Глобальный форум по продовольственной безопасности и питанию (Форум FSN)

English translation below

Au Mali, le BIT a un portefeuille de projets de coopération technique sur l’élimination du travail des enfants en appui aux efforts du Gouvernement et des partenaires sociaux et autres organisations de la société civile. On peut ainsi citer le projet ACCEL AFRICA « Accélérer l’action pour l’élimination du travail des enfants dans les chaînes d’approvisionnement en Afrique (pour le Mali l’or et le coton ont été retenus) » financé par les Pays Bas, le Projet Clear Cotton « éliminer le travail des enfants dans les chaînes de valeur du coton, de l’habillement et du textile en collaboration avec la FAO » financé par l’Union européenne, le projet de Coopération Sud Sud avec le Brésil pour la promotion du travail décent dans les pays producteurs du coton en Afrique et en Amérique latine, le Projet INDITEX qui est le fruit d’un partenariat Public Privé et qui fait la promotion des principes et droits fondamentaux dans la filière du coton.

ETUDES/RECHERCHE

Plusieurs études ont été réalisées ou en cours pour analyser le déficit du travail décent dans la filière du coton, analyser la chaîne de valeur du coton et de l’or, l’actualisation des données de l’enquête nationale sur le travail des enfants, l’analyse du cadre législatif et réglementaire du travail des enfants, l’identification des unités de production sur l’économie informelle et l’évaluation de leurs capacités à accueillir des jeunes apprentis à retirer des travaux dangereux dans le secteur de l’Agriculture. Toutes ces études permettent de générer des informations utiles qui aideront à orienter les actions dans la lutte contre le travail des enfants.

INSTITUTIONNEL ET POLITIQUE

Comme acteurs principaux dans cette nouvelle génération de projets du BIT dans la lutte contre le travail des enfants dans les chaînes de valeur, on peut citer les coopératives des producteurs de coton et la compagnie malienne de développement de textile. Leur implication et accompagnement est nécessaire pour la réussite de ces projets. C’est pourquoi un partenariat a été établi avec ces organisations dans le cadre du renforcement de leurs capacités en matière de promotion des principes et droits fondamentaux au travail notamment le travail des enfants. L’objectif est l’institutionnalisation de la question du travail des enfants dans les activités courantes de ces organisations notamment leur dispositif de formation et d’encadrement des coopératives à la base.

On peut citer aussi la Cellule Nationale de lutte contre le travail des enfants avec des Points focaux régionaux travail des enfants dans les inspections de travail. La mise en œuvre du plan d’actions national pour l’élimination du travail des enfants au Mali est assuré par ce service rattaché à la Direction Nationale du Travail.

Les Points Focaux Régionaux de lutte contre le Travail des Enfants crées auprès des Directions Régionales du Travail sont les relais de la Cellule Nationale de Lutte contre le Travail des Enfants au niveau régional.

Dans la collaboration entre le BIT et la FAO dans la lutte contre le travail des enfants au Mali, le tripartisme a été mis à contribution d’où la présence de syndicats des travailleurs au sein du comité de pilotage dans les projets de lutte contre le travail des enfants de la FAO.

La création d’une dynamique de concertation entre les inspecteurs du travail et les services techniques de l’agriculture ce qui favorise une meilleure convergence des actions de ces départements en matière de lutte contre le travail des enfants.

L’appui et le soutien d’autres approches de lutte contre le travail des enfants comme la zone libre de tout travail des enfants (ZLTTE) dans les régions rizicoles et cotonnières.

CADRE LEGISLATIF ET REGLEMENTAIRE

Révision de la liste des travaux dangereux pour les enfants de moins de 18 ans en Décembre 2017.

Harmonisation de l’âge minimum d’admission à l’emploi qui passe de 14 ans à 15 ans.

In Mali, ILO has a portfolio of technical cooperation projects on the elimination of child labor in support of the efforts of the government and of social partner and other civil society organizations. We can thus cite the ACCEL AFRICA project “Accelerating action for the elimination of child labor in supply chains in Africa (for Mali gold and cotton have been selected)” funded by the Netherlands, the Clear Cotton Project “eliminating child labor in the cotton, clothing and textile value chains in collaboration with FAO” funded by the European Union, the South-South Cooperation project with Brazil for the promotion of decent work in cotton-producing countries in Africa and Latin America, the INDITEX Project which is the fruit of a public-private partnership and which promotes fundamental principles and rights in the cotton sector.

STUDIES / RESEARCH

Several studies have been carried out or are underway to analyze the decent work deficit in the cotton sector, analyze the cotton and gold value chain, update data from the national survey on child labor, the analysis of the legislative and regulatory framework for child labour, the identification of production units in the informal economy and the evaluation of their capacities to accommodate young apprentices to withdraw from hazardous work in the agriculture sector. All these studies generate useful information that will help guide actions in the fight against child labor.

INSTITUTIONAL AND POLITICAL

As main actors in this new generation of ILO projects in the fight against child labor in value chains, we can cite the cotton producers' cooperatives and the Malian Textile Development Company. Their involvement and support are necessary for the success of these projects. This is why a partnership has been established with these organizations in the context of strengthening their capacities in the promotion of fundamental principles and rights at work, in particular in relation to child labor. The aim is to institutionalize the issue of child labor in the day-to-day activities of these organizations, in particular in their training and support system for grassroots cooperatives.

We can also cite the National Unit to Combat Child Labor with regional Child Labor Focal Points in labor inspections. The national action plan for the elimination of child labor in Mali is implemented by this service linked to the National Labor Directorate.

The Regional Focal Points for the fight against Child Labor were established within the Regional Directorates for Labour which are the relays of the National Unit for the Fight against Child Labor at the regional level.

In the collaboration between ILO and the FAO in the fight against child labor in Mali, tripartism was established, hence the presence of workers' unions within the steering committee of FAO projects on the fight against child labour.

The creation of a dynamic of consultation between labor inspectors and agricultural technical services, which promotes better convergence of the actions of these departments in the fight against child labor.

The help and support for other approaches to combat child labor, such as the child labour free zone in rice and cotton regions.

LEGISLATIVE AND REGULATORY FRAMEWORK

Revision of the list of hazardous work for children under 18 in December 2017.

Harmonization of the minimum age for admission to employment, which has been raised from 14 to 15 years.

Question 1: Food security and nutrition policies: example of a policy improving lives of cocoa producers in Ghana and reducing child labour”

World Vision Ghana together with Mondelez International through the Cocoa life programme are implementing activities as efforts in eliminating child labor through nutrition programming. The project approach in eliminating child labor is in line with the Ghana strategy which is Ghana Child Labour Monitoring System(GCLMS). It focuses on 3 areas: Prevention, Monitoring and Remediation with key emphasis on addressing the root causes of child labor. This is done through a holistic and community-centric approach such as improving farmer livelihoods. Through Food Security and Nutrition interventions under the prevention strategy, the root cause of child labor such as poverty is addressed by increasing household incomes, empowering women economically, reducing Malnutrition etc.

Strategies/Interventions

Our approach to using food security and nutrition activities to tackle child labor within the cocoa landscape together with stakeholders over the years has taken the form of activities such as:

Sensitize communities and hold food demonstration sessions on micronutrient rich foods

This activity was implemented with the aim of introducing smallholder farmers and caregivers especially women (nursing mothers) to micronutrient rich foods rich in iron, calcium, potassium, vitamin C, and other nutrients to boost immune system and provide energy for children and adults that prevents stunted growth as an effect of child labor. In partnership with district health directorates, community members especially women who are mostly responsible for in-home management were taken through how locally produced food crops, vegetables, spices, herbs, legumes, fish etc. could be used to prepare healthy less expensive meals. Demonstration on preparation of fortified corn porridge for toddlers with local ingredients like palm oil, eggs, shea butter, ground nut paste, etc. In total 1238 people, 865 women, 373 men with about 500 Children benefitted from the training in five (5) districts.

