that the benefits are increased and the costs drastically reduced. This can only be achieved through children's participation.

However most interventions so far have not taken into consideration the complexity of the situations, the varied and multiple causes of child labour and the real reasons why children work.

Our response has been "knee-jerk". We have tried simple single pointed solutions such as legislative bans, boycotts and compulsory education and burnt our fingers badly.

Papu, a street child from New Delhi and a member of Bal Mazdoor Sangh, a union of working children says: "We are treated as the Nation's filth. When there is a VIP visiting, they round us up from the station platforms and the footpaths and lock us up. By doing that they feel they have cleared away some of the cities' garbage."

When we want organically grown tomatoes, we dump chemical fertilizers and pesticides, however, in our zeal to eradicate child labour we cannot just dump children and be content with the fact that we have cleaned out a sector (export oriented or otherwise) of child workers.

Here we are dealing with thinking, living human beings who are desperately trying to survive in a constantly changing world and where they and their families have no political power or voice to determine these changes.

As we approach the twenty first century, it is time that we acknowledge that we have failed to address the problems that working children face, specially in the countries of the south. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has been in existence since 1918 and their first task was to address the issue of child labour. Yet they now propose a New Convention on child labour that narrows down the field of intervention to the 'most intolerable forms', the thin segment of children that are engaged in activities that have crossed all humane boundaries. This is a disaster management approach. In the light of our pitiful track record, after nearly a hundred years of experimentation, we have had to admit, rather shamefacedly, that we have no workable solutions to child work. This also means that we tacitly accept the reality that our children will continue to work for the next decade at least and resign ourselves to an 'at least let us do something' attitude.

This is not good enough. This should not sit easy with our conscious. We have abdicated our responsibilities and betrayed the trust of our children and if we are to enter the next century with any grace we must with all urgency and humility find answers to the questions in our children's eyes.

We have failed mainly because we have adopted a top down approach. We wanted simple single pointed solutions that fit in easily with our adult elite logic. We allowed our vested interests to get in the way. We felt that we knew what was best for our children and we never thought of consulting them. As a result we have learnt hard lessons and harmed the children we have set out to help. Two cases in point are the garment girls of Sicom in Meknes, a small town in Morocco and of an estimated 36,000 children working in the garment units of Bangladesh. What is worse, in many cases we have not even taken the moral responsibility of our actions.

In the light of our track record it is not at all surprising that working children are questioning our efforts and challenging our intentions. Derlis, a working child representing the Organisation of Working Children and Adolescents, Asuncion, Paraguay voiced what many working children feel. They say that all laws, policies and conventions including the Convention of the Rights of the Child are empty promises. They seem to have decided to take their lives in their own hands and use their right to organise to change this state of affairs. It is possibly the most effective
defense they have to resist exploitation and improve their lives.

When I began my work with working children nearly 25 years ago it was as a Trade Unionist in the informal unorganised sector of labour. Between 20 - 40 % of that work force were children below the age of 14. They could not understand why the law discriminated between them and adult workers and pressed the union to address their concerns.

In this they did not meet with much success as collective bargaining resulted in increased benefits for the adults while any settlement concerning them had to be finalised under the table.

These children also realised that their issues were wider that the mere demand for increased wages and better working conditions. Their aspirations were not limited to those of the adult workers. These children were full of hope and wanted to change the world. It was then that they decided to form Bhima Sangha - a union for, by and off working children and celebrate child labour day on April 30, the day before labour day. Bhima Sangha has since grown in numbers and in stature. What began as a small union in the city of Bangalore now represents more than 16,000 working children in the State of Karnataka. They have used the strength of their own union to change their lives and as a result many villages in Karnataka have been declared child labour free.

The working children's demand is reasonable on its merits, but is also fully justified under the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Articles 12 (the right to be heard) and 15 (freedom of association). It is the first global recognition that children also have the two most fundamental rights, the right to organisation and participation.

These are the two rights, that if exercised, will ensure - more than any other measure, the realisation of all the other rights articulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, so far, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely ratified convention, with the glaring exception of the United States of America, is by and large regarded as the fulfillment of basic needs and services with the responsibility of providing these accorded to the State.

