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VI. Child Labor

The phenomenon of child labor is inextricably linked to education. Children who have no access to quality schooling often enter the workforce, particularly if they are from poor families that need additional income. Extreme poverty brought about by HIV/AIDS, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, has dramatically increased children’s risk of hazardous child labor as families look for new ways to supplement their income. Once engaged in child labor, children are often unable to return to school or continue their education.

In many cases, employers actively prohibit children from attending school, while in others, the long hours demanded by employers make schooling practically impossible. Some children may try to work and attend school at the same time, but find that they don’t have enough time to study, are forced to miss classes, are frequently tired in class, and eventually fall behind or drop out. The result is often generations of poverty, fueled by low-wage, unskilled work and lack of education that could provide children with more and better options for their future.

According to the International Labor Organization, 246 million children between the ages of five and seventeen are engaged in child labor, including 110 million below the age of twelve. 171 million are engaged in hazardous labor.⁹⁶

To achieve universal primary education, governments must address the link between child labor and education, dramatically escalating efforts to remove children from the worst forms of child labor, ensuring other working children their right to schooling, and addressing the factors that push and pull children into child labor.

In India, millions of children are bonded child laborers. They toil as virtual slaves, unable to escape the work that will leave them impoverished, illiterate, and often crippled by the time they reach adulthood. Bound to their employers in exchange for a loan, they are unable to leave while in debt and earn so little they may never be free of it. They work in agriculture, picking rags, making bricks, polishing gemstones, rolling beedi cigarettes, packaging firecrackers, working as domestics, and weaving silk saris and carpets.⁹⁷

Child labor in India is often linked to the unavailability of schools and poor quality education. For example, a study of 450 families in Varanasi district found that 90 percent were involved in saree weaving. Although an estimated 2,000 children in the area were between ages five and fourteen, only one school was run by the local municipality. The school had enrolled eighty-two students and the school’s only teacher expressed his inability to absorb more students.⁹⁸ In another village, there were about 1,200 to 1,300 children in the community, but the only local school was capped at fifty students—the rest of the children were working.

Many schools that do exist are of such poor quality that children choose not to go or drop out. They may be overcrowded, have only one teacher, and lack classrooms, toilets, or drinking water.

An estimated 1.2 million child laborers worldwide are also victims of trafficking.⁹⁹ In Togo, high rates of poverty coupled with school fees keep many children out of school and make them particularly vulnerable to trafficking.¹⁰⁰  Trafficked Togolese children are often lured by false promises of education, professional training or paid employment. Boys are typically trafficked into agricultural labor, while girls are used for domestic or market work.

In West Africa, children most vulnerable to trafficking into child labor come from rural families engaged in subsistence agriculture. An ILO-IPEC study in 2001 of ninety-six trafficked children found that a large majority—87 percent—came from large subsistence farming families. Seventy percent of mothers and 60 percent of fathers had never attended school, and most had more than five children, making schooling prohibitively expensive. ILO-IPEC found that of children who had attended school, more than 80 percent had already dropped out before they were recruited by traffickers.¹⁰¹

Finding school too expensive at home, many Togolese children and their families are eager to believe recruiters’ promises of education or training. One girl, employed as a housemaid in Lomé, said that her aunt had arrived at her father’s funeral. “Afterward she told my mother she would bring me to Lomé and put me in school.” Another girl, in training to become a hairdresser, told Human Rights Watch she was offered a chance to finish her studies in Gabon. “A woman told me that she knew of opportunities outside of Togo and she could take me somewhere to finish my course, and then I could set up a shop.”

In South Africa, some children living on commercial farms drop out of school and work full time in contravention of South African law. Boys and girls are engaged in picking and pruning on citrus farms and pruning trees and lifting logs on tree farms. Teachers in Mpumalanga and Free State Provinces blamed low enrollment and poor attendance in the upper primary grades on the fact that children on farms were engaged in farm work.¹⁰²

In El Salvador, where thousands of children planted and cut sugarcane until the government began to enforce its labor laws in 2004-2005, one of every three child sugarcane workers interviewed for an ILO-IPEC study was not in school. And of those who attended school, 45 percent reported having difficulties with their studies because they had missed days of class and found it hard to catch up or because they were tired after working in the cane fields in the morning.¹⁰³ Children working in sugar often did not attend school during the harvest, which runs through the first several months of the academic year, causing them to fall far behind their classmates.¹⁰⁴

Nelson, a cane worker, told Human Rights Watch, “I began school when I was seven. But then I left it. Work affects you. Work interferes a lot with education.” Ernesto told us that he left school for four years starting when he was eleven. “I needed money, and I couldn’t go to school.” In his community, he said that the school only offered classes in the morning, a time when he was normally still working in the fields.

