We, the members of the National Movement of Working Children (NMWC) India are proud and happy to present this Alternative Report – 2003 to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The National Movement Of Working Children (NMWC) is a national federation of working children’s organisations in India. We have nine member organisations from 4 states of the country namely Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Karnataka.

The problems of working children are most often misunderstood or ignored. However, our member organisations have vast experience of solving problems collectively. They have been most effective at the local level, but also nationally, regionally and internationally. We formed the NMWC to bring together the strengths and experiences of all the member organisations in order to gain a stronger voice to negotiate for issues that concern us and have a greater impact on society as a whole.

We want, first of all, to be recognised as working children. This is the first step towards solving our problems. If our identity as working children is denied, then nothing will be done to solve the real problems that force us to work. We want to participate actively in solving these problems so that we no longer need to work. We want to build a new world where children are not exploited and there is justice for all.

NMWC has a total membership of over 14, 000 working children, boys and girls under 18 years of age. Our members are from both urban and rural areas and from different communities, ethnic groups, castes and religions. We work in a wide range of occupations – in both the formal and informal sectors. While all our members are working children, some of us combine work and schooling – either in the government run schools or in NGO programmes. Ever since the formation of our National Movement in 1999, we have been collectively fighting against our exploitation and discrimination.

Three of our member organisations, Mahashakti Sangha, Tamil Nadu, Soshu Panchayat, Orissa and Bhima Sangha, Karnataka, along with Udaan, Mumbai prepared the first ever children’s own report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1998. Their report, "Working Children’s Report" was not only accepted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child but representatives of the reporting team were invited to depose before the Committee in Geneva.

We, NMWC submitted a report to the UN as our inputs into the United Nation’s General Assembly Special Session on Children. Our representative took part in the discussions at the national, regional and international level as a member of the ‘under 18 delegation’.

We sincerely hope that you will accept this Alternate Report. We request you to discuss the issues we have raised with our Government and to keep us informed regarding the specific recommendations you may make so that we can monitor the implementation of those recommendations in our country.

We, the members of the National Movement of Working Children have been closely following international, national and local processes in connection with the realisation of Children’s Rights. Since three of our member organisations were actively involved in the ‘Working Children’s Report’, we followed the CRC reporting process very intimately.

When we learnt that the first periodic report of Government of India (GOI) was due for submission, we felt that we needed to review this report. If we need to realise our rights we have to first of all pressurise our Government to work within the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We felt that one important way to do that was to submit our own report to the Government as well as to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. At the 8^th meeting of the NMWC (October 2002) we therefore included this as an agenda item for discussion.

At that meeting we unanimously decided to prepare an Alternate Report. In our group discussions, the following points were mentioned in favour of preparing our own Alternate Report:

• We working children can and should participate in solving the problems affecting us. We have a right to contribute to the improvement of our situation. So we should submit our own report.

• We know our situation well. If we send our report to the Committee, our situation will be clearly depicted.

• The CRC has placed obligations on our Government that are not being fulfilled. Our Report can highlight these lapses.

• Our report will help us to draw the attention of our Government to our problems and to the solutions we propose.

• Our Government did not consult us when they prepared their report. So we have to send an Alternate Report to ensure that our views are heard.

• Our report will enable our direct participation in the reporting process to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

• Our Alternate Report will take our struggle for Children’s Rights and our Right to Participation forward.

• We, the NMWC can gain recognition as a federation that represents working children of India through our Alternate Report.

In connection with the above discussion we also took a decision to review the Government of India’s (GOI) first periodic report for the following reasons:

• We have to review the report of the GOI to the Committee because it will inform us about what the GOI has done to fulfil its obligations to us.

• If we know the contents of the GOI Report, we can judge whether or not it depicts our situation fairly.

• We the children of India have the right to information about matters related to us.

• When we learn what is contained in the Government Report we will be better equipped to plan the NMWC’s strategy for follow up and advocacy.

• We will be able to inform other children about the Report.

