UNIVERSITY OF NANTES

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND FACULTY OF LAW

CHILD WORK

Memory for the diploma of Thorough Studies of Private Law, mention legal and criminal sciences.

Presented and supported by Aude CADIOU, in June 2002.

Director of research : Mrs. Soizic LORVELLEC.

PART I :
RELATIVE IMPOTENCE OF the INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN FRONT OF the EXTENT OF WORK
CHILDREN

CHAPTER I : Child work : a situation
intolerable

Section I : Extent of the phenomenon of the child work

Paragraph I : A not easily quantifiable phenomenon

Paragraph II : A phenomenon not being limited to the poor countries

Section II : A work being carried out in forms very
any other business

Paragraph I : Child work within a family sphere

Paragraph II : Child work in the formal sector

CHAPTER II : International will of prohibition of the child work: a failure

Section I : Conventions of ILO relating to the work of
children and national impact

Paragraph I : A very prodigal organization as regards regulation of the child work

Paragraph II : An application however limited in the national legislations

Section II : The Convention on the rights of the child and application

Paragraph I : Genesis of the International Convention of the rights of the child

Paragraph II : An ambitious convention but still too recent to measure made progress

PART II :
CHANGE OF POLICY
THE COMMUNITY
INTERNATIONAL

CHAPTER I an international community anxious to include/understand for better fighting

Section I : Causes of the child work taken into account as a whole

Paragraph I : Causes related to the poverty of the families 

Paragraph II : Causes external with the family

Section II : The creation of standards against the «worse shapes of work children»

Paragraph I : Why a new more restricted convention ?

Paragraph II : The contribution of Convention n°182

CHAPTER II the search of more concrete solutions and alternatives to the child work

Section I : To support education : an essential starting point

Paragraph I : To succeed in bringing the children to the school

Paragraph II : To offer to the children an adapted education

Section II : Importance of the social mobilization in the fight against the child work

Paragraph I : The boycott of the products resulting from the child work : a false solution

Paragraph II : The need for creating a broad consensus counters the child work

Since the beginning of the Eighties, the child work causes a new mobilization, in particular on behalf of the international institutions and media. Nevertheless, it is necessary to get along on the expression « child work ». Indeed, when one uses this expression one imagines at once a child working under abominable conditions, on a weaving loom in Bangladesh, or a child of the streets of Rio or pavements of Manila. However, actually the children carry on very diverse activities which can go from beneficial activities reinforcing or supporting the physical or mental development of the child, until an activity obviously destroying or synonymous with exploitation. Between these two poles, one finds vast zones of activity with a work which does not harm inevitably the development of the child. « To regard any economic activity as also unacceptable, it is to throw confusion, to standardize the question and to make even more difficult the elimination of the child work »^1(*). Consequently, it is necessary to establish distinctive criteria between a work which can be beneficial for the child who exerts it and a dangerous work for him ; for that the UNICEF worked out approximately ten years ago a series of criteria to indicate a work which concerns the exploitation. The UNICEF is based then on nine criteria to determine if exerted work concerns the exploitation ; these criteria are : a full-time work at a too early age, too many hours devoted to work, work which exert physical constraints, social and psychological excessive, an insufficient remuneration, the imposition of an excessive responsibility, an employment which blocks the access to education, of the attacks to the dignity and the self-respect of the children, a work which does not facilitate the social and psychological blooming complete of the child. One thus sees through the study of these criteria which work becomes a problem when it involves consequences on the development of the child ; these consequences can be physical (in particular by a degradation of the general state), psychological (attachment with the family, feelings of love and acceptance), social and morals or cognitive (basic competences in reading or writing).

The physical attacks are of course easiest to note but the children are also vulnerable from the psychological point of view : they can suffer frightening damage while living in an environment which degrades them or oppresses them. The self-esteem is as important for the children as for the adults.

Before venturing further in the work study of the children in the world, it should first of all be eliminated the idea that the child work exists only in the poor countries. Of course, they are currently the developing countries, such as the countries of Africa, Asia or Latin America, which shelter the greatest number of children to work. However, even still nowadays certain industrialized countries such as England or Italy also see many young children to work. In France, fatherland of the humans right, even if if today the phenomenon almost disappeared, except in some clandestine workshops of Paris or of south-east, the work children was very a long time widespread and this until rather recent periods.

The child work in family goes up at the oldest ages : their participation in the behavior of the household and the agricultural work is attested in all the rural companies. During the centuries marked by a very short life expectancy, such as during the Middle Ages, childhood remains one short period and the child is quickly regarded as a young adult. The young girls receive an early formation with the domestic life and are married to fourteen or fifteen years. In fact, as soon as its physical capacities allow him, the child cultivates the garden and maintains the house with his mother or ensures of menus work in the workshop of his father craftsman, learning his trade little by little. The child takes part then in the family economy, each mouth to be nourished in front of making itself useful. At one time of raised mortality, it is also essential that the child is early able to mitigate the failure of an adult, because of a disease or of a death, but also to ensure its future. These requirements continue still today to model the daily newspaper of the families of the Third World. With the Middle Ages, there is already a childish labor, coming from the poor families which pain to nourish their offspring and which seek for their children an assumption of responsibility and a future outside. The request, it, emanates employers eager to have inexpensive, flexible and hard workers with the task. The young girls of the campaigns are placed as maidservants, and the young boys as agricultural workers or farmhands. Work concerns only the children of the people, since those of the nobility do not have to be concerned with their subsistence or their future. The education, exempted by the clergy or some schools of village, profits especially with the easy categories, nobility or middle-classes, but not with wire of peasants. Moreover, with the Middle Ages, the training in the medieval corporations is very widespread (tanners, clothiers, carpenters, masons, dyers, goldsmiths) and the placement in training lasts two to three years, starting from the twelve years age. Actually, the motivation of the employers is very simple : to have a labor which, n the other hand of the time spent to its formation, is not remunerated or much less than would be to it an adult. It is the same motivation that one finds today in the employers of the small workmen of the factories of Asia which are paid than the adults.