The most effective way for any right to be realised is the power of the collective voice, the strength of organised action. The Convention on the Rights of the Child paves the way for this in its recognition of these two fundamental principals, but children have been denied this for centuries and we are slow in providing the space for this to become an actuality.

However, by and large, it is apparent that the degree and level of participation of children in 'adult affairs' depends on the extent adults enable it and are willing to open up space for children. We lay down the frame and set the rules of the game. It depends on our willingness to share the power and control we now enjoy.

In a world where adults have taken decisions for children and set standards for them, the listening to smaller voices is still seen by many as a means of gathering interesting information from the perspective of children, involving them in 'doing something' and preparing them to be complete social subjects when they reach adulthood.

This facilitation by adults opens a space for children's voices to be heard, but it can also act as a barrier where children are mere testimonies of exploitation, symbols that reinforce the victim image, while the adults proceed with the 'real' deliberations. When children wish to take the initiative to question us we tend to draw the line and rarely allow them to suggest to us how things should be done.

The biggest and most glaring irony in the lives of working children is that though they are the ones most directly experiencing the problem, the most affected by the interventions we design - especially the ones that go wrong - the ones who live with exploitation and abuse in their daily lives, they are the ones who are the least involved in designing and developing the solutions. We as adults would be hard pressed to explain to working children the blatant contradiction inherent in this state of affairs.

In a small slum in Bangalore city 14-year old Salma, a working child that produces incense sticks on a piece rate basis and one of the leaders of Bhima Sangha, led an agitation for increased wages for her friends and herself. After nearly three weeks of collective bargaining and very unique forms of protest, Salma managed to get an 15% increase in their wages. However Salma and her friends saw this a mere stepping stone to better things.

Not satisfied they wanted to transform their slum into a safe and healthy environment for children. They want a safer and better paying industry for their parents, they wanted more schools designed to their needs and conditions. They have demanded and obtained day care centres for toddlers and better health care facilities. They have begun cleaning away the refuse and are rapidly working towards declaring their slum child labour free.

There are examples in many parts of the world where the initiatives taken by working children have had far reaching results that have changed their lives and the lives of their communities for the better. It is their way of acting not just to resist exploitation but to change their environments and to find deeper and more long lasting solutions. Throughout history there have been children who have acted as full fledged social beings. They have grasped opportunities and used them; they have challenged social norms and questioned the structure of society. They have paved the way for dramatic changes and in many ways made history.

Working children have been organising themselves for decades. In 1899, a hundred years ago, the newspaper boys 'the Newsies' in New York fought for and got increased wages.

Inherent in the tripartite nature of the ILO is the organised representation of its affiliates. The ILO's tripartite alliance between governments, employers and workers organisations insists on and advocates the right of organised labour to always be represented in negotiations.

There is no cause of the ILO that is more sacred or central than the right of workers to organise. It is recognised that organised movements, even if their actual membership is limited, do represent the concerns and demands and reflect the aspirations of the many, while individuals represent no group at all.

There is a repeated reference in all ILO documents to the participation of 'workers organisations', whose comments are solicited in the formulation of all conventions. In the questionnaire regarding the proposed ILO convention on the most intolerable forms of child labour, there is reference to finalising the instrument in 'consultation with the organisations of employers and workers concerned, where such exist'. This should have been interpreted as 'working children's organisations' as in this case the workers concerned are child workers and there are organisations of working children in three continents - Africa, Asia and Latin America and this movement is spreading fast.

The ILO should seize this opportunity to have a serious dialogue with unions and movements of working children from different parts of the world. A Convention as a result of such a consensus could prove to be the most powerful instrument to date. Most instruments have failed in their application - not so much because of the lack of a political will - but because they do not show us the way. The participation of working children could change this - they could show us the way. Moreover the ILO could gain moral high ground as they would have the Mandate of the working children themselves.