• We will be able to protest if we find things in the Report that are inaccurate.

• We can include our review of the GOI report in our Alternate Report.

• We will be able to understand to what extent the CRC has been translated into national laws and how effectively our rights are being realised in practice.

• We want to see how the GOI Report reflects the reality of street children and working children.

• We want to know what the Government says about ‘children’s participation’ in its report.

• We would like to get official statistics regarding school going and non-school going children from the GOI Report.

• We would like to find out more about the GOI’s programmes for children.

After our 8^th NMWC meeting, all our member organisations held discussions in their respective states among their members regarding the Alternate Report.

It was extremely difficult for us to get hold of a copy of the GOI Report. Our friends at the Defense of Children International, Geneva Office informed us that only one copy of the report was available with them. They did not have any soft copies to email us. However they said that the GOI may upload their report on the official website. This is yet to happen. For almost a year after our NMWC meeting in 2002, we could not access the GOI report.

At our 9^th NMWC meeting (February, 2003) we prepared the following framework for information collection for our Alternate Report:

• Our present situation in the context of the realisation of our rights with regard to our Protection, the Provision of services and infrastructure and our right to Participation.

• Our own initiatives that have helped us to improve our lives and to realise our rights.

• Our review of the GOI Report.

• Our suggestions for what needs to be done for the realisation of our Rights.

Our members carried out detailed discussions in their respective organisations based on the above framework. The outcome of these discussions formed the organisational inputs of the member organisations to the Alternate Report. For this process, we requested the NGOs working with us to give us inputs regarding the reporting process, to help us with translations and to provide logistical support when required.

As scheduled, 16 representatives of NMWC from different member organisations met in June 2003 to fine tune the Alternate Report. Our member organisations had prepared their reports in their respective languages. These reports were translated and compiled as our Alternate Report. A team of adults from the NGOs that support us facilitated this process.

We would like to emphasise that our report only covers the problems and issues of working children and is based on the areas and sectors that our member organisations represent. We do not claim to speak for all the children of India and we sincerely hope that children in other situations and circumstances and in different parts of India are also producing their own reports to put forward their realities and their suggestions. This is also an issue that we feel the Government of India should help to facilitate with the help of adult organisations and NGOs.

• A large number of families in our country face a lot of hardship. They suffer from acute poverty and little or no support systems. In such situations our parents are not able to provide adequate care to children.

• In some homes there are a lot of tensions among the adults because of the difficulties they face. Due to these tensions, sometimes parents may get separated or leave home. This happens more often in urban slums. When parents leave homeless children behind they often end up on the streets. Such children undergo a lot of trauma.

• In our country, there are a many children without parents. In some cases, after the death of the mothers, fathers marry again. Children are often ill treated by their stepmothers. Such children have no facilities where they can stay peacefully and study.

• Some of us are subjected to verbal abuse at home. Our members also report that sometimes parents and relatives sexually abuse children.

• There are several instances where families reject physically and mentally challenged children. In such families, children who need a lot of care and attention may get ignored or even abandoned.

• In some acute crises situations like communal riots when adults clash with each other, children also get hurt. Sometimes this may be deliberately done. Sometimes in such situations, girls and women get raped.

• In some parts of the country, both in the urban and the rural areas, children are married off at a very young age. In one such area one of our member organisations, Bhima Sangha has launched a major struggle against child marriages.

• In our country, there is an increase in the known cases of female foeticides and infanticides. This is practiced by both upper caste and lower caste families for various reasons. One of them is that they do not want to pay huge amounts in dowry. Because of this, the male-female birth ratio has been affected.

• In some communities alcoholism is a serious problem. In some areas because liquor is sold in public places, girls find it difficult to move around, especially in the night because they fear harassment from drunkards.

• Some children have reported that the society does not have any respect for families of alcoholics. Even children from such houses are looked down upon for no fault of theirs.