Training of community members on modern farming techniques and setting up Demonstration farms.

This activity was implemented with the aim of equipping smallholder cocoa farmers with practical skills in modern ways of producing other food crops such as plantain, vegetables etc. to serve as additional source of income when sold and also improve household nutrition. Smallholder Cocoa farmers especially women were first sensitized on the need to venture into other food crops production in addition to the cocoa farming to raise additional income when sold and to secure food for their homes to improve in their nutrition. In partnership with the District Agricultural Development Unit field demonstration farms were established by taking the small holder farmers through on hand practicals in modern farming techniques such as plantain sucker multiplication. Women groups were also taken through establishment of backyard vegetable farms to support families. In total 10 Demonstration farms has been established in 2 districts with 851 smallholder farmers involved 363 Females, 488 Males.

With established demo farms smallholder farmers especially, women are able to raise additional income from the sales of the harvested crops to support the educational needs of their children and also increased household nutritional needs.

Sensitization and establishment of Communities Self-Initiated School Feeding Programs

The team has over the years encouraged communities to implement a community self-initiated school feeding program using available locally grown foodstuffs as a measure to improve school enrollment and retention. It was established that pupils absent themselves from school to scavenge for food because they go hungry when in school since parents couldn’t give money nor cook for them since food is mostly prepared in the farms. An initiative where parents agreed to provide foodstuffs from their farms to be prepared by organized women groups trained in preparation of nutritious meals from locally available food crops for the children. Three communities Kotosaa, Nsoyameye and Danyame started the initiative and saw results of increased enrolment and retention over a period of one year. Some communities received support from the district assemblies, benevolent persons etc. through donations in cash and foodstuffs.

To sustain the activity, school authorities are engaged with the District Agricultural Development Unit to support in establishment of school gardens. Some communities also had the initiative declining or quitting due to lack of support however records show improved enrolment during the implementation stages and this reduced the number of children engaged in farm activities especially during school periods.

The school enrollment increased from 60 to 75 in Kotosaa, 53 to 63 in Nsonyameye, and 82 to 99 in Danyame.

• Facilitating Engagements between crop farmers and extension workers.

The motive of this activity is to enhance farmers access to food crops and animal husbandry extension through Ministry of Food and Agriculture. With this strategy we establish an engagement between small holder farmers and hard to reach Agricultural Extension Officers. With limited number of Extension officers, most farmers hardly get technical support from these experts to improve on their production to secure food.1532 people with 42% women in 35 communities in 5 districts reached.

• Train mobilized groups on developing business models such as value addition, postharvest loss management and local opportunities (i.e. additional livelihood options)

This activity was implemented with the aim of equipping smallholder farmers with knowledge in post- harvest management to reduce food losses. Mobilized groups especially women groups were taking through value addition of locally produced crops such as grains, cereals and tubers. In partnership with the District Agricultural Development Unit’s, the Women in Agricultural Development (WIAD) officer and crops officer took small holder farmers through the measures to implement in reducing post-harvest loss in the food value chain to improve food security. Smallholder farmers were then introduced to the use of improved storage bags for cereals and grains. This has helped to make food available even in the minor seasons for households to prepare a nutritious meal for their families especially children. Furthermore, smallholder farmers especially women groups were trained in adding value to locally produce crops to make it more marketable and reduce post-harvest losses in the bumper seasons. With value added to cassava to fortified gari, plantain and cocoyam into chips and grains and cereals into Winnie mix (porridge flour), crops which would have gone waste in bumper seasons/harvest is generating additional income to the households especially women and nutritious meals readily available in the homes especially for the children.

In total 585 small holder farmers, 310 women, 275 men were trained in 5 districts. Five (5) women groups into production now.

Stakeholders and Their Role

All these food security and nutrition activities held to help eliminate child labour are not done in isolation but with stakeholders to ensure that the program is sustainable and could be independently done when the program is no more in the districts. This is done by building the capacity of the communities as well as public authorities to support them play their part in protecting children. In executing food security and Nutrition activities in eliminating child labor some key stakeholders partnered and the roles they played are,

• Communities: Partnering and accepting to adopt all strategies in improving food security and nutrition in eliminating child labor by the program.

• Ministry of Food and Agriculture: Provision of skilled personnel such as Crop officers, WIAD officer, Agric Extension Agents, etc. in developing training manuals and facilitating training sections for community members.

• Ghana Health Service: Provision of skilled personnel such as Nutritionist, health promotions officer, nurses etc in facilitating training sections on Micro nutrients rich foods.

• Ghana Education Service: Providing support in the catering of children during school hours.

• COCOBOD: Provision of skilled personnel such as, Cocoa Extension Agents, etc. in developing training manuals and facilitating training sections for small holder farmers.

Question 2:  How World Vision is Supporting Family farming through producer savings for transformation groups and training these groups on child protection under Cocoa-Life Project in Ghana:

World Vision has been implementing Cocoa Life Project in Ghana. The project integrated ending child labour objectives and financial inclusion to increase income of cocoa producers, particularly women. Kate has been one pf the beneficiaries, a cocoa farmer in the Sekyere East district. She is a single mother of five. She has been taking care of the children alone since her left with sales of her farm produce-cocoa and food crops- and, loans from the loan sharks in the community. Her children have been assisting her in the farm as she did not have money to hire labour for every farm activity. Their roles have been weeding, picking pods, planting, watering, breaking pods and carrying farm produce home. Loss of income to hire labor becomes the driving force exposing children to the risk of child labor.

In collaboration with the department of social welfare and the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE), World Vision Ghana educated all the communities on child labour issues. As part of the project, Community child protection committees (CCPC) were formed, trained and supported with materials (books, identification) to monitor child protection issues. Referral lines were established to enable reportage and mediation. The role of the committee is to ensure children attend school and not work on the farms. Children were also educated on child labor issues Child Rights Clubs in response to the findings during the community engagement that the children engage in labour without the consent of their guardians.

As a practical solution to reduce exposure of children to child labor resulting from lack of income, World Vision organized community based and managed savings for transformation groups to give farmers financial insurance (savings and loans).These groups have provided funds to farmers to hire labour for agronomical practices which hitherto would have been done by their children. In addition, community enterprise groups were formed, trained and equipped to produce products with available raw materials for sale thus increasing household income. Cassava processing, soap making and baking were the enterprises established. Furthermore, Mondelez International provided farmer groups with premium on the sales of the cocoa beans that was distributed to farmers to purchase farm inputs and meet basic household needs. To ensure children stay in school, bicycles were distributed to children in hard to reach communities to commute to school.

Household income have been increased as a result on the additional livelihood interventions. Smallholder farmers are able to hire labour for their farming activities thus children are retained in schools. The CCPCs in the communities have enacted by-laws to monitor and refer offender to the district child protection committees for further action. School attendance and retention by children in the hard to reach communities have increased as the commuting time and stress have been drastically reduced by the use of the bicycles received from the project. Moreover, parents are able to provide the school needs of the children even during cocoa off-season with savings and loans from the savings for transformation groups (S4T). Therefore the children do not have any excuse to be absent from school. Farmers and their children now understand the negative impact of child labour in their lives as a result have increased interest in the education and training for life.

Question 5: Public-Private Investment in The Cocoa Sector In Ghana Towards Elimination Of Child Labour And Forced Labour: The Role Of Mondelez International Cocoa Life And World Vision Ghana

The sustainable development goal 8.7 mirrors the urgency and necessity of actions for eradicating child labour in all of it forms to ensure children are protected to enjoy life in all its fullness. In Ghana, fishing and farming sectors are highly reckoned to be child labour hot spots, with about 21.8 per cent of children affected (National Plan of Action Phase II, 2017). Within the farming sector, cocoa farming in particular with its unique characteristics require diverse stakeholders to act intentionally to deal with child labour by tackling root causes. Among stakeholders in the public sphere, district level institutions usually rely heavily on District Assembly Common Fund and Internally Generated Funds. With the former usually disbursed in arrears and the later insufficient in rural districts where most cocoa farming families reside, major public institutional investment in child protection and child labour specific activities are limited.