Domestic workers face particular challenges in gaining access to education. Mostly girls, domestic workers are typically employed in private homes and may work as many as eighteen hours a day cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, shopping, caring for children, and performing other domestic tasks for the household. Many begin their day at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, and often work until 10:00 or 11:00 at night.

In Indonesia, nearly seven hundred thousand children, mainly girls, are believed to be engaged in domestic labor.¹⁰⁵ They typically enter domestic work between the ages of twelve and fifteen. Most girls interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported that they worked fourteen to eighteen hour days, seven days a week, with no days off. Many are prohibited by their employers from leaving the workplace, leaving them isolated from their families and the outside world.¹⁰⁶

Of forty-four current and former child domestics interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Indonesia in 2004, only one was working and attending formal school at the same time. Most child domestics were unable to pursue either formal or non-formal education because their employers would not allow it. An official with the Ministry of Education remarked, “Getting [child domestic workers] to go to school needs the understanding of the employer. . . . Employers don’t allow them to go out. They are scared of the level of awareness and empowerment, which can make child domestics more demanding. We have to show employers that education is beneficial to kids.” Indonesian law does not require employers to allow working children to attend school.

Even if employers allow child domestics to attend school, the long and demanding hours they work almost invariably interfere with scholastic performance. An ILO-IPEC official told Human Rights Watch that studies in Indonesia on the effects of work on education found that a child can combine only three hours of work per day and effectively study at the same time. For most child domestics working hours are far in excess of three hours, and getting time for any schooling at all is often simply impossible.

Child domestics in El Salvador face similar problems.¹⁰⁷  ILO-IPEC found that domestic workers in El Salvador typically drop out of school between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, most commonly because their work hours conflict with the school day or because of the related costs of schooling, including the costs of uniforms, school supplies, transport to and from school, fees, and other educational expenses. Others are able to attend night classes, but traveling to and from school at night involved increased risks to their safety.

Even those who are able to go to school report that their work sometimes interferes with their schooling when they do not have time to do their homework, fall asleep during class, or miss days of school. One former domestic worker told Human Rights Watch, “Sometimes when I had lessons I had to cook, I had things to do: cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning. Sometimes I didn’t have enough time to prepare for school.”

In Ecuador, a Human Rights Watch investigation of children engaged in work on banana plantations found that the majority quit school before the age of fifteen.¹⁰⁸  Of thirty-seven children who had begun working before age fifteen, only fourteen—approximately 38 percent—were still in school at age fourteen, working primarily during their vacations. The mother of a fourteen-year-old boy who left school at age thirteen to begin working on plantation Guabital expressed her frustration with the situation, stating, “All of my children work. Working, they’re not able to advance. I wish that my children could study, but they can’t because they have to work.” Of those still in school, several explained that they often missed school to work.

Child labor does not interfere with education for children only in developing countries. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of children work as hired workers in commercial agriculture, laboring in fields, orchards and packing sheds across the country.¹⁰⁹   Their long and grueling hours interfere with their education; only 55 percent ever graduate from high school. Reflecting this legacy of under-education, a full 80 percent of adult migrant farmworkers function at a fifth-grade literacy level or less.¹¹⁰

One of the reasons for high-drop out rates among child farmworkers is simply that they spend too much time working. Numerous studies have found that long hours of work—generally defined as twenty or more hours a week during the school year—interfere with scholastic performance.¹¹¹ Child farmworkers who spend long hours in the fields do not have time to study, are often tired during class, and are more likely to be tardy or absent.