Working children's organisations are spreading, and increasingly represent the concerns and aspirations of working children from many parts of the world. They want to enter into the international debate. They know that their agendas are being written by adults in the North and they want their voices to be heard.

Working children view this world very differently from us. Their experience is not ours. They are the subjects of a very disparate set of circumstances. They live with discrimination, ostracisation, inadequate access to and no control over resources, exploitation, no political power and no voice. Despite this, one of the most remarkable things about many groups of working children, such as those in the street, is how much of their lives they have been able to take into their own hands. In some cases much more so than middle-class children who may in fact have very little decision- making space of their own in spite of being economically well-off.

Unfortunately though there are many records of the exploitation children face, there are very few recording the achievement of movements by children to resist it. History, usually written by those in control, have suppressed these. To quote a South African proverb "Until the lions have their historians, history will always be told by the hunters." So until children reach the stage where they can re-write history, they will remain mere helpless victims in our eyes and not the determined small beings they are, capable of a more holistic and beautiful vision for the new age.

The capacity of children, specially working children, to identify and analyse situations that they find themselves in and change them is grossly underestimated and undermined. They know their situations the best, they understand the nature of humiliation and oppression, they recognise the things that enable growth, development and empowerment. They know what needs to be changed and very often, what needs to be done to change them.

Many NGOs in different parts of the world have realised the value of listening to working children's views about the nature of their work, what causes it and what needs to be done to change it. They are increasingly taking note of working children's opinions in developing programmes and this has had a significant impact on the quality and success of these initiatives. It has also been seen that when working children have not been consulted strategies can fail and in some cases (the garment sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco) with disastrous effects on children and their families.

Children in countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa and the United States of America, have been involved in the gathering of information and designing plans of action that would benefit them and their communities using the Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) methodology.

Bhima Sangha (Working children's union) in India have been using PRAs for several years now to plan strategies in their localities. In 1990 working children mapped the course of the river Varahi from source to mouth, documenting information on natural resources, infrastructure, history, demographics and culture.

The children of Bhima Sangha met to discuss their findings. They realised that massive destruction of the environment including the felling of forests had led to a scarcity of raw material for the production of traditional crafts such as baskets and mats. There was also a paucity of green manure, medicinal herbs, firewood and fodder for their cattle.

There was a small child at this meeting, a boy called Dinesh, who seemed 6 but was actually 9. I felt he looked too young to participate. Then he began to speak. He said "The answer to this is to grow our own forest. We will plant all the trees we need including medicinal herbs. We will let lose all the birds and animals our parents told us once lived here. We will not ever cut any trees, only branches and we will protect this forest for our children".

I said where will you get the land? He said we will ask the Commissioner. I said what if he does not give it to you? He said we will sit in his chamber until he does - after all we are Bhima Sangha children.

Dinesh's dream has come true. In 100 acres of land, a forest planted by little working fingers has begun to grow. They call it Namma Kadu or "Our Forest" and the trees are now twice the height of Dinesh. I saw him the other evening at dusk with his bundle of firewood on his head, cheerfully waving to me.

This is the forest that we adults will never see fully grown in our life time - but the children of Bhima Sangha were able to find a long term solution to some of the root causes of child labour. Their vision is amazing and it makes us ashamed of our far too conservative logic that lives largely in the present.

Now the children have gone a step further. They have realised that information is power and those that have it can influence policy and practice. So they have decided to do research themselves. They are at the moment involved in designing and administering questionnaires in 12,000 households in the villages of Kundapur, an area on the west coast of India.

This awakening has led to an exciting dimension of working children's participation. They wanted to actively participate in the decisions of the local governments or panchayats. To strengthen their participation in this process, they set up a parallel children's council, or Makkala Panchayat. Together we created a `Task Force' consisting of representatives of working children, and the local government.

The children of Makkala Panchayat map the village and identify the problems they face. Then they picture the village the way they would like it to be. This they present to the local government at the 'Task Force' meetings complete with data and supporting evidence. The 'Task Force' then looks for ways of implementing these schemes through existing budget allocations or community participation.