Against this backdrop, the Social Welfare Department and Rural Enterprise Programme through the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty and rural enterprise development initiatives support most vulnerable cocoa growing families with direct cash transfers to cushion most vulnerable families with some skills training. The actual strength of public departments that has been harnessed by the Cocoa Life Programme in the course of child labour eradication is their technical skill and mandate for protecting children as enshrined in the laws of Ghana. Through partnership and support by World Vision in running planned sensitization campaigns at the community levels, cocoa growing families especially children are aware of their rights and responsibilities, which safeguard them from child labour and other forms of exploitation and rights denial.

In the private space, the partnership between World Vision Ghana and Mondelez International Cocoa Life has been very sensitive in the following ways to ensure child labour is ended in all programme beneficiary communities as outlined herein.

 Improving Cocoa Farm Yield and Income through Access to Cocoa Extension Services

Cocoa farming in rural communities’ dependence on manual labour is due to poverty which pulls all family members regardless of their age to contribute towards their families’ survival. In ancient times, cocoa farming parents had many children often with the intent of having more hands to support family cocoa business, employing limited knowledge of good agricultural practices coupled with lack of resources needed to apply improved practices to improve their business. Consequently, yield per hectare of cocoa is low, affecting cocoa family incomes. Though the idea is not wholly negative when considered in the lens of family business continuity, the time at which children worked on these farms and its resultant child right deprivations makes it worrisome. In essence, child labour within cocoa growing communities is not tied to third party hiring of services as occur in sectors but within family businesses to ensure family survival. The Cocoa Life Programme therefore recognizes poverty as major root cause of child labour as children must not be in the position to work to survive and thus invests heavily in poverty reduction within cocoa growing communities

The programme ensure cocoa farmers in beneficiary communities are mobilized at the community and district levels to form cooperatives with support from World Vision Ghana and Department of Cooperatives. These cooperatives are then exposed to good agricultural practices which improve cocoa yields and increase cocoa family incomes. Cocoa Extension Agents have been specially recruited in collaboration with COCOBOD as part of the project to provide extension services to farmers in all project beneficiary communities, enhancing their productivity with trainings.

As at 2019 175,017 farmers including farmers within the five project districts where World Vision Ghana operates benefited from direct coaching and farm development plans through trainings on good agronomic practices with 391 nurseries and 689 demonstration farms established in 589 Cocoa Life beneficiary communities. Additionally, 10,809,555 improved seedlings were distributed to farmers in these communities. All these actions are aimed at improving farm yields and incomes of cocoa growing families to ensure they escape poverty and hire appropriate labour to free children from working to ensure family survival.

As a coordinating implementing partner on the Cocoa Life Programme, World Vision Ghana facilitates periodic meetings in five project districts in Ashanti (Sekyere East and Ahafo Ano North Districts), Western (Bia West and Juaboso District) and Central Regions (Awutu Senya District) of Ghana through an established information sharing platform for implementing partner field agents including Cocoa Extension Agents, Department Of Cooperatives Officers, District Cocoa Farmers’ Union and other partners. This oversight coordination enhances existing partnerships to consistently improve programming through information sharing on progress of implementation, successes, discussions of challenges and ways of mitigating these challenges. The field coordinating teams also support farmers through sensitizations which aid cocoa farmers’ adoption of new farming methods introduced to them through these trainings.

 Improving Household Incomes from Sources Other Than Cocoa through Relevant and Accessible Community- Based Training

Cocoa farmers in Ghana depend heavily on seasonal income from cocoa farming, making farmers vulnerable during shocks during off-peak seasons and weather failure. Due to this over reliance on cocoa farming income, most cocoa growing family members especially youth and women are unskilled and thus unable to contribute meaningfully to family income from other sources other than cocoa. This lack and how it makes cocoa farmers vulnerable is addressed by the Cocoa Life Programming design, with massive investments in relevant community-based small and medium scale enterprise skills and provision of start-up kits to support production to increase family income from other sources.

As a partner to this key initiative, World Vision Ghana facilitates this skills training component through community based needs assessments and market tailored trainings to ensure easy access and skill relevance in partnership with Rural Enterprise Programme Units/Business Advisory Centres, targeting women and youth (of legal working age). Initiated business operators are supported with financial literacy and business management trainings to ensure business are sustained.

As at 2019 the Cocoa Life programme had facilitated involvement of 18,234 cocoa community dwellers in several additional livelihood enterprises (i.e gari processing, soap production and confectionery products) with 72,498 and 52, 904 community members trained on financial literacy and business management in Cocoa Life Districts in Ghana. World Vision Ghana facilitates these trainings in six project district in Ghana with technical support from Aboadi Rural Agricultural Technology and Transfer Centre and National Board for Small Scale Industries.

Enhancing Cocoa farmers Access to Microfinance to Increase Resilience of Cocoa Farming Families

World Vision Ghana with support from Mondelez International Cocoa Life further facilitates cocoa growing communities’ access to microfinance products through the Savings for Transformation Groups which helps farmers to save parts of their income against off-peak cocoa seasons, with savings kits. This microfinance component of the Cocoa Life Programme also helps cocoa farmers to save up and build assets necessary to escape poverty and invest in the education of their children to high levels to enable them have descent jobs. As at 2019, the Cocoa Life Programme had established 1,967 functional savings groups with 121,167 cocoa community dwellers participating in 589 cocoa life communities in Ghana. Over 300 of these savings groups have been linked successful to formal microfinance institutions to access bigger loans to expand their businesses of which they are able to hire labour for their work on the farm. World Vision Ghana facilitates this initiative in 161 communities in six districts in three regions of Ghana. The meetings are used to discuss child labour and child marriage preventions.

 Improving Community Access to Infrastructure which mitigates Child Labour In Cocoa Growing Communities

The Cocoa Life Programme also robustly facilitates total community development to sustainably free families from infrastructural limitations which foster child labour and forced labour practices. Naturally, cocoa growing communities in Ghana are in the remote areas, challenged with unavailability of necessary social amenities and services like roads, schools and health services. The lack of education infrastructure in particular aids child labour through deprivation of children’s right to quality education. In instances where schools are available, the distance covered by children in cocoa growing communities to attend these schools impact negatively on their health and makes schooling unattractive. Poor road networks also make transportation of goods to market centres an avenue for child labour practice.

In ensuring access to community infrastructure and social services World Vision through the Cocoa Life Programme Unit had supported 450 communities in 12 Districts, to develop and activate community action plans, ensuring the participation of erstwhile marginalized groups like women, youth and children. As at 2019, 3,205 projects had been initiated and completed while 1,599 projects are on-going in cocoa growing communities in Ghana. World Vision Ghana’s District project coordinating units facilitated the mobilization and training of communities in six districts within three cohorts of the Cocoa Life Programme, enhancing cocoa farming communities’ advocacy knowledge and skills through its Citizen Voice and Action Project Model. This model essentially drives communities to engage duty bearers for provision of non existing social services and improvement of existing low quality services and infrastructure.

World Vision Ghana also supports communities by bridging the disconnection between cocoa growing communities and district-level duty-bearers in cocoa growing districts through an established annual communities and District Assembly engagement forum. This has improved District Assemblies infrastructural and social services improvement in Cocoa Life communities, leading to gradual removal of major community barriers which predispose families to engage in child labour. Private institutions and cocoa growing communities have also initiated and partially/fully funded projects which address community pressing educational infrastructural needs and access to safe potable drinking water. Access to education infrastructure in particular has replaced farms in the lives of children in cocoa growing communities with mechanized water points also reducing times spent on household chores for children (especially girls) before attending school.

Additionally, World Vision and World Bicycle Relief directly supports children who access education from distant communities through the Bicycle for Educational Empowerment Project in collaboration with Mondelez International. This initiative provided children in remote communities with bicycles to support and motivate them to access education with support from Mondelez International.