It is thus seen that the child work whom one thinks held today of the developing countries, was practiced very a long time in France, where it even developed at the XIXème century. Indeed, after the French revolution, still very few poor children go to the school but their wages are essential to the family because it covers at least what the child costs in food, and is used as auxiliary income at one time when all the means are good to relieve poverty. During the Industrial revolution, the workmen have dramatically low incomes and thus incite their children to return in the factory ; the workers of the textile bring their children to manufacture to supervise them and while growing, those are incorporated little by little in work of the workshop. According to investigations' carried out by historians, the children would have constituted a good third of the labor attached to the machines of the spinning mills in France, and about 1840 one estimates that 12% of the workmen of industry are children. In 1847, the general Statistics of France count 130.000 children of less than thirteen years in the establishments of more than ten paid and the census of 1896 book the figure of 602.000 children and teenagers in industry and the trade^2(*). Lastly, it should not be forgotten that the children are also engaged numbers some in the coal mines : in 1890, out of 116.000 paid coal basins of France, one counts 8300 children from twelve to sixteen years . On the surface, they sort, target and wash the ore and underground in the mine, they are charged to handle the carriages, all the day. At that time, the industrial middle-class considers that the employment of the young people is a factor of social peace, because it avoids the delinquency, and a manner of helping the families of the poor or the poor ones. To justify it, employers spreads even the idea that their small size is essential for certain phases of manufacture, which nobody thinks at the time disputing.

However, little by little, and owing to the fact that the child will leave his quasi-invisibility inside the family circle, to work within a visible framework, the public opinion will start to be moved. In France, since 1830, inspectors, doctors, prefects and local councillors evoke the working conditions of the children and the accidents of which they are frequently victims. In literature, works of Charles Dickens, former working child as of the twelve years age, and Emile Zola forge the vision of a social plague. The regulation however will be initially timid since a decree of 1813 prohibits the descent at the bottom of the mines only to the children of less than ten years. But since 1837, the doctor and statistician Louis-Rene Villermé will seize the State of « too long duration of the child work in much of manufactures ». The legislation then will advance step by step, by prohibiting the recruiting of children of less than eight years in industry, then in 1874, the recruiting before twelve years and limit work at twelve hours per day up to ten eight years... makes the regulation of It could be effective only thanks to the launching of a policy of state education. In 1881 and 1882, Jules Ferry imposes the obligatory primary school for the two sexes, from six to thirteen years and creates the certificate of primary studies. The schooling is free, and this exemption from payment is fundamental because the school thus manages to modify the social perception of poor childhood : it will be increasingly normal that the children of the modest families attend the school, and not the factory. The compulsory schooling up to sixteen years since 1959 allied with the generalization of the family benefits will contribute to withdraw the children of work gradually to arrive at the total disappearance of this phenomenon, at least in its visible form. Indeed, work in family, such as work with the farm or the house work of the young girls, will remain still tardily in France, but this time while yielding with the schedules of the school. In the campaigns, the school absenteeism will remain very important for the periods of harvest until the inter-war period, but technological progress will make disappear this absenteeism. Today, the child work very largely disappeared in France, but as we will see it later on, there still remains in industrialized countries like England, Italy, Spain or the United States. It is thus seen that in France the situation of the children, and in particular the development of standards concerning their rights, developed very gradually ; we thus should see whether the situation developed in the same way at international Community level.

Since the middle of the Eighties, one attends a keen demand of protection of the children on behalf of the public opinion. However the concern to give rights to the children and especially to oblige the States, which do not do it yet, to respect them, date completion of the years 1910.Les sufferings caused with the children following the First World War pushed the international company to be interested more closely in the fate of these vulnerable beings which are the children and to create by the means of the Company of Nations (SDN) a Committee of child welfare in 1919. The international Union of help to the children writes in 1923 a text called Déclaration of Geneva or Declaration of the rights of the child adoptive by the Parliament of the SDN in 1924. This text represents in fact the first attempt at coding of the basic rights of the child ; one finds there the ideas which will be taken up later by the United Nations for the International Convention of the rights of the child, and which preach the right to a normal development, materially and spiritually, as well as the right to be put able to earn its living and to be protected from any exploitation. Because of the harmful consequences that one knows today of the Second world war on the children, the idea is started again in 1946 by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) which asks for the development of new standards going in the direction of the Declaration of Geneva. When on December 10, 1948 the General meeting of the United Nations adopts the universal Declaration of the humans right, the rights of the child are implicitly included there since it states in her article 25 subparagraph 2 : « Maternity and the child are entitled to a special help and an assistance ». The international community thus recognizes the need for a child welfare and it is the commission of the social questions which will submit to the Commission humans right a project of declaration which will become after some deteriorations the Declaration of the rights of the child^3(*). This Declaration states essential principles which can be summarized thus : the child is entitled to education, with a special protection, to receive protection and help, to be protected from any form from negligence, cruelty or exploitation...

However, these texts were insufficient to protect the unit from the children of the world population and very quickly the need was felt to adopt another more complete, and broader international instrument. For that, the Organization of Work played a great part by adopting several fundamental conventions in particular as regards child work, such as Convention n°138 in 1973 relating to the minimum age. Nevertheless, the situation of the children was long much in improving and it is thus for this reason that the United Nations then attempted to create the International Convention relating to the rights of the child, of which we will study the genesis and the contents later on but of which we can already notice that it is today the international instrument most complete as regards rights of the to date existing child.

As regards fight against the child work, an organization had a dominating role since its creation : it is about the International Labor Organization (ILO) .La creation of ILO is the result of a whole movement of ideas in favor of an international regulation of the work which occurred as of first half of the 19th century, but which really continued only at the beginning of 20th. The called upon argument is that of international competition, summarized perfectly in the preamble to the Constitution of ILO : « Waited until the not-adoption by an unspecified nation of a really human operating speed range makes obstacle with the efforts of the other nations eager to improve the lot of the workers in their own countries » ; but at the end of the First World War, this idea of social justice is especially considered from the point of view of its contribution to the safeguarding of peace. Thus, the preamble to the Constitution of ILO underlines it as of its first sentence, that « a universal and lasting peace cannot be founded that on the basis of social justice. »

The sacrifices authorized by the workers to the effort of war and the fears caused by the Russian revolution of 1917 reinforced the influence of the organized labor. It is thus under their pressure that the governments taking part in the Conference of peace in January 1919, two months after the armistice, decided to include in the treaty of Versailles part XIII devoted to creation of ILO. This part XIII defines the objectives, the structure and the means of action of ILO.

Instituted in 1919 by the treaty of Versailles, the International Labor Organization (ILO) thus has for objective essential to promote social justice, and by-there same, to contribute to world peace. Based on the principle of the three-party government, it brings together representatives of the governments, workers and employers. Its action falls under the continuation of a humanistic ideal founded on the respect of the humans right and on the dignity of the living and working conditions. From this point of view, it works out international standards which relate to all the aspects of work and which have vocation to guide the social policies of the Member States. Contained in conventions and recommendations, these standards constitute a unit which is often indicated by the term of international Code of work. Until the bursting of the Second World war, ILO was the only active international organization in the social field. However, after the end of this one, its activities practically ceased development control of the standards, as well as action on the ground. But an intense deliberation, which was continued, in particular led to the adoption of the Declaration of Philadelphia, in 1944, concerning the goals and objectives of ILO. Little time after the creation of the United Nations, in 1945, ILO became the first of the specialized agencies, in 1946. But, little by little, with the creation of other specialized agencies and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the role more and more invading of the United Nations, ILO saw to weaken its role of « social pillar » of the international organizations.

