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ILO Convention 'a child labour milestone'

The Convention is being debated at the annual ILO Conference, which opened in Geneva today. Among the proposed provisions are measures for the immediate halt to extreme and exploitative forms of child labour and the creation of national programmes to protect the very young, especially girls. The new Convention would establish criteria for determining work hazards and would also designate certain practices as criminal offences.

"Only as we get rid of working practices which expose children to injury, illness and death will we be on the road to abolishing all forms of labour which deprive children of their fundamental rights," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. She hailed the forthcoming debate and expressed hope that the resulting Convention would add new impetus to the struggle against child labour.

In recent years UNICEF has achieved several victories, among them a 1997 agreement to end child labour in the Pakistan soccer ball industry; another, to end children working in the garment business in Bangladesh.

"The groundswell of public opinion is growing," Ms. Bellamy said. She noted the arrival at the Conference of thousands of young people who took part in the recent Global March against Child Labour organized by ILO. French actress Emmanuelle Béart, UNICEF National Ambassador, and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri, a UNICEF Honorary Spokesperson, joined the marchers as they reached the Conference site, their final destination.

Ms. Bellamy applauded the marchers' energy and aims. "Their slogan – From Exploitation to Education" -- gets to the core of UNICEF's drive against child labour," she said. "Along with government action to combat poverty, universal education for children is necessary to provide a viable alternative to entering the work force."

UNICEF has consistently urged -- as a national and international priority -- that every child have access to relevant, good-quality primary education. A survey of 14 of the world's least developed countries found half of the pupils were without textbooks. Classes were often huge -- 67 pupils per teacher in Bangladesh and nearly 90 per teacher in Equatorial Guinea.

Some 30 per cent of primary school children in developing countries drop out before completion. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 15 nations have school enrolment of less than 50 per cent. UNICEF recently issued a call for stepped-up debt reduction for the world's poorest nations to help enable greater investment in basic health and education, the only lasting solution to the child labour problem.

UNICEF calls on governments to allocate 20 per cent of their budget to education and basic social services and on donors to do the same with their official development assistance. The children's agency estimates that it would cost $6 billion a year, on top of what is already spent, to put every child in school by the year 2000. It points out that this is less than one per cent of what the world spends every year on weapons.

The proposed Convention, in addition to identifying priorities, would stipulate the most harmful forms of child labour in a single standard and aim at the comprehensive protection of children and young persons in all nations.

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