 Facilitating Cocoa Farmers’ Access and Adoption of Appropriate Technologies To End Dependence On Manual Family Labour

In addition to increasing household incomes for cocoa farming families to pay for appropriate labour to work on the farm, the Cocoa Life programme strategically evaluates the cocoa production value chain to ascertain areas where appropriate technologies can be used to reduce manual work and thereby eliminate child labour along activities in the cocoa value chain.

Mechanized Slashers and tricycles used by Cocoa Farmers to manage weeds and transport beans

This alternative ultimately breaks reliance on children within the value chain replacing manual activity with farm mechanization. These technologies also help to protect children from harmful chemicals and hazardous work which are harmful to their health. The Mondelez International Cocoa Life Unit has invested heavily in these appropriate technology supplying mobilized farmer cooperatives at community and district levels with environmentally friendly motorized pruners, slashers and tricycles to support farm management and transportation of cocoa beans from the farm to the house for drying.

World Vision Ghana supports farmers through district project coordinating teams to ensure adoption of these technologies with modalities for proper usage, management and maintenance of these technologies to ensure they sustainably eliminate child labour.

 Raising Awareness among Cocoa Growing Families and Communities on the effects of Child Labour and Importance of Education

More directly, Mondelez International in partnership with World Vision Ghana and other child-focused organizations like Child Rights International and Right To Play have consistently raised awareness among cocoa community dwellers, reaching 270, 863 in 2019 in 656 communities with community child protection structures established to sustain preventive awareness creation messages. Child labour monitoring and remediation systems are also in place to manage cases of child labour and forced child labour.Community Child Protection Committees have been ensuring that every child in their communities attends school and undertake referrals to the District Child Protection Committees if any child labour/abuse is identified.

Use of Policies and Strategies to Address Child Labour in Agriculture

Unlike the conventional approaches to deal with this issue, this contribution will take a close look at the causes of it because a practical solution to it will have to be directed at what brings it about. It will be shown that those causes are concerned with complex socio-cultural aspects whose distribution has been far wider than some modern humanists in affluent societies might presume. Hence, the present approach is holistic and pragmatic.

Let us recall that until just a few decades ago, the autumn school holidays in Scandinavia were called ‘potato holidays’, because the school children were needed to harvest potatoes. Theoretically this is child labour, and most of those children successfully finished their education and now hold responsible positions in their countries. The point is that it is not child labour per se that leads to problems, but its duration, nature and the other background details. Other things being equal, it might be argued reasonably that safe child labour may indeed be beneficial, for it provides gainful physical activity and induces in the youngsters a feeling of achievement and will contribute to family cohesion. Moreover, it entrusts them with some sense of being responsible, which is important for their development into adults.

Unfortunately however, this discussion seems to be aimed exclusively at poorer segments of agrarian societies where children have very little chance of securing an adequate education, health care, general security and their parents have little or no means of procuring their daily needs. Under those circumstances, both children and their parents are driven to do what they may in order to live albeit in abject poverty.

Thus, it would be irresponsible to begin a universal condemnation of child labour in agriculture because it does not reflect the reality. Judicious and reasonable child participation in agriculture is commendable when it does not deprive children from procuring an appropriate education, have access to health care, are secure and have ample opportunities to engage in games, sports and other cultural activities. What is a blot on humanity is that children are not only forced to engage in heavy labour for many hours daily, but are also deprived of all those other necessities.

Hence, it is clear that penalising legislation is the last thing that could succeed in offering millions of labouring children any glimmer of hope. Indeed, if such legislation is effectively enforced, one can anticipate an incredible rise in juvenile crime in both cities and villages. Anyone who is even slightly au courant with the reality as it is and not through a window in a comfortable office will know how many children are sold by poor parents in villages to city procurers to be ‘employed’ as child prostitutes. A short walk in any south or south Asian city would provide any open-eyed researcher indisputable evidence/reference on this subject even though most academics might reject it out of hand because it is not in print.

Furthermore, such legislative action or signing of signatures to an international convention on the issue will automatically condemn the beneficial child participation in agriculture. Even if effective law enforcement is able to keep children from working in agriculture or in other field, one has to ask the simple question how are they going to live then? After air and water, food is the most essential thing we need. Without it, all the rest is well, academic.

I think the foregoing introductory remarks are essential to inculcate in the potential reader a sense of proportion and reality as it is, rather than as it is perceived through some popular theoretical and reductive perspective. The problem is real and it adversely affects millions of children in the poorest areas of the globe. True, a large proportion of child labour in use is absorbed by agricultural pursuits, but many other areas some of which involve handling dangerous materials also employ child labour. As a result, any punitive legislation restricted to agriculture could only induce those children to take up some even more dangerous or unsavoury means of existence. Therefore, punitive legislation should be rejected not only as counterproductive, but as positively dangerous. Besides, law enforcement is well-known for being extremely ponderous since the time of Dickens. Child hunger has lasting consequences within a very short time. Thus, our approach would have to involve policies and strategies that may eliminate harmful child labour in general and from agricultural pursuits in particular.

At a minimum, it is necessary simultaneously to concentrate on several policy domains. These include agriculture, health, education, communications i.e., transport and other related infra-structure, trade and finally finance needed to establish/up-grade and run those. Even though it is necessary, I shall not include security here because it will only result in lengthy discussions leading to very meagre results while more critical issues are left unresolved. Thus, this partial completeness of the present submission is intentional.

I intend to use legal policy as an adjunctive tool owing to its limited usefulness, but hope what is proposed here will be enforced as rigorously as possible. Legal tools will be used to ensure that policy and strategic actions proposed here will be carried out as efficiently as possible. Before we look at any strategic action within those policy domains, we need to ensure two general requirements obtain.

First of those is that an inter-policy harmony obtains among all the policy domains of a country with reference to their common goal which is not only to avoid harmful child labour in agricultural pursuits, but also to enable their parents/guardians to earn enough to support those children and allow them to lead more or less normal lives. At this point, let us firmly remember those adults are poor and hardly well-educated, and are thus comparatively unskilled.

Consider an appropriate agriculture policy and its implementation. It does not operate in isolation, rather in an environment of diverse other policy domains. Now suppose it is accompanied by a trade policy supported by the country’s legal system that allows the establishment of very large scale farming operations. Regardless of their ownership, such farms are capital-intensive and use extensive monoculture to ‘maximise profits’. Obviously, this would lead to unemployment among semi-skilled farmers and leave their children even more helpless than they were before. This is a clear case of inter-policy disharmony which leaves even a good agriculture policy ineffective.

I have intentionally avoided the use of currently fashionable ‘policy congruence’, for it is all too general as it emphasises what is called ‘the economic progress’ i.e., increasing personal incomes without clearly specifying how that could help unless what one needs for sustenance like food for a balanced wholesome diet is also available and affordable. Increase in personal income does not entail a simultaneous increase in the availability of a sustained, affordable supply of wholesome and varied food needed for a balanced diet. This is an uncomfortable logical fact; hence it is liable to be ignored.

Before we look at the next pitfall, it is necessary to re-introduce a term I have often used in this forum viz., appropriateness. Appropriateness has two logically inseparable elements; an appropriate means or a method can be comparatively rapidly mastered by its future users i.e., it is within their present knowledge and skill set, thus it is adequately acquirable by a given target group more or less quickly. After all, one cannot wait for 2 years while potential users are learning their new skills without being fed, and shortage of food is a powerful creator of child labour.