ILO is initially characterized by its three-party government, since with the difference of the other public international organizations, it includes/understands, not only representatives of the governments, but also of the representatives of the workers and employers. The three-party government is it « claim to fame » of ILO, since it allows to the representatives workers and employers to take part, on an equal footing with those of the governments, with the discussions and the decisions of the Organization. The proportion retained for the majority of the deliberating bodies, and in particular for the Conference and the Board of directors, is of two representatives of the governments for a representative of the workers and a representative of the employers. Its operation rests on three essential bodies : the International Labor Conference, an annual general assembly ; the Board of directors and the International Labor Office.

The International Labor Conference is the supreme body of ILO, the general assembly of the Member States. Since 1949, it always meets in Geneva, once per annum, in June, during three weeks. She initially has the role of discussing and of adopting conventions and recommendations which define the international standards of work and of controlling the application of ratified conventions. But the debates which it devotes to the discussion of the Report/ratio of the general manager of the International Labor Office are also essential.

The Board of directors is the executive body, the pivot of all the activities of ILO ; it is him which establishes the agenda of the Conference and other meetings and fixes the broad outline of the program of work of the International Labor Office.

The International Labor Office (the ILO) is the permanent secretariat of ILO, it is at the same time the body of execution of the decisions of the Conference and the Board of directors, a resource center and a laboratory of ideas from where emanate from important publications and the projects which are subjected to the various authorities of ILO. It is him which prepares conventions and recommendations subjected to the Conference then follows the application of those which were adopted.

As regards fight against the child work, the action of ILO was done in several forms : a normative action that we will develop later on, and who was of first importance, a technical assistance with the developing countries consisting in sending advisory missions in the countries which wish to receive councils for the application of certain standards and in order to help them to measure the extent of the problem and of its consequences, improving their legislation on work of the children and his application, but also thanks to creation in 1991 of the international Program for the abolition of the child work
(IPEC) which rests on the reinforcement of the capacity of the countries to attack this problem and on the creation of a world movement to fight it. In front of the width of its mission, the IPEC concentrates, initially, on the eradication of the most abusive and intolerable shapes of work children. However, certain actions to undertake to fight the major causes of this phenomenon falling within the competence of other international organizations, ILO must act as dialog with those, and in particular with UNO, the United Nations for education, science and culture (UNESCO), the World Bank and the world Organization of the trade.

As regards fight against the child work, the International Labor Organization must thus act as dialog with other organizations and in particular with UNESCO and the Funds of the United Nations for childhood (UNICEF).

The UNICEF was creates at the end of the second World war because the famine and the disease threatened the children of Europe : this organization was instituted by the General meeting of the United Nations on December 11, 1946^4(*) in favor of the cause of the children all over the world. In the Fifties, Europe recovering from the war, certain countries estimated that the UNICEF had made its time but the General meeting widened the role of the organization which will work from now on for the children and the families of the developing countries. In 1953, the UNICEF becomes a Safety and Health Committee of the United Nations of which the mission is to deal with the questions such as the food aid, education and training and since 1989 to take care of the application of the International Convention of the rights of the child.

UNESCO was creates by a convention adopted by the Conference of London in November 1945^5(*) and counts 188 Member States today. Its principal objective is to contribute to the maintenance of peace and safety in the world while tightening by education, science, the culture and the communication, the co-operation between nations, in order to ensure the natural respect of justice, the law, the humans right and of fundamental freedoms for all.

These are primarily the two organizations which contributed to create the world dash in favor of the children who mobilizes today strongly the international opinion on the problem of the child work. One can only be delighted by this formidable dash since as extremely precisely said it, Philip Alston, famous lawyer specialized in the rights of the children : « In last analysis, only the broad and repeated expression popular indignation will impose the adoption of right policies. » One has indeed seen developing for a few years, the demonstrations against the child work like walk against the child work. This walk was creates on the initiative of an Organization nongovernmental Indian working with the daily newspaper with the fight against the child work ; the purpose of it is of « to mobilize forces in the whole world to protect and promote the rights of all the children, in particular with a free education and of quality, not to be exploited economically, not to be constrained to carry out a work which is harmful for its physical development, mental, spiritual, moral or social »^6(*). An extraordinary session of the United Nations in favor them children was to be taken place in September 2001 but it was shifted because of the attacks undergone by America a few days before its opening. This extraordinary session thus took place May the 9, and 10 2002 in New York. It gathered Heads of State and government, nongovernmental Organizations, defenders of the rights of the child and children themselves. At the end of these two days of debates, sometimes surging, the General meeting of the United Nations adopted a world action plan in 21 points for the next decade. The document entitled « A world worthy of the children » determines four priorities : health, education, protection counters the abuses, the exploitation and violence; and the fight counters the AIDS. With the exit of this extraordinary session, several nongovernmental organizations, were declared disappointed by the final project, considered to be too timid. One can notice that these commitments had already been undertaken, ten years ago at the world Top for the children, and that the situation of the hard-working children, hardly developed since. However, it should be hoped that this time the rich countries will keep to their commitments to help the developing countries.

In this study, we will see in detail the various types of work which the children are brought to make today ; however, two types of work will be not considered, not because they are not dangerous for the children who exert them, on the contrary even, or that they do not relate to enough children to be explained in detail, but on the contrary because the study of this work could make the study of two additional studies. They are the childish prostitution and the children soldiers. The sexual exploitation of the children at commercial purposes became, these last years, a world problem which tends to develop. More and more, of the children are sold and are the subject of an international draft. According to a ratio of 1996 of the special Rapporteur of the United Nations charged to examine the questions referring to the sale of children, the prostitution of the children and the pornography implying of the children, approximately a million children of Asia are victims commercial of the sex^7(*). It is estimated today that thirty million children are victims of sexual violences to the hands of traffickers of share the world. The mercantile sexual exploitation is one of the most brutal forms of the violence which is exerted against the children. The victims undergo traumatisms physical, psychic and emotional irreversible and sometimes mortals. The girls risk early pregnancies, know a high rate of maternal mortality and sexually transmitted diseases (in particular due to the HIV). The traumatisms are so deep that in many cases, the return to a normal life is impossible and that many victims die before the adulthood. It thus appeared impossible to to me to treat this form of exploitation, particularly odious, in this talk because of complexity and of the extent of the phenomenon today. The same reflection results in also excluding from the field of this study the case of the children soldiers. Indeed, the number of children taking part in wars as a soldier, servants, spies or shields human is estimated at 300.000 in the world. Recruited or removed, these children who have sometimes less than ten years assist or take part in acts of violence, often perpetrated against their own family or their community. The military chiefs are useful themselves of these very young children bus they are more flexible, easier to exploit or mislead.