This programme is called Toofan or working children's Typhoon. These winds of change are gradually blowing over Karnataka, my State in India and as a result we have been able to declare several villages child labour free.

Project Toofan has been functioning for three years. It is not a parallel system but a part of the formal political structure - the 'Task Force' is chaired by the District Minister, the elections of the children's council is held by the local administration and the Secretary to the local government acts as the Secretary to the children's council as well.

As a result children have been able to forge an official partnership with employers and government, that is normally the most difficult to achieve. They have been able to change the traditional view to planning and have succeeded in implementing child centered micro planning with themselves as equal partners in development. Through this, children have been able to determine their future and the future of their villages.

Our experience with Project Toofan has shown us that children often hit the nail on the head. They pointed out that the lack of full day child care centres prevented many children from accessing an education, mainly girls. When both parents had to work at full-time jobs the care of toddlers became the responsibility of children. The establishing of full-time day care centres has relieved several children from this
responsibility.

Children also pointed out that there were several things wrong with the formal schools and unless these were changed they would find no relevance in education. The Concerned for Working Children held a consultation with the children of Bhima Sangha and asked them to design what they considered their dream school. The basis of their discussions were the formal schools, field centres run by us and a demonstration school set up for the purpose where the method of education was based on the Montessori system.

The children began by listing the positive and negative aspects of each system and we were surprised to find that they were actually in favour of exams and uniforms. They felt that our centres did not pay enough attention to academics but they wanted our field activists to replace all teachers. They saw the access to information as essential and they identified the existence of pedagogy only in the demonstration school.

Their dream school was a combination of all the positives and they insisted that education should be empowering. As a result we have implemented a new system of education in all the formal schools in the Toofan villages with the help of a consultant and based on the children's demand.

With Toofan, a peaceful revolution has begun. The Panchayat presidents or local govt. leaders see the children's participation as positive. They say that for the first time they have been able to reach every household in village. They say that the issues the children raise are 'clean' or free from any hidden political agenda.

The adult panchayats have found a new role and a higher level at which to function. They also see the children's Panchayat as the training of the next generation of leaders - the present ones having come through a policy of reservation and who are not adequately equipped to handle matters of governance.

The sustainability of this intervention is reasonably assured as todays Bhima Sangha's children will soon be old enough to stand for elections to the local government and are likely to become the elected representatives of the community. They will have a vested interest in maintaining the systems that they have fought for to free children from the burdens they face.

Martin Woodhead in his very interesting participatory study in six countries of the
world called Children's Perspectives on their Working Lives argues strongly/forcefully for taking into account children's perspectives. He says: "Children are important sources of evidence on how work may harm their development and are not passively affected by their work- too young and too innocent to understand what is going on. They are active contributors to their social world, trying to make sense of their present circumstances, the constraints and the opportunities available to them. Listening to children's perspectives does not undermine efforts to combat child labour that is hazardous and exploitative. It provides a much more sound starting point for intervening in ways that are child-centered, context-appropriate and in the best interests of working children."

Strategies that are developed unilaterally and without the participation of all the major actors, specially working children require compulsion and vast resources to implement. Where as strategies developed on the basis of a consensus are easily implemented with minimal resources.

The active participation of working children also brings about two things. Their very presence introduces an unwritten accountability. When your constituency is monitoring your every word and action, you become extremely careful about the steps you take. They also determine where you place the lens of your camera - are you looking down at their problems from your ivory tower or through their eyes.

At the Amsterdam Child Labour Conference, eight working children, all in their teens, elected to represent their unions and movements, demonstrated through their very lucid and eloquent participation that they were capable of handling the formal atmosphere of the conference, though for all of them this was a first experience.

Six of the eight children engaged in a Plenary Debate moderated by Max van den Berg, Director Netherlands Organisation for Development Cooperation (NOVIB) and two of them were panelists in a workshop moderated by Minister Jan Pronk. These children showed us that given the opportunity they could participate in an international forum with poise. The fact that the recommendations of this conference reflected many of the concerns that the children voiced proves that they were convincing and able to convert the majority of participants to their view.