The second element of appropriateness involves the physical materials necessary to implement a plan by a chosen method. In agriculture, this may involve seeds, breeding animals, feed, fertiliser, farm implements and machinery, fishing gear etc. It is often here great deal of resources is wasted due to the use of inappropriate methods under the cover names ‘modernisation’ and ‘innovation’. Let us briefly consider how this happens:

• It would be agreed that the distribution of actions to address child labour in agricultural pursuits will predominate in poor countries where the majority subsists by those activities. Moreover, most of those countries display high humidity and daytime temperatures.
• Parents of children engaged in child labour are often among the very poor, badly educated, physically and cognitively not well-developed.
• This limits their capacity to acquire new agricultural skills or reduces it to improve the existing ones. Hence, methods appropriate for their use should not be ambitious i.e., ‘innovative’ nor yet ‘cutting-edge’.
• This is vitally important because reducing child labour in agricultural pursuits depends on how soon the development plans could bear fruit. Speedy results are of the essence.
• As for crops and animals used, they should be able to perform well under the relevant geographic and climatic conditions. Usually, traditional crops and animals are optimally suited for this purpose. Further, they are a part of the local food culture and do not require heavy use of fertilisers and biocides whose adverse environmental effects are well established. This consideration also precludes farmers resorting to destructive monoculture in industrial farms.
• Introduction of cash-crops or replacement of existing food crops with them is highly dangerous, for the main intention is to reduce child labour while improving people’s access to their customary food at an affordable price. This purpose is not served by enabling them to earn enough by selling cash crops to buy cheap junk food of foreign origin.
• Agricultural machinery and implements will have to be robust and easy to repair and maintain in line with the abilities of those who will be using them. Keep firmly in mind that parents of children forced to work are not graduates of universities of agricultural institutions whose knowledge and skills may be of use in industrial countries but not at all relevant to those with whom we are concerned. Indeed, they may be able to ‘direct’ farms and use some unskilled farm labourers to grow ‘green crops’ that fetch a high price in local cities, but farm labourers are hardly paid a decent wage, nor yet this ‘green entrepreneurship’ makes local food available to them at affordable prices. Beware of those who advocate such exemplars of altruism.
• Thus, appropriateness represents the pragmatic suitability of material means use to achieve a goal combined with its potential users’ ability to master how to use and maintain it with the resources actually at their disposal. Naturally, this must not be a new skill acquisition beyond them, nor should it impose a continued financial burden that would exacerbate their present situation even more.

Now we can easily understand the second condition a policy domain must obtain to ensure its success. When for example, agriculture policy displays intra-policy harmony it would be the most suitable for the area to which it applies. In other words, all strategies of its implementation will be in harmony with the end the policy is intended to achieve, in the present case, addressing the problem of child labour in agricultural pursuits.

Consider now the case where an agriculture policy requires wide spread mechanisation of cultivation in an area of high unemployment and the level of public education is limited. In such areas one often encounters a high incidence of child labour. This action may increase the food output provided that appropriate crops have been chosen, but it could easily make more farm labourers redundant and thus exacerbating our problem. This undesirable result arises from the evident internal disharmony in the agricultural policy in question.

To anyone who has read this contribution thus far, it may seem that we face a hopeless task. It is because we have concentrated our efforts in a reductive fashion, which we condemn elsewhere as ‘thinking/acting in silos’. True, FAO cannot take on the role of advisor in formulating every other national policy, nor yet provide technical support thereto. The inevitable conclusions from the argument thus far are the following:

Addressing the problem of child labour cannot be successful unless all other national policies are effectively coordinate towards its mitigation. Confining such mitigation to one policy domain may result in an undesirable increase in the incidence of child labour in other areas like building, textile, leather goods manufacturing industries etc. Moreover it may increase child migration into nearby urban centra.

Punitive legal measures would require the investment of considerable financial resources that would prove unrealistic to most regimes in view of the other pressing needs they face. Further, finding and training the requisite personnel for the purpose may prove very difficult. Most importantly, this reductive solution may make lives even more precarious for ‘working ‘children should they be deprived of their meagre incomes.

Education with financial support is often suggested as a solution in conjunction with punitive legislation. Examples of short-term success from some areas of the world have been presented as evidence of its universal applicability. However, a careful examination of some important aspects of such an approach remains to be undertaken:

• What work will the proposed education qualify the children to undertake? Will there be enough jobs for all those who are going to be qualified?
• Is the proposed education compatible with a child’s innate abilities? Or is it prescribed by some potential employer?
• If the answer to both questions above is yes, will such a job enable the trained person earn a decent living, and for how long? In other words, what job security could one anticipate?
• This should convince the realistic analyst that even under optimal conditions an appropriate education and agriculture, could successfully address only a part of a wider problem.
• Even so, provided that the other national policies could be harmonised with the food and agriculture policy of a country to counter child labour in agricultural pursuits, a way forward could be found for its gradual disappearance. Although this may not sound very ambitious, progress in it may induce other policy makers to follow suit due to the publicity it may receive.

A Way Forward:

The way forward presented here comes in two parts; first, it outlines the minimal inter-policy harmonisations which will have to be undertaken in a set of national policy domains. Secondly, it proposes some strategies to implement an appropriate food and agriculture policy that would serve the twin goals of enhanced sustainable public nutrition and elimination of child labour from the domain. It must be borne in mind that specific implementation of certain strategies at the field level may vary according to the geographic, climatic and food cultural considerations. For instance, dairy farming may prove inappropriate in high Andes while raising Cavia is not.

• Sustainability is the foundation of every successful effort to enhance the living conditions of us all. At a minimum, it should enable the present and coming generations to enjoy the same culinary enjoyment as well as adequate nutrition, not to mention a sufficient living space, access to nature, decent shelter, good health, security, education, etc. the Possibility of having all of these depends on how sustainable is the way we husband our finite material resources.

Should the world population continue to increase at any rate, this becomes physically impossible. Even with zero population growth, it is difficult to see how one may reduce the mentally and physically unhealthy high population densities one sees in nearly all cities.

As for nutrition, ‘novel foods’ have been advocated by some as the ‘way of the future’. However, they have not consulted those who are supposed to live on such stuff about their preferences. This seems suspiciously similar to old religion-dictated press codes prescribed by the clergy to the ‘natives’ in the past.

Recall that every culture has spent centuries to evolve their own culinary tradition, and eating is not just re-fuelling the body, but it provides culinary pleasure as well as enjoyable social interaction. Indeed, food culture as a part of a national culture is a priced social good and a part of one’s cultural patrimony. No innovator has a right to deprive people of this and offer them some insipid substitute as a ‘novel food’.

Therefore, a serious and effective population policy is an essential need; high birth rates seem to be endemic to poor countries where the incidence of child labour is the highest. It is hoped the decision-makers everywhere would recognise population growth as the greatest current danger to mankind, and in a world with fewer and fewer available resources, competition for them may rapidly lead to a world-wide loss of the values and standards of civilised existence.

• High cost of military equipment and weaponry is well known. It would be a wise decision if the authorities everywhere could make useful reductions in their defence budgets and channel the savings into food production and appropriate improvements in infra-structure. Donors of military aid might be induced to make statesman-like decisions and re-direct their aid to civilian needs.
• Even though this step may be unpopular in some quarters, it is imperative to re-model our current education systems so that they may serve their real purpose viz., nurture the young minds in a way that enables each individual to fully develop his inborn abilities. It is unfair to the young to shape them in a way that meets the needs of trade, industry, political party or to become an insatiable consumer. Education should underline the inescapable logical fact that we emerged from the rest of brute creation thanks to cooperation among ourselves and not competition. A basic understanding of the theory of knowledge would convince anyone that competition would have left cave man where he was with his predecessor from Neander valley.
• Education policy should admit that not all children are capable or interested in technical or intellectual learning as amply shown by the ‘drop-out’ rates in affluent countries. Those who possess amazing manual skills in craftsmanship, painting, pottery, are compelled to ignore their innate abilities and engage in academic skills to which they are indifferent, thus making them ‘problem students’. It is time we openly acknowledged this unpalatable fact in recognition of reality and formulated the education policy accordingly.
• Youngsters involved in child labour are seldom completely healthy, and work makes further inroads into their health. Thus, they become progressively more and more vulnerable to a variety of diseases. Matters are further exacerbated by the general inadequacies in health care in the areas where child labour takes place. Therefore, a health policy to extend and expand basic health care in general and child health care in particular is a very necessary adjunct to the fight against child labour.
• Elimination of child labour in general and from agricultural pursuits in particular will require a vigorous reduction of unemployment relevant in where child labour obtains, for parents’ inability to support their children is a major cause of it. Thus is it essential to put in place an effective employment policy funded by national and international sources. Types of employment envisaged here should be compatible with the potential employee’s current abilities or require apt short-term training. Obviously, such work should be sustainable, small to medium scale operations, and above all, labour-intensive. Sustainability as used throughout this submission entails no adverse effect on our environment.
• Industrial devolution into regional and local units should be required by the national industry policy. It must deprecate unlimited automation and should actively encourage labour-intensive approaches wherever appropriate. Greater emphasis should be placed on products required by a country rather than on wares for export. The latter not only deprives a country of its finite natural resources, but will also create a false sense of being wealthy while placing it in a state of reverse dependence, for example by compelling a country to import many essential items including food. It should actively discourage industrial practices harmful to the environment, and actively promote those benign to it.
• Trade policy can play the role of a major enhancer in our efforts. Restrictions should be placed on the manufacture and import of food foreign to national food culture. Massive imports of industrial food and drink or their local fabrication are not examples of cultural diffusion, rather concentrated attempts at increasing profits through professional promotion.

