PARTIE II :
CHANGE OF POLICY OF THE
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
The international community became aware at the end of the
years four twenty ten of the relative failure of the policies of fight against
the child work whom they had installation during previous decades. In spite of
the efforts which it had provided, in particular while enacting of the
International Conventions prohibiting the recourse to childish labor, the
situation of the children in the world did not improve. It thus appeared
obvious that one could not wait a long time any more to protect these children
subjected to the economic exploitation ; they cannot wait until the
economic situation their countries improves sufficiently to enable them to find
a pretense of normal childhood. Everyone agrees for saying that the economic
development of these poor countries will take much time, the more so as
engagements of the rich countries to financially support them in their step of
development and social progress, are not held.
At the time of the world Summit for the children, the
industrialized countries had been committed pouring 0,7% of their interior
product to help these poor countries gross ; actually, it of it was
nothing and these countries always struggle in an absolute poverty. It was thus
necessary to work out an emergency policy allowing the children most exposed to
the danger to be withdrawn from work. For that, it appeared essential to study
with precision the major causes of the child work, in order to be able to fight
effectively and as soon as possible against this one (Chapter I). However, in
parallel of the means urgently suggested by the international community, of the
solutions of eradication of the child work, later on, are also proposed because
the total abolition of the child work remains the principal objective
(Chapter II).
CHAPITRE I :
AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY ANXIOUS TO
INCLUDE/UNDERSTAND FOR BETTER FIGHTING
The child work, one saw it is not the prerogative of the poor
countries, but it is always the poverty which is the principal cause of this
work. Nevertheless, the work of these children results from multiple factors
varying according to the areas of the world
and that it is essential to
encircle perfectly in order to include/understand, not only why the children
work, but especially how to make to rectify this situation (Section I). It is
this step which took the international community, and which led to a new
International Convention, which relates to only them « the worse
shapes of work children » (Section II).
SECTION I :
Causes of the child work taken into account as a
whole
The causes of the child work are multiple and varied,
nevertheless we will try in these developments to expose the principal ones,
i.e. those which push the majority of the children to work. If one intends
effectively to be opposed to work children, it is important to have
included/understood some the major causes. Should be kept simplifying
globalisations. The child work poses a problem complexes closely related to the
social background and economic where it is located. We will first of all
analyze the causes directly related to the poverty of the families (Paragraph
I), before seeing the causes external with this home environment (Paragraph
II).
Paragraphe I :
Causes related to the
poverty of the families
The current extent of the child work in the world can be
explained only by that of poverty : today 250 million children are brought
to work to survive, because 1,3 billion people in the world (on 6 billion
inhabitants) live in a total destitution, with less equivalent of a dollar per
day36(*) i.e. less than
the poverty line defined on the international level. Always according to the
same report/ratio, 4,3 billion people has only approximately two dollars per
day, in purchasing power parity according to each country. It is known well
that the immense majority of this poor population lives in the developing
countries, country where the child work is most important. The UNICEF estimates
that the children account for 50% of the poor living in the world. One
evaluates to 650 million the number of children who live in an extreme
destitution, and their number does not cease increasing. Between 1988 and 1993,
the number of the poor children increased at least 20% in Africa in the south
of the Sahara and Latin America.
The sociological bonds between poverty and work children today
are clearly established : to be poor, it is to fight unceasingly to have
the vital minimum, to seek each day what to nourish its family, and on the long
private being term of all decision-making power on its own
life. « Poverty comes down to living the permanent insecurity
and simply trying to avoid the worst »37(*). The child work then forms
completely part of these strategies of survival, because more one family is
poor plus each one of her members must contribute to gain what it costs, out of
money or food production. This essential question of the food still arises with
more acuity when there are many children to nourish, which is the case of many
rural families in the developing countries where the fertility rate is very
high.
The destitution can then push the families to the extreme to
accept any proposal, including that of an intermediary more than doubtful or an
usurer, and to be found then in the vicious circle of the constraint for debts
which we saw previously. However, to in no case this explanation cannot nor
should not result in making the lawsuit of the parents. The stripped families
take any activity which is presented in the form of a light relief in their
search of the daily bread. The parents have only one hope which is that work
makes it possible their child to carry out an existence better than theirs. The
children who work as servants under abominable conditions, are sent by their
parents in the cities to work and not to be made exploit and maltreat. To
in no case, the poor relations would not let their children work under these
conditions if they knew about those.
The bond between poverty and work children is also visible in
the industrialized countries, since it should not be forgotten that nearly 100
million people live in poverty in the rich countries, to which were added in
the Nineties, 120 million individuals fallen into poverty in the countries from
the East. In the United States, as in the United Kingdom, 8% of the children
live in poor families and it is among them that one currently finds the
majority of the active children.
If one believes the theorists of the economy of them, when
they encourage their children to launch out on the labor market, the poor
families can seem to adopt an irrational attitude, but in fact, they hardly
have alternatives. For them, short-term survival is more important than the
long-term development. Thus, misery generates the child work, which perpetuates
misery, the inequalities and discrimination. According to certain sources, the
share of the children goes sometimes until reaching the quarter of the income
of the poor families. Nevertheless, it would be false to affirm that poverty
automatically involves the child work, even if it is true that the large
majority of the children who works belong to poor families, all the poor
children are not therefore with work.
Indeed, and it is there a second factor of the child work, the
parents have often evil to have an employment and especially to draw some from
the sufficient incomes to make correctly live their children and they thus tend
to make work their children, who them paradoxically do not have evil to find
work.