• Most of our member organisations have noted that we working children are often accused of crimes we have not committed and are harassed unnecessarily by the police. There are also incidents where police snatch money from children. These happen more often in the slums than in the villages.

• Some of us are very scared of the police. From our experience we feel that many police personnel do not help us or talk to us politely. They do not take our complaints seriously, instead they suspect us.

• Sometimes In the urban areas, children who live and work on the streets are taken into police custody and are beaten up. Our member organisations report that most often these arrests are made on the basis of false allegations. Sometimes children are let off but sometimes they are sent off to the State Observation Homes.

• Some times, when police cases are booked, children who are not yet 18 years of age are also registered as adults and produced in the courts. Due to this those children do not get the legal protection, which is theirs by right.

• The Government conducts raids on our work places as a part of its Child Labour Eradication Programme and ‘rounds up’ working children like stray dogs. We are pulled out of work, taken away against our wishes and illegally confined. The actual raid experience is very traumatic for us. No one talks to us before hand to ask us if we need to be rescued. No one talks to us after the raid about what the next steps will be. Sometimes we are sent off to the Observations Homes and kept there for days. We are constantly told that we have to stop working and start going to school. But they do not realise that in our given situation of poverty and deprivation, work is a necessity. Even if we try to explain our situation, we are not taken seriously. If we are migrants, we are sent off to our villages. They do not realise that we left our villages because we had no livelihood there. In the raid process we the concerned children are not at all consulted. Our needs are not taken into consideration. The alternatives forced on us by the Government actually make our situations worse than before. These raids are a total violation of our rights and are not a solution to child labour.

• Many working children in the country do not know where to go for help if they are in trouble. If anyone ill-treats them, they do not know where they should file their complaints or where they can get justice. Those of us who are members of working children’s organisations are able to protect ourselves better because we have the support of our members. Our members provide us information, protection, care and solidarity in times of crises.

• Many of us who live and work on the streets have no protection from bullies who tease us and threaten us. Some of them force us to beg money on the streets for them. The girls on the street are severely harassed. We also do not have any place to keep our earnings safe. We are not allowed into the banks and other institutions where people save their money. So we are constantly worried about bullies who grab our money from us.

• Our members feel that one of the biggest problems for those of us who live and work on the streets is the lack of care and protection, especially when we are sick or when there is violence in the locality.

• Often, when girls work as construction labourers, they have to stay on the site for many days where they have no protected place to have a bath and no safe place to rest or sleep.

• Some people in the urban areas treat working children in a rude manner. Some of our members have reported that they are viewed with suspicion and are told to leave the area by affluent people in their neighbourhood.

• Often, we working children have difficulties at our work place. We have to work for long hours with little or no salary. We are not provided adequate health care or sick leave. Some employers are kind, but they are exceptions.

• In some extreme situations, employers abuse us both physically and mentally. At times we have to listen to humiliating words from our supervisors. At the work place we are scared when the supervisor raises his/her hand to hit us.

• Our members report that some sectors of work are very dangerous even though most people are not aware of this. One example of such a sector is child domestic work. In some situations domestic workers are not only subjected to a lot of physical and mental harassment, they are also sexually abused.

• Our members have reported that they know of cases where children have been abducted and their body organs are removed and sold by people involved in such rackets.

• Some of our places of work are very unhygienic such as the street, tanneries, meat and poultry markets, fish processing etc. This is especially true in urban areas.

• According to our members, in some situations, where adults and children are employed in the same workplace, the adults often take out their anger and frustrations on children.

• Many children migrate from villages to cities for work. They have little or no information about where they should go or whom they should contact to get employment and shelter. Sometimes their belongings are snatched away by street gangs. Middlemen manipulate them and force them into bad work situations and gain commission from the employer.

• Some adults in the cities and villages of India work as middlemen and supply children for employment. They give false assurances to poor parents and bring their children away in the pretext of providing them education. Once the children are brought to another village or city, they are forced to work. Our members report that many of these children do not know how to get back to their homes and end up working for many years under difficult conditions. Our member organisations have been able to assist some of these children to find their families. In one situation, a case was filed with the help of MSV against the employer and as a punishment he had to pay a financial compensation to support the child’s education.