Devolution of trade in general and food in particular is an absolute necessity. Contrary to anti-trust rhetoric which has now become a stale joke, in most affluent countries, a few retail chains have a monopoly on food sales and purchase. Through Byzantine legal machinations, those chains arrange what food stuffs to buy at which price, thus leaving the food producers poorer, and end-users with a symbolic choice. This is why that in many affluent countries, domestic farmers receive massive annual monetary subsidies.

A really transparent devolution of food trade would create many employment opportunities in agriculture, small retailers, family-run restaurants, etc., as well as enhance the food producer’s income and provide the end-user a real choice and lower prices. This requires a trade policy that deprecates both the dictatorship of the ‘market place’ and that of the legendary ‘proletariat’ where some comrades were very much more equal than the others. Instead, what is needed is a cooperative exchange of goods and services, and value tokens where gain is dictated by a sense of common decency and fairness.

It is high time a simple fact is recognised; every competition results in losers, and in economic activities, this manifests itself as rich and poor with some in the middle.

• The need for zero population growth is an integral component of a holistic environment policy. It has two logically inseparable components; prevention of any further man-initiated environmental degradation and active regeneration of it using endemic species for this purpose. Justification of both actions is quite simple as long as one has no vested interests.

At the emergence of life, the possibility of any living thing remaining alive on earth depended on its having an adequate access to certain mineral resources. As reproduction is an attribute of life, multiplication of the original species led to a diminution of those mineral resources. In order to sustain life on earth, nature introduced a dual strategy to overcome this threat to the continued existence of life; there are death and saprophitism i.e., subsistence on the dead.

However, these strategies alone could not cope with the unpredictable periodic changes of earth’s climate and geography. Thus, the secondary survival strategies of adaptation to the environment and predation became necessary. There are logical reasons to believe that predation was subsequent to the former as plant species have comparatively free access to energy and generally live long. It is reasonable to postulate that the herbivores emerged first while carnivores and omnivores came later on.

Thus, existence of life on earth today depends on the equilibrium between the availability of certain essential mineral resources and the living species. This equilibrium depends on the balance between the rate at which those minerals are taken up and the rate at which they are made available for re-use. Their total amount is finite. This balance depends on the equilibrium among all the living species.

The equilibrium among the living species depends on the number of individual species and the sustainable number of each individual species. These respectively indicate the qualitative and the quantitative aspects of biodiversity on earth. No species is exempt from this requirement; hence the urgent need for zero human population growth, an immediate halt to environmental destruction and its regeneration with endemic species. Therefore, we urgently need an environment policy embodying strategies to achieve these three objectives. Range and scope of those three strategies may show a wide variation owing to the differences in the size of population, economic activities, climate and geography of the countries involved; thus, it is impossible to generalise at this level of decision-making.

A food and Agriculture Policy to Address Child Labour:

I hope that I may be pardoned for the preceding introductory remarks. I am convinced that they are necessary for the reasons given there. Moreover, it is my intention to offer a holistic policy approach, which entails the inclusion of all the policy domains which may influence the incidence of child labour. However, it must be underlined that I do not claim the list of adjunctive policies mentioned here to be complete, nor yet are those included explored comprehensively. The interested reader may add to them in any relevant way to suit the conditions he faces.

Let us remind ourselves that the main purpose of a sound food and agriculture policy is to ensure the sustainable availability of victuals a country’s or any other political entity’s people need for a diverse, wholesome, balanced diet at an affordable cost. At least, this is the ideal many claims it should be. As the majority will have to purchase their food, Success of our policy would depend at least in part, the employment policy of a country. However, labour-intensive, cooperative agricultural pursuits could go some way to serves as a source of decent income to a significant segment of world’s rural population where child-labour obtains.

Therefore, the term ‘food’ will henceforth refer not only to comestibles but how they are made available to end-users of it. Some of the actions needed here are best undertaken by trade, industry, health and education policies and have been briefly noted. The following strategic elements concerning food may be easily incorporated into an agriculture policy:

1. Highest preference is given to environmentally sustainable methods.
2. Appropriateness of the approaches in use.
3. Highest priority given to cooperative ways and means.
4. Due attention paid to the local food culture.
5. Preference is given to labour-intensive methods.
6. Modernisation ought to be gradual to avoid the distress of sudden redundancies which will re-create the current problem.

These strategic necessities are embodied in the following tactical approaches:

• Facilitating the establishment of small-holder and fishermen’s cooperatives to dispose of their produce/harvest through other cooperatives, family-run restaurants, consumer groups, etc.
• Financial and technical support for the establishment of appropriate local food storage and processing facilities. Traditional methods of preservation ought to be preferred to more expensive modern ones which cost a great deal to buy, run and maintain, hence, inappropriate. Cold storage may preserve some nutrients in food, but unless a good transport network is in place, it can only add to running costs.
• ‘Luxury cash crops’ like exotic flowers, meats, etc., often do not pay the producer a fraction of what the sellers gain. Further, it does not increase the local food production, rather compels the local people to import food with the money they have earned from cash crops. This creates an unhealthy reverse-dependence, and it may lead to soil salination as such crops depend on the extensive use of fertilisers. This is a pitfall every policy maker ought to avoid.
• Encourage and support the establishment of family-run restaurants in towns and cities who may be supplied by the farm cooperative near them. In deference to William of Okham, I shall not create an extra category to describe such nearby cooperative ventures.
• While promoting coordination among every food and farm cooperative, any effort to form chains owned by a few should be actively discouraged.

The above tactical actions concerning food are by no means exhaustive. The interested policy maker should use his discretion to determine what actions are appropriate and must pay due attention to cultural sensibilities of the target group. He must constantly bear in mind that what one wants to achieve is to successfully combat child labour and not reforming social norms. Even in financially Poor societies, child labour is seldom the norm; hence, one should resist bringing in other social issues to cloud the picture. It is very easy to forget that what constitutes norms in industrialised world took centuries to evolve and it is unrealistic to impose them on societies where they are not. A holistic approach does not entail achieving everything; rather it strives to achieve what is possible through a joint action by all those who may contribute to its success.

The six strategies given earlier also apply to an agriculture policy needed to weed out child labour from its domain. Once again, health, education, trade, industry, financial and other policy adjuncts play a key role in its success. Their part here may be envisaged as their necessary intersections with our trade and agriculture policy in a Venn diagrammed. Thus, it represents a distributed policy cluster where food and agriculture policy occupies its centre intersected by the relevant portions of the adjunctive policies.