Vis-a-vis these two forms of exploitation, the General meeting of the United Nations adopted two texts called « Optional protocols » with the Convention on the rights of the child on May 25, 2000. The optional Protocol on the participation of the children in the wars fixes at 18 years the minimum age of the direct participation of a child in hostilities or the enrôlement obligatory one in the armed forces. The optional Protocol on the sale of children, the prostitution of the children and the pornography implying of the children requires of the States to take legal steps and administrative to prevent the sale, the traffic and the sexual exploitation of the children and to make these offenses liable to continuations. It recommends moreover an international co-operation to fight against this criminality without borders.

Other than the sexual exploitation of the children and their participation in the wars, we will thus consider in this study all the other forms of exploitation whose children are victims daily with the four corners of the world. In spite of great efforts to cure the unbearable situation that the extent of the child work constitutes, the international community still did not succeed in damming up this plague. It is thus necessary to recognize the relative impotence of the international community in front of the extent of the child work (Left I). However, the international institutions decided to react to improve the situation of the children in the world, situation which worsened ineluctably with the wire of the decades. The international community thus decided to change policy, in 1999 to try to answer concretely the problem arising from the economic exploitation of the children (Left II).

PARTIE I :
RELATIVE IMPOTENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN FRONT OF THE EXTENT OF WORK
CHILDREN

For a long time, the child work was completely ignored by the international community, because this phenomenon had course with considering and with known everyone, even in the industrialized countries. Nevertheless, the living conditions appreciably improved for the populations of the rich countries to leaving the Second world war, which made it possible a broad population to have access to information, and to discover the conditions of the children in the developing countries. This knowledge of the extreme destitution in which the poor children, forced lived to work to be able to survive, moved the public opinions, and thus forced the political leaders to set up against these deplorable living conditions. Today conscious of the extent of the problem which constitutes the child work throughout the world, the international community tries to set up, in co-operation with the countries concerned, of the policies intended to fight against the child work. Indeed, in spite of a rather late awakening at the international level, everyone agrees today to saying that the fight against the child work must be a priority of the international community. However, in spite of the adoption of many International Conventions condemning the use of childish labor, the situation of the children working with the four corners of the world does not improve. Before seeing in detail the fundamental principles as regards child work enacted by the International Conventions (Chapter II), we will study the extent and the nature of the child work (Chapter I).

CHAPITRE I :
CHILD WORK : AN INTOLERABLE REALITY

The child work is, in spite of many studies carried out on the subject, a reality little known or badly. Everyone agrees to saying that many children are obliged to work and that this situation is intolerable, but one knows little the nature and the working conditions of these children ; in the same way, nobody can say with precision which is the number of children who work in the world. However for considering effective policies of fight, it is necessary very well to know the phenomenon against which one intends to fight.

It thus appeared essential to to me to begin this study with a detailed talk of the extent of the child work in the world (Section I), before seeing in which branches of industry and which conditions the children work
(Section II).

SECTION I  :
Extent of the phenomenon of the child work

Everyone is conscious today that a great number of children work, but because of combination of several factors making difficult the access to the children who work, the exact width of this phenomenon is quantifiable with much difficulty (Paragraph I), the more so as, contrary to the generally accepted ideas the child work does not meet unfortunately only in the poor countries but also in the countries known as rich, of which our European neighbors (Paragraph II)

Paragraphe I  :
A phenomenon whose width is
not easily quantifiable

Nobody currently knows with certainty how much children work today in the world. The International Labor Office (the ILO), which makes authority on the matter, considers as for him that the statistics available are very inadequate and not very reliable, and that the process of data-gathering comprises much complications. Indeed, under the terms of the principle according to which what is not supposed to exist in comparison with the law, could not appear in the official statistics, the child work is not listed in many countries. Moreover, the investigations launched to count the population of children to work are limited bus much national governments do not answer it, and that sometimes, those do not include the children of the industrialized countries or those which have less than 10 years or those which are provided education for while having an activity. Moreover, one most of the children to work is not accessible, to see even invisible, because occupied with housework, whether it is for their family or as servants. Lastly, the activity of the children cannot be indexed with precision because it can be intermittent and irregular, and that it is mingled everywhere with that with the adults ; their activity can also geographically be very burst, in immense agricultural areas or thousands of urban workshops. The collection of solid and reliable data on work of the children is also blocked by the fact that certain authorities prefer to be unaware of the existence of this childish labor which is thus not entered by the official statistics : only in India that would add nearly 90 million children, as a majority of the girls.

One can then wonder why quote figures ? The answer to this question is simple : these figures make it possible to attest the phenomenon in its dimension and to open the eyes of the opinion and the leaders. In fact also elements of comprehension make it possible to locate the child work taking into consideration other social reality. Majority of the estimates, because it is absolutely necessary estimates, come from UNO, and to the first chief of its agency specialized in the regulation of work, ILO. The UNICEF also constitutes another organization of foreground ; these two organizations have local establishments which enable them to work with the actors of the countries concerned
(governments, associations, sociologists, trade unions...) and to thus have a direct sight on the situation in these countries. In addition, the international Confederation of the free trade unions (CISL), established in 141 countries, regularly provides local studies carried out by its affiliated, on all shapes of work children. A certain number of data also emanate from investigations of nongovernmental organizations (ONG) such as Anti Slavery International or Amnesty International.

The existing evaluations were often established starting from investigations by company, branches of industry, areas or cities. The stepping of the results with broader socio-economic data, such as the number of children in the age bracket concerned, working population or poverty lines ; allows extrapolations, at the national or international level. The only organization to have established a methodology in this field is the ILO, which launched a first series of questionnaires at the beginning of the Nineties in 200 countries or territories. In order to better quantify the problem , the ILO launched into 1992 of the experimental investigations to Ghana, to India, to Indonesia and in Senegal, in order to study a sample of approximately 4000 households and 200 companies per country. According to results' of this investigation, the proportion of children economically active between 5 and 14 years was 25% on the whole of these 4 countries, and reached the surprisingly high figure of 40% in Senegal^8(*). On a worldwide scale, it is possible to depict the situation of the children thus : the large majority of the children who work live in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Asia with it only gathers half of it, although their proportion seems to decrease in Southeast Asia because of increase in the income per capita, of the generalization of basic education and the reduction in the size of the families. In Africa, a child on three on average carries on an economic activity, proportion which passes to a child on five to Latin America. In Africa and Latin America, only a very small percentage of childish labor is employed in the structured sector : the great majority works in its own family, in residence, in the fields or the street.