• In several parts of India, especially in drought prone areas, there is a severe shortage of fodder. Some of our members who are from such regions report that they have to take their sheep to far away fields for grazing. Sometimes they have to stay in those fields, for many nights and days, without any protection or safety.

• Our member organisations report that in rural areas where the agricultural fields are far away from the villages, ruffians sometimes abuse girls during their walk to the fields or while at work.

• In Karnataka one of our member organisations, Bhima Sangha has set up Makkala Panchayats (please see the box below for details) and elected Makkala Mitras (children’s friends or Ombudspersons) who provide children the support and assistance they need. But children’s organisations, Makkala Panchayats, Makkala Mitras, Makkala Sahayavani’s exist in very few places in the country. So a very large number of children do not have the benefit of such support structures.

• Our member organisation report that children from urban slums often face a lot of humiliation and abuse. They are also beaten and abused with vulgar language by the teacher.

• Our members have information that there are incidents of sexual abuse by the teachers of students, especially girls.

• Some major developmental projects that displace large numbers of people, place children at risk. For example, mining in Orissa and constructions of dams in North Karnataka. Our members from Karnataka express their anxiety about a dam that is proposed for their area. They fear this construction may lead to the submersion of large areas of land, agricultural fields and houses. This may also cause extensive deforestation. From past experience, most of the villagers are not even sure of getting adequate rehabilitation and alternate housing. The Government is not holding any public discussions with them. So the anxiety levels are very high.

• In many villages of India, children have to commute very far to access Middle Schools (6 - 7 grades) and High Schools (8 –10 grades). One of our member organisation reports that children have to walk for two hours from their village before they can take a bus to reach the nearest High School. Many children find it very difficult to walk that far and to afford bus tickets. So they drop out of school after Middle School. Girls drop out in larger numbers, as families do not allow girls to travel far.

• Many of us find that school timings are not convenient as they clash with our routines at homes and our work. Because of this many of us find it difficult to manage domestic work, employment and school.

• During the rainy season in the costal regions as well as the hilly regions of our country it is very difficult to go to school because the mud roads get very slushy and many streams cross our path. Some of the streams are very deep and they are very difficult to cross. Many children stay away from school during the monsoon and some of them also drop out of school.

• In some remote, hilly villages, during the rainy season water flows into the trenches and since there are no footbridges, children have to take alternate routes through deep forests or across fields that have been sown to reach the schools. These routes are usually very difficult and often unsafe. So children, especially very young ones and girls, discontinue their schooling.

• Our members have also reported that in some hilly areas of the country, the only way to reach schools is through dense forests. Small children, especially girls find it difficult to walk through these paths alone so they do not start schooling. Sometimes even if they enrol in the beginning, if their companions leave school, they too drop out.

• One of the serious problems faced by children who move their residence from one State to another is that they will be admitted only into class one (Grade 1) irrespective of their earlier education because of different state languages that are the medium of instruction. Our members, many of whom are migrants, are very concerned about this.

• Most children of our country do not get any education or information about our rights either in schools or anywhere else. Those of us, who are members of children’s organisations, have some access to such information through our peers, the NGOs that facilitate us and the other sources of information that we now have.

• Many of our member organisations have pointed out that the lessons taught at school have very little relevance to our lives and appear unconnected to our livelihood. For example there is hardly any health education or legal education in schools. So some of us feel that we should not waste time at school – especially after we have learnt to read and write. There are very many educated unemployed people in our country. Some of our family members tell us "we do not want you to become like them". They prefer that we learn a vocational skill in school or out of school – so that we can take care of our future.

• Many of our members find several problems with the examinations at school. They pointed out that a large number of children fail in schools because it is difficult to cope with the English language and subjects like mathematics because the basics are not learnt well in the primary school.