It must be stressed that the implementation of the following tactics will have to be undertaken more or less simultaneously in order to achieve our objective. I have emphasised a labour-intensive approach at present, which may be gradually made more technically advanced in an appropriate, gradual manner. Greatest good of all the needy children is our aim, and not that of any vested interests.

• Identify the current transport facilities to and from a target area, and determine how they may be improved rapidly. This does not mean the introduction of most modern methods, rather improving the existing ones. What is needed is a quick and inexpensive solution.
• Ensure sufficient funds are available to purchase the equipment, put up the necessary buildings, for salaries of the training personnel, allowances paid to participants, etc.
• Before proceeding with the following, ensure that funding for follow-up support will be available for at least three years after the conclusion of the undertaking. This lack often leads to the breaking down of initially successful endeavour.
• Establishment of small to medium sized farms where the former is family-owned while the latter run on a cooperative basis. Both should enjoy secure legal tenure.
• Medium-sized units could be used as on-the-job training facilities for families and/children.
• Preference may be given to children already engaged in child labour, but does not have to exclude others who are interested in agricultural pursuits.
• Children undergoing such training should spend some time on acquiring a general education. However, standard education may be totally inappropriate for children who have not had a sufficient formal education before they were driven to work. Modest academic expectations combined with dedicated vocational training seem to offer them a greater chance of success in life.
• A suitable family/child allowance during such training may be needed to supplement the participants’ income. In many cases, there is no social help available to deprived families or when available, meagre.
• An appropriate number of technical training units ought to be established at suitable central locations to train adults/youth in the use of small farm machinery, their maintenance and repair. Same unit may also train suitable candidates in food preservation and proper storage. As the farm machines, preserving and storage units are to be run on a cooperative basis, the number of people needed here will not be very large.
• Ensure that the crops and animals used are compatible with the local food culture, geography and climatic conditions. This will reduce the need for extensive irrigation, use of fertilisers and biocides Moreover it contributes to the preservation of agricultural biodiversity.
• The foregoing also applies to fishermen and aquaculture. The use of trawlers and factory ships is deprecated; every support should be given to local fishermen. En passant, fish caught with nets made of natural fibres do not spoil or loose their firmness as fast as those caught by nets made of artificial material. This has been noted since the introduction of Nylon nets.

Concluding Remarks:

The most useful points to emerge from this discussion seem to be obvious. First, A given relevant policy domain will only achieve a partial success in its efforts to address child labour even under the best of circumstances. Unless some pressure can be brought to bear on other involved policy domains to undertake some necessary changes in them, eradication of child labour seems to be an untenable goal. However, an appropriate food and agriculture policy implemented at a regional or a local level may have a greater chance of success.

This appears to be the case in the example from Brazil sent to this forum, which has then been integrated into a greater programme well-known for its progress. However, Brazil has enormous resources both in human skills and material as well as a considerable number of concerned people. Not many of the countries where child labour obtains have these advantages.

Population growth is not only a generator of child labour but an open threat to civilised life on earth. It is essential that concrete action is undertaken to deal with this problem without delay. Thus far, most efforts have been directed at the top to act so that it may work down to the ground level. As they seem to have yielded but indifferent result, we need the reverse strategy viz., initiate local and regional action with reference to a holistic policy framework.

What this means in practice is simple. It is easy to draw up such a national policy framework to suit the conditions of a given country, and then determine the region/locale where the relevant food and agriculture policy is to be implemented. Then, one may select the tactical measures required for the purpose with reference to the strategic considerations listed earlier. When successfully completed, it will resemble the Brazilian example.

Finally, cooperation should replace the current notion of competitive approaches while the need for rapid economic devolution has become a vital necessity. If we are to come anywhere near achieving SDG-2 in time or ever for that matter, food production and disposal should be fully devolved. I hope the current discussion would lead to action that could soon ameliorate the lives of children forced into labour.

Best wishes!

Lal Manavado.

Dear Participants,

Thanks for all your contributions. It has been an interesting week. We have heard from policy makers (government), producer organizatoins and farmer's unions, academics researchers, NGOs, UN agencies, and those working at community level.

The word education has repeatedly come up. This includes greater access to rural [quality] education and how access to education for older children remains an issue, including school fees. The important role of producer organizations and farmer unions has been expressed on several occasion. This includes giving farmers credit opportunities, raising awareness on hazardous work and child labour, providing shared opportunities for access mechanization and much more. Several participants brought up the concept of child labour free zones, which requires community level mobilization. Moreover, the need of an integrated approach which requires coherence between different ministries and stakedhoders has been mentioned on different occasions.

Other interested points, among many, include the potential of territorial development approaches, the importance of rural consultation to child's rights organizations and how smallholder farmers could greatly benefit from various social protection mechanisn as well greater access to information related to price fluctuation. It was mentioned that policy enforcement is often an issue, while a policy to address child labour may exist at national level, limited action is done at local level which, at times, can be attributed to the lack of information on policies amongst local authories and limited knowledge capacity on concrete measures that can be taken at communtiy level.

We would like to hear more from you, as well as newcomers, on:

• Concrete measures that that have been put in place that have successfully reduced child labour in agriculture. Who have been involved in this process? 
• How can we improve labour conditions for seasonal/temporarly agricultural workers and migrants. 
• How can we address the hidden work on girls that interfere with schooling. 
• Who are the different agriculture stakerholders that have a role to play in the fight against child labour in agriculture? What are there roles and how should they coordinate?

We look forward to a continued discussion! Among the questions just listed, we remind participants to  list the number of question for which they are providing an answer. However, if the experience you would like to share does not fit into one of the questions, it is equally welcome.

Warm regards,

Jessie Rivera Fagan [Facilitator]

Producer organisations best practices for farmer organisations in handling child labour in Uganda

For source of labor small farmer groups have alternatives like digging clubs which help save the opportunities of reducing Child labour.

Utilisation of Spray men and professional pesticide applicators that are paid by cooperatives and farmers groups in application of pesticides.

Facilitating processes of access to finance which some farmer organisations have emphasised some approaches like Village Savings and loans Associations to support in accessing finances to support their value chain activities to substitute chances of Child labour.

Training in agricultural related Good Agricultural Practices like mulching, timely planting that enable reduce laborious nature of agriculture that which has more work in weeding, harvesting thus reducing chances of child labour.

Negotiations for better prices through collective bargaining especially collective prices and collective enforcement of policies aiming at ending child labour.

The informal sector inspection is critical in monitoring labour and its forms so that child labour chances are limited.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to deliver some opinions in this topic

1. Firstly, child labour is an illegal activity in every country, sector, including agriculture sector. I think that this is regulated in law in whole country in the world.

2. The secondary key feature of agriculture and rural sector: 1. This sector is usually located in remote and mountainous areas where is little population but need a lot of labour in line with price of labour is low, seasonally. 2. Agriculture and rural areas have a rate of poverty, hunger and malnutrition that is higher than other ones in every country. This also encourages children join phase in chain of agricultural production.

3. Finally, how to develop agricultural policies and strategies to help ending child labour in agriculture

• Priority in developing policies and strategies on investment and social welfare as well as subsidies in agriculture and rural regions.
• Apply technology and science, innovation, creation in this sector to save resources, labor and increase capacity, efficiency, values.
• Encourage clients to consume agricultural products without child labour and request producers/companies pledge no using child labour in any phase of agricultural product process (if could label no child labour).

It is better for world as next generation is fostered in affordable climate.

Best regards,

KIEN

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Mr. Nguyen Van Kien, Principal Researcher

National Plant Genebank

Plant Resources Center, (PRC)

The particularly hazardous nature of agricultural work makes it crucially important to integrate child labour and youth employment concerns in the organising and bargaining agendas of rural workers’ and producers’ organizations, including cooperatives and Unions. Amidst the risky nature of agriculture, it is sad to note that about two thirds of all child labour,occurs in agriculture and its various sub-sectors, including fishing, aquaculture and forestry. The world in recent times has shown deep concern about the issue of child labour, trafficking in children and other forms of slavery and slavery-like practices.