The ILO estimates today that only in the developing countries, there are at least 120 million children from 5 to 14 years compelled with work and that they are twice more numerous (either approximately 250 million) if one includes those for which work is an ancillary activity. Michel Bonnet, who worked a long time at the ILO estimates that this figure of 250 million represents a minimal order of magnitude^9(*) since this figure does not include/understand the children who are only active at the house because it is about an activity known as « noneconomic ».

One of the paramount questions today is to know if the child work increases further. The majority of the data are indeed still too recent to draw an evolution in time, but several factors could contribute to an increase, in particular the demographic growth which increases the number of active children mathematically and the epidemic of AIDS which prevails in the poor countries, returning the every day of the thousands of orphan children and thus much more vulnerable to the economic exploitation. A beginning of social development in certain countries of Latin America and Asia had made decrease the number of active children, but the financial crisis of 1998 in Asia was unfortunately not without consequences on the level of poverty, and thus on the strategies of survival of the families. Improvements perceived not thus be that of short duration. In Africa, the ILO on the contrary perceived a clear tendency to increase, during the years four twenty ten, of the recourse to the childish labor, because of the persistence of poverty.

By evoking these amazing figures we see the world situation, where the immense majority of the children who work live developing countries. However, it would be completely false and utopian to think that the industrialized countries, said rich countries, do not know the child work.

Paragraphe II  :
A phenomenon not being limited to the poor countries

Even if the large majority of the children who work finds in Asia, Africa or Latin America, the child work is not limited to the developing countries. Indeed, the industrialized countries also use this labor but it is then the nature of the child work which determines if it is prejudicial for them and not the simple fact of having an employment. Few inhabitants of the industrialized areas think that to employ a young person to deliver newspapers during one hour or two before the school is a form of exploitation, although it is paid certainly less than an adult for a similar work. Often, the child will be even encouraged to take this kind of employment in order to rub in the world of work. All the confused forms of work, the percentage of childish labor can be surprisingly high : in the United Kingdom it appears that the phenomenon concerns from 15 to 26% of the 11 years old children and 36 to 66% of the 15 year old young people^10(*). An investigation carried out at the local level in Great Britain noted that 40% of the questioned children had, in a form or another, « a trade or an occupation exerted at lucrative ends », i.e. a work other than the baby-sitting or the races. Other studies showed the existence of a bond between the unemployment of the parents and work children and that, in London, four children out of five who work make it illegally, either because they do not have the age, or because their work was not appropriate for a child. The number of families with low incomes not ceasing increasing, more and more children will be put in the search of an employment, often clandestine and illegal. It should not be believed that these children work under conditions protected than in the developing countries since one belongs unfortunately sometimes to the very serious accidents : a 14 year old child who worked for wages of a book per hour in a factory of bed linen is made grab the arm in a machine deprived of protection. In England two large firms were recently prosecuted to have employed children in lower part of the minimum age !

In Italy, the problem of the child work is also growing, and one estimates at several hundreds of thousands the number of children who work in one way or another in this country, mainly in the large cities. Many children make the school buissonnière to go to work. The domestic industry is the very widespread shape of exploitation of the children and the industry of the shoe is a great sector of the clandestine economy which functions with thousands of small workshops dispersed a little everywhere, which returns the intervention of the authorities almost impossible.

The child work also gains ground in Portugal where more and more of children are employed in small companies which want to be ensured of the profits of competitiveness on the European market. The children are exploited in the metallurgy, the trade, tourism, the textile, the construction industry, the pottery but also the shoe, the services domestic and the clothes industry. ^11(*)

However, in the industrialized countries like the United Kingdom, the majority of the young workers also attend the school. But, it would be completely naive to believe that in the Western countries, the child work is always of the type « pocket money ». The industrialized nations would have tendency according to the UNICEF with « to think that they completely abolished the hardest shapes of work children and thus push the poor countries to follow their example »^12(*). One still frequently finds the shapes dangerous of work children in the majority of the rich countries. Usually, the exploited children would come from minorities ethnic or groups of immigrants, like the communities Tziganes and Albanian in Greece. It is also the case in the United States, for the majority of the hard-working children employed in agriculture. A study carried out in 1990 by the countable general Agency showed an increase of 250% of the infringements to the legislation on the child work between 1983 and 1990. In 1990, an operation carried out by the Ministry of Labor during three days revealed that 11.000 children worked clandestinely^13(*). The same year, an investigation into the children Mexico City-American occupied in the farms of the State of New York revealed that about half had worked in still wet fields of pesticides and that more than one third had been touched by direct or indirect pulverizations.

It is thus seen that the child work is not the unhappy privilege of the developing countries, but which there also exists with our doors. Nevertheless, that should not prevent us from wanting at all costs that this one ceases quickly in the poor countries, because it is all the same in these areas that it is generalized the most and that the working conditions are most deplorable.

SECTION II  :
A work being carried out in very diverse forms

Work the children revêt today of the very diverse forms which one can classify in seven great types, of which none is specific to a particular area of the world : house work, forced labor, work in constraint, sexual exploitation at commercial purposes that we will not study here, work in industry and plantations, trades of the streets, family work and the work of the girls. It is thus seen that there are two large poles of childish activity : the children work either at the house, within a family sphere (Paragraph I), or in factories or companies, i.e. in the formal sector (Paragraph II).

Paragraphe I  :
Child work within a family sphere

Of all the employment occupied by the children, most frequent are the agricultural or domestic work in the residence of their parents. The majority of the families, and this everywhere in the world, expect that their children help at the house, that it is by preparing the meals, while going to seek water with the well, by keeping the herds, or by achieving harder tasks in the fields. This type of work can be enriching, because the children learn while taking part in a reasonable way in the domestic drudgeries, with the culture of the kitchen garden, and they also draw a feeling from it from pride. Unfortunately, family work is not always as beneficial, it can be too fascinating, demanding children as one devotes long hours to him which move away them from the school and requiring too many efforts of bodies of children in full growth. In the rural zones of Africa and South Asia, the children start to take part in the domestic drudgeries well before having the school age. The girls must go to seek the water and the wood of the household. The children of the two sexes must contribute to the agricultural work, to deal of the animals and all that relates to water, work often extremely tiring. Similar models are observed in many countries of Latin America such as Colombia.
On a world level, agriculture constitutes the first branch of industry of the children, but this sector was unfortunately studied little. The synthesis of the data recorded by the International Labor Office until today in 26 developing countries delivers an average percentage of 70% of agricultural workers among the active children^14(*). The World Bank rightly records that the higher the share of agriculture is in the interior product gross of a country, the more the frequency of work of the children is high : it is before a whole rural phenomenon. In certain countries of Africa, one estimates that a third of the agricultural labor is made up children.
This type of work, especially that of the girls who are generally charged to deal with the infants, to draw water, to collect wood and to prepare the meals, is largely invisible to the statisticians charged to measure the extent of the child work. It is also apart from the sphere of activity of the legislation, in particular because of the difficulty in regulating the child work in their family. However, to accept that this form of activity cannot be controlled amounts accepting that hundreds of million children do not profit from any legal protection, whereas it is about the most widespread shape of work children.

