Forcing children to work is a way of violating their rights, child labor must be eliminated because it reduces their chances of future development, thereby promoting that new generations of children do not have access to education and are future condemned to deprive yourself of better employment and development opportunities; it is a way of perpetuating poverty.
For many it is common for children to participate in their parents' work activities, but others are used to raise money through money-making practices or in informal jobs. In many communities these are legitimate practices and must be legislated and educated in relation to them.
Enabling families in poorer and more remote areas to enjoy access to internet technology and enjoy public services will allow children to visualize the opportunity to improve the quality of life for their families, access to forms of education and information that allow them to open their minds to new horizons and opportunities.
Agricultural policies aimed at reducing child labor must be articulated with other policies that allow improving the quality of life, reducing poverty and offering jobs that generate sufficient income to meet the basic needs of the family, is one of the ways of reducing the practice of child labor since adults will not have to find this way of earning income for their families.
Agricultural policies and strategies will help reduce child labor by facilitating access to education for the most vulnerable populations in the poorest urban areas and in remote rural areas; This allows adults to understand that it is not an adequate practice, while educated children and adolescents are projecting themselves into the future and will allow them to access opportunities for development and quality of life; Providing children with access to quality education appropriate to their environment will provide a promising future for themselves and their families.
The problem must be made visible both in public policies and in the community in general by carrying out communication and education campaigns that make visible to the community in general the obligation to avoid this practice to protect the present and future well-being of children.
In relation to question # 1, Hunger and malnutrition, I present the arguments related to the importance that education in the rural sector is accompanied by strategies that promote school retention, one of them carried out in Latin American and Caribbean countries is the School Feeding Program (SFP), which provides food to children during the school day and thereby contributes to the child receiving a part of their nutritional requirements; a study carried out by students from the Universidad del Rosario acknowledges “the opportunity cost that families face when sending children to school, which is reduced through the SFP and is reflected in a statistically decrease significant child labor, the theory holds for this document, because household decisions will allow the boy or girl to continue attending school instead of sending them to the labor market and ensuring precarious conditions in their future life. This study concluded that the school feeding program decreases the probability that schoolchildren work by around 4%. In addition, it is explored that child labor is reduced thanks to the fact that the program increases food security, which consequently changes household decisions and cancels the workload on infants”.
Bibliographic references:
Porto Gutiérrez, Indira Margarita. (2016). Impact of the School Feeding Program on Child Labor: An approach from family decision-making. Degree work to obtain the Master's degree in economics. Rosario University, Bogotá, 2016.
Prof. Mylene Rodríguez Leyton