Mark was twelve the summer he first worked in the cotton fields of central Arizona, getting up at 3:00 a.m. and finishing working at 2:00 p.m. He missed a lot of school and eventually dropped out. Nineteen when interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Mark was trying to catch up on his education. “A lot of my friends worked the fields, and a lot dropped out. I was supposed to graduate last year and I didn’t. . .  I would tell kids just to finish school. You can’t get a good job without a diploma. . . You get more options.”

One of the most hazardous forms of child labor is the use of children as soldiers in government armies and non-state armed groups. Many children who join such forces do so because of lack of educational opportunities in their communities. Once recruited, opportunities for further schooling while serving as a soldier are extremely rare. Once a child has been released or has escaped, education gains an added element of importance as one of the few interventions that may prevent a child from being re-recruited and picking up arms again. Former girl soldiers may be least likely to receive assistance getting back into school. Although up to one-third of child soldiers in many conflicts are girls, girls are often excluded from demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration programs, including both formal and non-formal education.

In Liberia, former child soldiers interviewed by Human Rights Watch often identified difficulty in accessing schools as a reason for joining armed forces or groups.¹¹²  In the past, Liberian families have been forced to pay over US$100 in fees per year to send a child to primary school. With 76 percent of Liberians living on less than a dollar per day,¹¹³ such fees put education out of reach of many. Between 1989 to 1997, an estimated six thousand to fifteen thousand children took up arms. In renewed fighting that began in 2000, an estimated fifteen thousand children participated, including some who had fought in the previous conflict.

Brian told us:

Young people need an education, some had their learning interrupted, others never stepped into a classroom. But where will they get the money for uniforms and school fees? Are these same young people going to be content to sit around when from their experience they can get things with fighting? If they are not given possibilities, they will fight here or go and fight in other countries.

One child rights specialist reported that in a conversation with a military commander about child soldiers in Liberia, the officer declared that children with education, those that can read and write, are more difficult to recruit and are generally more questioning of authority. This view was shared by Roland, a former child soldier, who said, “Most of our brothers, they have been fighting since 1990, so all they think about is war. But if you are educated, you can think of other things.”

The widespread participation of children in Liberia’s conflicts underlines the imperative of providing education in order to break the cycle of child recruitment.  One counselor who works with former child soldiers explained:

These kids did not fall from the sky, they are Liberian children. They came from communities and they need to go back to the communities. But we need to look at factors which caused them to leave and take up arms in the first place. Beyond the warfare lies poverty, neglect and lack of opportunity. Perhaps the biggest disservice to children in Liberia is the failure of the state to provide education.

In neighboring Sierra Leone, where thousands of children participated in the civil conflict, a former fighter gave a grim assessment of the consequences of failing to provide children with education:

I know lots who would easily slip back into it. . . If there is commotion in another land, they’re too easily prepared to go back to war. They need to be educated. The future of our country is now left with our leaders. The more illiterates, the higher chance there will be another war. Another war, the higher the chance there will be atrocities committed. It’s a rare educated man who would be so vulnerable as to succumb to the influence of people like the RUF (Revolutionary United Front). But if things don’t improve, the more vulnerable we’ll all be to there being another war.

Recommendations

• Governments should ratify and implement ILO Convention No. 138 concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment and ILO Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.

• Governments should enforce laws governing child labor and develop policies and programs related to the human rights of child workers. Allocate the resources needed to provide for a sufficient number of labor inspectors and ensure adequate enforcement powers to guarantee effective implementation of child labor laws.

• Governments should enforce and strengthen punishments for violators of prohibitions against child labor. These could include fines, imprisonment, forfeiture of operating licenses, seizure of equipment, and short and long-term closure of facilities.

• Governments should take steps to address the root causes of child labor, including by providing stipends conditional on school attendance to off-set lost income from child labor, guaranteeing access to free primary education, educating parents about the risks of hazardous labor, and providing basic protections to orphans and other children affected by HIV/AIDS.

• Governments should cooperate with international organizations working to abolish child labor, in particular the ILO’s International Programme to Eliminate Child Labour (IPEC).

• Governments should ensure the availability of education, including informal education and vocational training, for children removed from the worst forms of child labor, including children used as soldiers.