The house work children placed in another family that theirs is a phenomenon very running in the countries poor but these children placed in constraint domesticates undoubtedly most vulnerable and are exploited. Private nature and often not declared recruiting of servants makes impossible any measurement, but the small servants probably amount per million in the world. This trade is the prolongation of the domestic activity carried on at the house and consequently, it employs a majority of girls, but one can also find little boys domestic, in particular in Asia.

The children often are very badly paid to see remunerated at all ; generally, their working conditions depend entirely on the employer, with the contempt of their rights : they are private of school, play and social activity, as well as psychological support of their family. Who more is, they are regularly confronted with physical violence and the sexual abuse. Here, an example among so much of others one working day of 7 years Marie, Haitian, placed by its poor family living in a rural zone, an urban and easy family : she lifts herself to a height of five hours of the morning, will seek water with the well while carrying to the return the heavy earthenware jar on the head, then prepares the breakfast and is used it for the members of the family, then, she accompanies the children at the school, must buy the provisions, deal with fire, sweep, wash the linen and the crockery, to clean the house... She nourishes remainders of the family or of pulp of corn, is vêtue haillons and sleeps outside the house, by ground. It is regularly beaten if it is long in fulfilling all its obligations or if its Masters judge that it misses respect. It appears quite obvious that Marie does not go to the school. Very often, these girl, domestic employees generally, are parents of the employer, a niece or the girl of cousins living in the countryside ; the rural family is not that too much happy to have a mouth in less to nourish and usually, the relative who takes the child charges some is committed educating it. Unfortunately, once downtown, nobody is there to make sure that this promise is held, nor to note the long working hours inflicted with the young girl. From the nature even of this work, those which undergo it are hidden with the eyes of the world, without protection. According to the results of an investigation into the households with average incomes in Colombo, in Sri Lanka, a household on three employs a child of less than 14 years like servant. The children are often rather selected than the adults because they can be dominated more easily and of course less paid. The consequences of this type of work on a child are obvious : first of all malnutrition bus in spite of hard work that they provide, they have right only to ridiculous rations ; then the sexual abuse which is often considered by the employer belonging to work ; serious problems on the plan of their psychological and social development because they are very isolated from the community, deprived of any occupation of rest and play. Children work as servants in Africa, Latin America, in Asia, in the Middle East and in areas of Europe of the South.

Concurrently to these children who work in the family sphere, that it are theirs or that their employers, certain children work apart from on their premises but work neither in a factory nor in a plantation : they are the children of the streets. Contrary to the children placed as servants, these children work in the places more in sight, i.e. in the streets of the cities and the agglomerations of the developing countries. Any person, having been brought to go in these cities, can testify some : they are everywhere, praising their goods on the markets or threading between the cars to propose their services. Hundreds of thousands of children work from day to day in the streets of the cities, of the streets which are used to them also sometimes as residence. These children who work in the streets are the product of the certain social phenomena most worrying today, the fast urbanization, the racing of the demographic growth and the aggravation of the disparities between the incomes. Often, these children worked before as servants or in the fields, but they fled the ill treatments and are found in the street. Very often deprived of legal identity, they are handled by the organized crime, the not very scrupulous employers and the upholders to sell drug or to deliver themselves to the prostitution. What few people know it is that many children working in the streets provide a vital financial support to their family while taking responsibility for their when they can it, the expenses of their education. Indeed, a child who spends six hours in a discharge of Manila can gain more than one adult in one day ten hours in a close factory. In the street, they wax the shoes, wash the cars, carry the parcels and find a multitude in other manners of earning money. While being modest, the sums which they obtain are not higher than those which they would receive with a work in the formal sector. Nevertheless, whatever the benefit that they can withdraw, the sorting of waste is a dangerous work that the children themselves estimate if degrading that many leaves it preferring even the prostitution to him. The nature of their work is particularly unhealthy, dangerous and degrading. They contract various skin diseases (ulcers, scale, etc...) and by collecting pieces of rusted iron or while going on the fragments of glass, it is not rare that they are wounded with the risk to catch tetanus, without forgetting that they often eat the remainders which they find.

Paragraphe II  :
Child work in the formal sector

The formal sector gathers all the activities equipped with the attributes of the traditional economic activity, namely the wage bond and the legal framing. As regards child work, childish labor is then employed either in factories, like any adult employee, or the children are reduced to the state of slaves by managers of not very scrupulous factories, by the means of the constraint for debts.
The constraint for debts is without any doubt one of the shapes of exploitation of the most intolerable children. What characterizes this form of exploitation, they are not only the deplorable working conditions, but especially that the human person is reduced to the state of goods : the child slave belongs to an owner. One learns how with the young victims to accept the conditions under which they live and especially never to rebel. In South Asia, in particular in India, this phenomenon of slavery took a known almost traditional form under the name of work in constraint of the children. The principle of this system is very simple, the children who have often only eight or nine years, are given in pledge by their parents to owners of factories in exchange of loans. The children thus work to discharge a debt or any other obligation contracted by their family, however the constraint of a whole life does not most of the time even manage to reduce the debt of the parents. Indeed, the creditors, who are generally the owners, handle the parents so that it is very difficult, to see even impossible with the family to settle her debt ; they thus secure a practically free labor with perpetuity. The families can thus remain in constraint during generations, the children taking the changing of the old or crippled parents. It will be pointed out once more that the systems of constraint are illegal in almost all the countries and in particular in those where they are most widespread ; they are contrary not only with the laws on the child work but also with all the International Conventions ratified by these countries.