In Egypt, a study showed that a rise from only 10% of the
wages of the women would make move back of 15% the work the children from
twelve to fourteen years, and of 27% that of the children from six to eleven
years. The countries concerned with the child work know a very high rate of
adults without use or in situation of under-employment, i.e. of the adults who
wish to work more and who do not gain the vital minimum. To Peru, for example,
75% of the working population was in 1992, situation of under-employment, and
remained using marginal or precarious activities. According to UNO, a third of
the three billion individuals of active age of planet without employment or is
under-employed, essentially in the developing countries. Without same wanting
to absorb this population, the creation of 40 million new employment each year
would be necessary on a world level, but everywhere in the world, public
employment was reduced, and the evolution of private employment is not enough
to occupy the whole of these credits. Consequently, the adult population in
money search to survive is partly absorbed by the abstract sector, like the
trades of street, sector which evolves/moves more quickly than formal
employment in the developing countries. But its capacity for absorption is not
unlimited and especially, it does not give stable incomes to these parents,
enabling them to remove their children of work definitively. These families
which live of an abstract activity often solicit the children to supplement the
family income. To find an income stable and sufficient with the parents is of
primary importance if it is wanted that their children are not brought any more
to work. Indeed today for a poor family, the small contribution of the income
of a child or the assistance which it makes to the house and which then makes
it possible to the parents to occupy a precarious use of time to other, can
make all the difference between the hunger and satisfaction of the elementary
needs for the family. Nevertheless, this problem of the under-employment of the
adults in the developing countries belongs to a vicious circle that it is
difficult to break : the parents do not find employment or thus do not
perceive sufficient incomes they send their children to work, thus contributing
to the situation of unemployment of the adults, and thus involving the child
work. Moreover, it contributes to another vicious circle which is that these
young children who work do not profit from any education, and thus will
constitute an illiterate and not qualified adult population which will then be
plunged in poverty. They will thus revive the same situation that that lived by
their parents and will have to make work their children to survive. The roof
resides all the same in the fact that the employers of children often justify
themselves by explaining that they thus render service to the parents
unemployeds !
Another factor supporting the child work in the developing
countries primarily : the traditional aspect of the child work. The
economic forces which push the children towards dangerous work and in
particular work are undoubtedly most powerful, but the rigid traditions and
social conventions also play a great part in this respect. In the
industrialized countries, like ours, everyone recognizes today that so that a
child develops normally and healthily, it should not achieve too hard work. In
theory, education, the play and the leisures and a sufficient rest must have an
important place in the life of the children. But this idea is rather recent,
since at the beginning of industrialization, work was regarded as one of the
most effective means to learn the life and the world with the children. One
finds still today this idea in the opinion of much of people for whom it is
always good that a teenager makes « odd jobs », in order to
realize of the value of the money and to occupy itself in particular during the
holidays.
Nevertheless, in the developing countries, the problem arises
differently : the children must work to gain their bread, because their
parents did it before them and they did not die about it, therefore their
children must make in the same way. It happens that the children are supposed
to play their social part by taking the continuation of their parents in a
particular branch, like the agricultural activities. Consequently, this child
does not require to learn another thing that the culture of these fields and
moreover it is of its duty to help his/her parents. Like Mrs. Catherine Boidin
says it very well, consulting near the International Labor Office, the parents
do not even have the impression which their children work :
« this child does not work, it helps his family, it is normal, there
is on our premises a system of mutual aid, a duty of recognition, a counterpart
of the assistance which it receives », or « it is to
allow the transmission of the knowledge of one generation the
other »38(*).
For these poor and noninformed populations, the children do not work when they
help their family. Because one does not have a sufficient knowledge of his
consequences, the child work can be so deeply enraciné in the local
habits and practices that the parents of the children do not have themselves
conscience of what this work is illegal or prejudicial with their children.
This phenomenon is important in the rural zones of these
developing countries and especially girl. Indeed, their culture imply that a
young girl must know to deal with the house and children because it is what it
will be brought to do all her life, even when it will have left the family
house while marrying. The girls are thus victims of sociocultural prejudices
unfavourable, which are omnipresent in the rural zones of Asia and
Africa ; their education is regarded as a money and waste of time, because
they will devote their life to the behavior of their household. A widespread
idea wants besides that an educated girl would be less inclined to marry and
with fulfilling its traditional role well. It appears indeed probable that an
educated young girl less easily supports her condition of married woman not
having any right of direction on her own life. A girl is also intended to
belong to another short-term family by the marriage, while a boy, will support
his parents in old age to him and will take care of the inheritance, in
particular agricultural. The families thus reserve in priority food, the care
and education with wire. Even if if today certain estimates reveal that there
would be more young boys with work than of the young girls, it of it is not
nothing in reality ; that results quite simply that the activity of these
last are confined most of the time is with the family hearth or work as
servants, and are thus « invisible ». Concurrently to these
causes due to the needs for the families or all at least with their tradition,
of the causes completely external with the family sphere also play an important
part in the perenniality of the child work.
* 36 UNDP, world
Report/ratio on the human development, 1998, Economica, Paris
(Web site : www.undp.org)
* 37 Benedicte Manier :
Child work in the world, 1999, editions the Discovery, p.33.
* 38 Catherine Boidin
« With the listening of the hard-working children in the
developing countries », Book of the Committee of history,
supplement April 2001, children and young people with work, p.159.
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