During the Conference on Urban Childhood in Trondheim it was more than apparent that the presence of working children representing their unions and movements from three continents focused the attention of participants to the gaps now existing in the area of child work research. A large part of the discussions revolved around the need for working children to participate actively in research. Martin Woodhead's presentation that covered working children of six countries showed some interesting ways in which this could be done. The actual presence of working children as resource persons showed practitioners that they had valid and important contributions to make to their own betterment and proved that they were capable of designing solutions.

It is only when children begin to participate that we realise that we have not given them the common courtesy of consulting them. It is only then that we realise that they are capable of exercising their rights with a tremendous sense of responsibility.

For the past three days we have discussed and dissected some of the worst crimes that, we the adults of the world, have committed, the crimes against our children. We call ourselves civilised and yet we rape, torment, maim and exploit our children. This is not a sign that some of us have gone bad but a symptom of a sick society.

In our relentless pursuit of profit and our eagerness to ape the consumerism projected by a few, we have lost our integrity. This model of development that is being thrust on us has resulted in the shrinking of social nets, the increase of poverty in the third world and the disintegration of the family. Indonesia, once hailed as an Asian Tiger has been reduced to rattling her begging bowl as a result of Structural Adjustment Policies of the IMF and the enrolment of children in school this year has fallen from approx. 90% to below 50%. What is free about a free market economy where 20% of the world's population consumes 80% of the world's resources, while 80% of our people subsist on 20% of our resources? This is not a path that our planet can sustain. The only answer is to jump off this fast train to nowhere and develop a model that is gentler and more humane.

The leader of the Socialist Party in India, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia once said that the two great discoveries of this Century were the Atom Bomb and Non Violence and it will be left to be seen which of these will triumph by the end of the century. India, a self professed non violent country that could have given impetus to the movement for disarmament has just tested a nuclear device to cock a snook at the USA. Though many of us in India are ashamed of this we were powerless to prevent it and were silent spectators.

Recently some children were talking about what was special about their villages. One little boy said that his village was special because he could stand in the rice fields and turn his face skyward to welcome the rain. Another child said that in her village the full moon followed her wherever she went. This they wanted to preserve.

When the people call Earth "Mother"
They take with love and
With love give back
So that all may live.
When people call Earth "It"
They use her
Consume her strength
Then people die.

Already the sun is hot
Out of season.
Our mother's breast is going dry.
She is taking all green
Into her heart and
Will not turn back
Until we call her
By her name.

Children seem to instinctively understand this. They have a close affinity with Mother Nature and want to nurture her. They know that their future is linked to the future of our planet and that any solution has to be holistic and take this into consideration as well.

Working children's protagonism could be our saving grace. It has appeared in the spotlight at a time when the whole world is in a quandary. As a generation we seem to have lost our way. We have a new set of problems that are growing at an alarming rate for which we have no solutions. Now perhaps is the time to turn to our children with humility and listen to what they have to say to us.

However, for adults to accept the children's agenda implies acknowledging that working children are protagonists of their own lives, legitimate actors actively participating in society. This view directly challenges the prevalent paternalistic image of children.

The right of children to organise and participate in decisions regarding themselves does not mean that they have all the answers, nor does it mean that we, as adults, are absolved of our responsibilities towards our children. It is only giving them the first step towards being able to defend themselves and reshape their future. These children must be given the right to intervene in their environment and change elements that do not uphold their rights as children.

We must also be prepared to face the fact that children will say things we do not necessarily agree with, they will ask embarrassing questions for which we do not have ready answers and they will disagree on the stands they take based on the differing realities they face. But we must be willing to accept this. The concerns of working children need to be put on the agenda and discussed. Their questions must be answered and only if we accept this challenge will we be any closer to finding solutions that work.

Gandhijee could have won the battle of independence for India with violence. We had a large population that was ready to do battle and that was also the prevailing mood with Subash Chandra Bose training an army in Rangoon. But he opted for non- violence. As a result he was able to show the oppressor the reflection of his own face and expose the nature of exploitation. The truth was transparent and there was mutual respect. This was a new revelation for the oppressor.