In India, this type of transaction is very frequent in agriculture, like industries like the manufacture of cigarettes, the weaving of the carpets, the production of matches, the slate quarries and the industry of silk. In Asia, one estimates at several tens of million the number of children employed under these conditions. Well knew, the majority of the children thus exploited belong to the most marginalized sectors of the company. These ethnic minorities or these underprivileged groups are often regarded as not having any right, and themselves were often able to believe it. In connection with this true shape of slavery of the children, one generally thinks of meeting it only in India, in Nepal and Pakistan, but it also exists in sub-Saharan Africa, in Brazil or in Mauritania where each year of the thousands of babies are still born in a slavery in fact. Traditional during generations, slavery was officially abolished in 1980, but 400.000 black Africans are always useful as slaves, officially or not their Berber Masters^15(*).

The work of these children is not always remunerated, but when it is it, the pledges are most of the time so thin that they will never be enough to refund the debt. Of as much, that the owners of these children, are never with court of ideas to prolong the financial dependence : the employer takes the price of food and of the tools, if the child makes a fault an additional sum is taken on his pledges and if it is sick, a new debt comes to weigh down the first to pay the care. This rate/rhythm, it is thus not astonishing that a family is controlled on several generations and what is of course the objectives by the creditor-owner. This form of exploitation, qualified the intolerable one by the UNICEF, fact part of the top priority of the International Labor Organization, but its eradication appears difficult because of the traditional character of this system and the great poverty of the families, which consider it often preferable to send their child to work, under conditions which they are unaware of often, rather than to keep it in a family which cannot nourish it for lack of means.

The wage-earning of the children in the structured economic sector is certainly the most studied form and médiatisée of the child work, whereas in fact it relates to only one minority of children to work ; the International Labor Office counts indeed only 8% of the active children in manufacturing industries and as much in the trade and hotel trade, a little less than 4% in transport and handling, 2% in the construction industry and hardly 1% in the mines and the careers. Michel Bonnet affirms that work in subcontracting for the multinationals
(articles of sport, clothing) 10% of the workers would undoubtedly not occupy^16(*). It is probably the same for industrial agriculture (large coffee plantations, bananas, canes with sugar, tea...) where 5% of the children would be active. Nevertheless, even if these children represent a minority of the children to work, their working conditions deserve alone that one stops on this form of exploitation. Indeed, they work under particularly dangerous conditions ; let us quote simply as example the working conditions in a factory of glass in India where « the children transport masses of glass melted at the end of iron canes, with 60 centimetres hardly of their bodies ; they withdraw molten glass of furnaces where the temperature reaches of 1500 with 1800°C, their short arms children touching the furnace almost ; they assemble and model the bracelets of glass on the small flame of a stove with kerosene in a part little or not aired, since it would be enough to a draft to extinguish the flame. All the ground of the factory is covered with fragment of glass and the children go and come, carrying this extreme glass, without shoes to protect their feet. Naked electric wire during a little everywhere because the owners of the factory did not worry to install an electrical supply network interns insulated. »^17(*) The deplorable conditions are thus seen under which children of less than 14 years are brought to work up to 14 hours per day. The young minors know serious respiratory problems, such as tuberculosis, bronchitis and asthma... the children working in the exploitations also run of great physical risks, in particular of mutilations, in the plantations of cane with sugar, where still risks of bites of snakes or insect bites.

If the majority of these industrial activities and agricultural are the fact of national subcontractors, a part nevertheless is controlled by transnational companies whose products are intended for the stores and the hearths of the Occident. Large companies having their registered office in the rich countries delocalize their installations of assembly in the poor countries to benefit from the lower costs of personnel and the reduced social security benefits. These cases brought humane militants in the countries of origin and reception to make pressure on these companies so that they establish as well codes of conduct applicable to their own operations, as with those their subcontractors. We will see later on, the problems which can pose this type of action and in particular their perverse influence on the child work.

CHAPITRE II  :
INTERNATIONAL WILL OF PROHIBITION CHILD WORK: A FAILURE

In this field as in so much of others, a solid tallies legal A a role essential to play to support the changes. It must define what is acceptable and what is not it in the world of work and to fix the executives in which a relation of employment right and equitable can be established. It is indeed particularly important to provide the children, a strict legal framework and the protection which accompanies it, because they do not have any capacity of negotiation on the labor market and are thus consequently, ready to be protected from the exploitation. However, to be effective, and to offer a true protection to the million children likely to profit from it, these national and especially international standards, must applicable and be applied. Indeed, nothing can carry reached any more to the credibility of a legal rule than the absence or the insufficiency of the mechanisms of application.

A great number of conventions of the International Labor Organization as of other international treaties relate to the child work and the protection of those against the exploitation. We will thus recall briefly the contents of those (Section I), before seeing the fundamental text as regards rights of the child who is the International Convention relating to the rights of the child adoptive by the General meeting of the United Nations (Section II). 

SECTION I  :
Conventions of ILO relating to the child work and national impact

The International Organization creates in 1919, with leaving the First World War, had the principal role to enact international standards of work in order to ensure peace in the world. For this reason, this organization very quickly was interested in work of the children, and in did one of its priorities. From 1919 until today, ILO regularly drew the attention of the international community to the gravity of the situation of the children, by regularly adopting International Conventions intended to fight against the child work. However in spite of a constant normative activity in order to eliminate work from the children (Paragraph I), the impact on the national legislations of these conventions was not with the height of the hopes of ILO (Paragraph II).

Paragraphe I  :
An organization lavishes as regards regulation
child work

Since its creation, ILO adopted several conventions relating specifically to the child work. This organization mainly fixed a minimum age of admission at employment or work, either for a particular sector of the economy or for the whole of the economic sectors, while allowing certain exceptions. ILO adopted its first convention on the child work in 1919, the year of its foundation. It is about convention n°5 on the minimum age in the industry adopted by the International Labor Conference at its first session and ratified by 72 countries, it prohibits the child work of less than 14 years in the industrial plants. It was the first international effort to regulate the participation of the children in work. Thereafter, the Organization will adopt nine sectoral conventions on the minimum age of admission to employment in the branches or following professions : industry, agriculture, soutiers and drivers, maritime work, nonindustrial work, underground fishing and work.

The instruments of ILO most recent and most complete on the child work are convention n° 138^18(*) and the recommendation n°146 on the minimum age, going back to 1973. This convention replaces all the former instruments applicable to limited economic sectors. It makes obligation in the States started from specify a minimum age of admission to employment and work and to continue a national policy aiming at ensuring the effective abolition of the child work^19(*). The recommendation n°146 which accompanies it fixes the framework of action and measurements essential to implement to prevent and eliminate work from the children. This convention and the recommendation which accompanies it constitutes the important advanced ones in the field of the international standards on the child work. They are indeed the first to have recognized the need for integrating the legislation fixing a minimum age at an overall national policy having for goal to abolish the child work completely. It is however more exact to speak about minimum ages, in the plural, because the fixed age varies according to the nature of employment or work.