Not withstanding the above, harnessing the rural economy’s potential to create decent and productive jobs and shared prosperity is imperative to achieving sustainable development and equitable economic growth. However, rural areas in many economies and in all regions are characterized by significant decent work deficits. Unions therefore cannot pretent not to notice what is happening. It is therefore important to note that the employment of children deprives adults of employment and once children cannot be unionised the union membership is reduced. GAWU as a Union is therefore committed to the tenants of decent work and has an objective of creating and operating within child labour free zones.

It is against this backdrop GAWU initiated the Torkor model, which seeks to address the key components of SDG target 8.7, on forced labour, modern slavery, human trafficking and migration. The model thus uses Torkor as an entry point to address the endemic nature of child labour on the volta lake by applying its three (3) conponents; (1) Organization of informal workers, (2) Socail mobilization through capacity building and sensitization and (3) Knowledge Sharing.

The future of our children is in our own hands. Let us therefore put our efforts together through the revision of workable agricultural policies that seek to modernise the trade and make agricultural players and actors more independent and financially sound to discourage them from using children on their farms. These are very workable by adopting the strategies and models of Unions, Civil society organisations and employer organisations. The torkor model, integrated area based approach and a child labour national plan are therefore key in this regard. It is therefore important to address the long term underlying demand and supply factors of poverty and education while strengthening the legal frameworks for preventing exploitation and foster coordination among organisations charged with different aspects of the problem if results are to be achived.

Policies and strategies should be tailored in the context of Human Rights Based Approach. This should be with recognition that poverty is one of the drivers of human rights abuse and especially the people living in poverty who are so vulnerable to abuse. Secondly, the policies should provide for localisation of protection mechanisms which empower local communities to report any form of abuse whilst ensuring victims are protected from victimisation. 

Global March would welcome an integrated approach of child labour in agriculture. Until date most of the interventions are scattered. In potential they have a positive effect on the numbers of children working but because of the absence of a child rights organizations the basic conditions are overlooked to eliminate child labour. All organizations that work in the rural areas should always consult with a child rights organization. Especially agricultural universities overlook the child labour issue and stay. Furthermore more research on the link between climate change and child labour is needed, the impact is going to be devastating in several countries.

1) Hunger and Malnutrition

School feeding programmes have been very successful to withdraw children from work.. Those programmes should always be promoted. Although there is still little data available if girls are benefiting from this programme as well. We need more research to see how girls and boys equally can benefit from a school feeding programme. Furthermore we need other stakeholders to be vigilant on how these activities can contribute to the food supply of families. We have found examples in our sugarcane research on how farming practices and land rights have a disastrous effect on the possibility of families growing their own food.

3) Family farming

We have seen a reduction in the number of children working under hazardous conditions, because of farmer training programmes. This training will educate farmers about hazardous working conditions for young adults. This training should also be included in small holder farmers training, like the ones for improving yield.Social protection schemes for the small holder farmers would also be beneficial, as would be for companies sourcing from small holder farmers to sensitise them and incentivise non-employment of children, as well as shifting engagement of young adults (those above the minimum age) from hazardous to non-hazardous work. 

4) Innovation 

We see great benefit in price prediction. Working with futures will give farmers a good idea on how much they will get and will help them to maximise income and reduce investment costs. Mechanisation is not only a potential decent solution to making labour less intensive and reducing dependency on child labour and its impacts on daily wage, seasonal and part time migrant agricultural workers and children should be taken into consideration.The stakeholders also need to take into consderation the alterntives such as other livelihood options for families dependent on farm work and access to education for chidren. In rural regions either in the global north or global south, manual work is still a major source of income for many women, despite being exploitative in its nature. Thus, the gender impacts of mechanisation need to be taken into consideration as well while measuring the success of mechanisation interventions. Lastly, small-scale farmers are also not yet in the position to afford mechanisation in absence of subsidies and access to relevant resources, making mechanisation a complex challenge. 

5) Public and private investment

There is direct link between financial incentives and the reduction of child labour. Like the cash transfer programmes. All investments done in improving the life of farmers should have a link with education. Special attention is needed for vocational training of young adults, which does not necessarily be linked to agricultural training. We should take the local job market into account.

6) Attention to domestic supply chains

We always make a direct link to the domestic supply chain when we are implementing a project for international supply chains. Good advocacy on the ground will lead to the improvement of the domestic supply chain as well. There is never a direct link between export and sourcing area. Therefore to make an impact on an international  agricultural supply chain you need to address the domestic issues as well. There needs to be more attention to this within the whole international supply discussion. We always collect sex desaggreted data to see where boys and where girls are mostly working. In most cases you will see that the girls work is hidden and not always as seen as child labour although their work directly interferes with school attendence.

7) Cross-sectoral policies and strategies

A) Most of the interventions to improve the situation of agricultural workers are limited to the independent actions/initiatives of stakeholders. In India for example, most of the labour laws are not of any benefit to agricultural workers as the workers are mostly not-registered and are seasonal or temporary migrants and in some cases casual, daily wage farm workers. Trade unions in some states such as Gujarat, Maharashtra and other surrounding agricultural states have been trying to ensure agricultural workers have access to grievance mechanisms wherever possible and to bring the agricultural workers under the purview of the organised sector but it remains the biggest challenge. Therefore successfully improving working conditions for agricultural workers to reduce the vulnerability of households that engage in child labour is still a far fetched idea even outside of India.

C) Social protection schemes for the small holder farmers would also be beneficial, as would be for companies sourcing from small holder farmers to sensitise them and incentivise non-employment of children, as well as shifting engagement of young adults (those above the minimum age) from hazardous to non-hazardous work. In India, you have the MNREGA and the Mid Day Meal Schemes. However, they have failed 100% to cater to vulnerabilities of migrant agriculture labour, including children especially because even when the children migrate with their families for seasonal agricultural work, they are not able to access the meal schemes. MNREGA too can barely cover the local, more permanent workers (the ones who do not or can’t migrate) and has only seen a downfall in its budget, wages and work provided to villagers in the last 6-7 years. 

English translation below

Bonjour

Je vous remercie pour avoir créer ce forum sur un sujet aussi intéressant. Laquestion du travail des enfants dans le secteur agricole est une problématique trés déguisée puisqu'il s'agit d'une main d'oeuvre familiale et qui ne ressort pas facilement dans les statistiques officielles. Cette problématique prend ses origines de plusieurs autres problémes à savoir l'abondon scolaire, l'absence d'oppotunités de formation professionnelle et d'apprentissage, la pauvreté rurale et le manque de sensibilisation des parents.

Plusieurs stratégies pourront contribuer à atténuer cette problématique citons à titre d'exemple les différentes politiques de développement territorial qui permettent de créer une dynamique de développement dans les territoires fragiles et promouvoir des activités génératrices de revenu pour les parents afin de pouvoir assurer les frais relatifs à l'éducation de leurs enfants, aussi le développement de stratégies de formation professionnelle qui peuvent absorber les catégories d'enfants n'ayant pas réussis leur cycle d'éducation fondamental et qui se retrouvent perdus sans formation. Toutes ces stratégies ne peuvent pas aboutir sans une meilleure implication et sensibilisation des parents à l'importance d'éducation de leurs enfants.

Hello

Thank you for creating this forum on such an interesting subject. The question of child labor in the agricultural sector is a hidden problem since it is family labor and does not easily appear in official statistics. This problem originates from several other problems, namely school dropout, lack of vocational training and learning opportunities, rural poverty and a lack of awareness among parents.

Several strategies could help to alleviate this problem, let’s mention the example of the different territorial development policies which make it possible to create a dynamic of development in fragile territories and promote income-generating activities for parents in order to be able to cover the costs related to the education of their children, also the development of vocational training strategies for those children who have not successfully completed their basic education cycle and who find themselves lost without training. All these strategies cannot succeed without better involvement and awareness of parents of the importance of educating their children.