With the participation of children we see the reflection of our actions. In their faces we see the real face of their oppressors. Their participation brings about an unstated accountability in adults. It makes it impossible for us to escape the moral responsibility of our actions. It is the most powerful monitoring mechanism one can think of.

So as you all prepare to return home I appeal to you to carry this message with you to your countries. The greatest gift we can give our children is to listen to our children and truly hear what they have to say. They are the ones who will inherit this planet and they have a right to determine in what state we leave it to them.

In our work with working children we have received many gifts from them. One of the greatest gifts that we have received is the capacity to recapture our childhood. To hope and dream - dreams that only children can dream. To find the courage to leave a bold footprint in the sands of time - after all we are mere transit passengers on this beautiful planet.

So here in the land of the Maori, let us take the hands of our children and allow them to leads us from Te Kore Te Whiwhia - the womb of night to Te Ao Mavama - the bright light of humanity with the blessings of Rangi - the primal father and Papatua nuku - earth mother.

And now I wish to end my presentation with a poem about children written by the Indian Poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore:

"Who can say if there is written on your forehead
The invisible mark
Of the triumph of some great striving?
Today we search for your unwritten name:
You seem to be just off the stage,
Like an imminent star of morning.
Infants bring again and again
A message of reassurance -
They seem to promise deliverance, light, dawn."

Thank you.

‘TIME TO LISTEN’ (Film Review)

ISPCDirector: Deepa Dhanraj
Duration: 52 minutes
Subtitles: English

I saw the video film Time to Listen in Hyderabad when it was screened at Prakriti, a festival of films focusing on environment, development and human rights. Deepa Dhanraj, the director, in her introductory address before the screening, described the film as the report of a meeting. She explained that the film documents a meeting of representatives of organised working children from three continents, Asia, Africa and Latin America which was held in Kundapura town in Karnataka, India, in December 1996.

Deepa elaborated that she had no scope to intervene in the process and was therefore a mere documenter of the event. Her brief was specific: to document the 12-day meeting, and to edit the footage into a film.

I immediately wondered whether it would work, 52 minutes of watching a meeting! That too on working children. Added to Deepa's confession was my own confusion about working children. While all around me I can see children working in atrocious conditions, I could not agree with the groups who called for a ban on child labour. To them the main enemy appeared to be the parents who, in their analysis, live off the earnings of their children by packing them off to work instead of school.

Moreover I had seen a highly objectionable film by a reputed documentary maker which paints the parents of working children as devils even as it glosses over the inequities of a system that forces children to work. But as I was always the minority voice and, more importantly, I couldn’t really articulate my sense of disquiet, I usually kept quiet and stayed away from the lobbies wanting to ban child labour.

So it was with much skepticism that I stayed back to watch Time to Listen. But when the film began I listened and watched, spellbound. The tone was set right away when, one after another, the children articulated why they began to work. As they expressed themselves individually, a clear and collective picture of an unequal, exploitative and oppressive system emerged. However, the children did not dwell on their present circumstances for long. Their agenda was clear. They had come together in order to collectively change their destiny. And as a first step, they demanded the right to organise themselves.

The film followed the children over the next few days as they debated the issues surrounding child labour, shared their experiences and emerged with a strong sense of bonding. From expressing a desire to establish contact with each other, to discussions on the possibility of providing scholarships to working children, they revealed themselves to be fully capable of articulating their problems and mooting probable solutions.

One of their foremost concerns was the need to come together, to form organisations that can help them be better informed about their rights and the forms of exploitation.

As a group, they felt they could identify their problems better as part of an analysing process that led up to what many of them felt to be their immediate goal --- learning to be protagonists. What this entailed was the recognition that they could have an agency, and not exist merely as a category of the oppressed and the marginalised of the world.

The film emphasised that the issue of child labour is not a cut-and-dried one, where one can simplistically, and counterproductively, call for a ban on child labour or the products of such labour. Such an approach is not cognizant of the fact that the root cause -- poverty -- ensures that the children return to the stree