Convention establishes a fundamental principle according to which, the minimum age of admission to employment or work should not be lower than that to which cease compulsory schooling, nor in any case at 15 years. It also provides that the minimum age should be gradually high on a level making it possible to the teenagers to reach the most complete physical and mental development. It allows, however, the employment of the teenagers from 13 to 15 years with light work, i.e. work which is likely neither to carry damage to their health or their development, nor to harm their school assiduity, with their participation in programs of orientation or vocational training, with their aptitude to be profited from the received instruction.
Convention prescribes to fix this age at 18 years for any dangerous work, i.e., « any type of work which, by its nature or the conditions of exercise, is likely to compromise health, the safety or the morality of the teenagers »^20(*). Convention also lays out that the types of employment or work concerned will be determined by the national legislation or the proper authority, thus leaving with each country the care of this decision. The recommendation accompanying this convention proposes criteria of determination stating, that it is advisable to take into account international standards of work relevant, for example, those relating to the dangerous substances or toxic agents or processes, the transport of heavy loads and work underground. It lays out moreover that the list of the types of employment or work in question should be re-examined periodically with the light in particular advances in knowledge and technique, in consultation with the organizations of employers and workers. The minimum age, for the types of work concerned, should be 18 years. The recommendation reinforces this principle by indicating that, when the minimum age is still lower than 18 years, of measurements should be taken, without delay, to carry it on this level. However, convention lays out, that this age can be lowered to 16 years provided that health, the safety and the morality of the children are fully guaranteed and that they received in the branch of corresponding activity, a specific and adequate instruction or a vocational training.

It is also advisable to mention another instrument of the International Labor Organization, convention n° 29 on the labor forced, 1930, adopted by the general Conference of the Organization on June 28, 1930. Its role is primarily to protect the children against the worst forms from exploitation. It aims at removing the recourse to the forced or obligatory labor, i.e. with « work or service required of an individual under the threat of an unspecified sorrow and for which the aforementioned individual did not offer himself of full liking » .Etant^21(*) applicable to any person, whatever her age, it protects the children against the forced or obligatory labor and is applied to the certain most unacceptable shapes of work children, such as the constraint and the exploitation of the latter in particular at ends of prostitution or pornography. This convention is one of the fundamental instruments of ILO and one of was most largely ratified : 149 States for convention n°29 and 130 States ratified convention n°105 on the abolition of the labor forced into 1957 which supplements convention n°29.

Today only 49 countries ratified the convention n°138, including only 21 but any country developing country of Asia, continent where are however more half of all the children who work . Indeed, certain Member States of ILO, consider this convention too complex and too difficult to apply in detail ; the organization thus endeavors to offer technical councils and to make play the clauses of flexibility contained in Convention n°138.

The legal arsenal is thus extended, but its range remains limited. Indeed, the sanctions laid down in conventions are not sufficiently constraining. The States left must periodically give a report on the progress implemented either at the commissions of the ILO or at the committees of UNO which then confront the relationship with those of ONG. However, the violations of the rules are the examination procedure object very long followed by recommendations, but on the ground, these procedures often remain without effect. Even in the industrialized countries, the methods of control remain insufficient. In the developing countries, the child work is of such a width that the respect of the laws passes by a prerequisite : modification of the socio-economic context. The national plans of action launched in several countries thus have only few results. The instruments of control and sanctions (factory inspectorate, organizes), exist sometimes. Certain countries like Pakistan, the Philippines or Turkey set up special units, and targeted inspection campaigns, but everywhere effective and average remain dramatically insufficient taking into consideration million farms and establishments which would have to be inspected. Much country is thus cut off behind this lack from means to affirm that convention n°138 is too difficult to apply.

The respect of the law also runs up against the absence of political good-will and general resignation. South Asian Coalition one Child Servitude blames absence of the real and honest political good-will and notes that the deputies themselves have domestic children. Most of the company judges normal that a poor child works and ONG Indians show the successive governments to have lowered the arms.

Implementation the effective of the legal arsenal thus proves very difficult in the developing countries, in particular because of inefficiency of the sanctions ; the application of the International Conventions in the national legislations thus is very limited.

Paragraphe II  :
An application however limited in
national legislations

Convention n°138 on the minimum age made hope for the end of the child work. However, it of it was nothing because the developing countries which cannot or not wanting to integrate this convention in their national legislations, had recourse to the versatility contained in this convention. Indeed, while fixing a minimum age applicable in theory to all the branches of industry, that children work there or not like employees, convention n°138 contains provisions which give him a certain flexibility intended to allow the phased introduction of it. Thus, the countries whose school economy and institutions are not sufficiently developed can specify, in first stage, 14 years a minimum age instead of 15^22(*), which causes to lower the minimum age for light work from 13 to 12 years. However, there is not corresponding exception for the dangerous activities, pursuant to the principle according to which the level of development cannot be used as excuse to allow that children are assigned to tasks likely to compromise their health, their safety or their morality.

Convention n°138 presents also a certain flexibility with regard to the sectors or activities aimed since it authorizes the States to be excluded from the limited categories of employment or work, when its application to its categories would raise special and important difficulties of execution^23(*). It does not specify these categories, but it was made mention, during preliminary works, of employment in the family companies, the domestic services at the private individuals and certain types of work carried out apart from the control of the employer, for example the domestic industry. These exclusions primarily hold with the practical difficulties that the application of the law raises to the categories concerned, and not of course with the absence of risks of exploitation or abuse.

In addition, convention gives to the developing countries the possibility of initially limiting its field of application by specifying the branches of economic activity or the types of companies to which it applies : article 5 stipulates that « any member whose economy and the administrative services did not reach a sufficient development will be able, after consultation of the interested organizations of employers and workers, if there are some, to limit, in a first stage, the field of application of this convention. » However in this same article it is specified that the field of application of convention will have at least to include/understand the seven following sectors : minings ; manufacturing industries ; the construction industry ; electricity, gas and water ; medical services ; transport, warehouses and communications ; plantations and other agricultural companies exploited mainly at commercial purposes (other than the family or low-size companies)^24(*). Different other provisions envisage exceptions or exemptions, for example that which excludes the work carried out within the framework from certain types of teaching or formation or that which makes it possible to authorize the participation of the children artistic spectacles as well as the possibility of fixing the minimum age of the training at 14 years. If they are dangerous activities, the application of these provisions requires the greatest precautions. Thus, the participation in artistic spectacles can present serious health risks or the morality of the young people. This is why certain countries prohibit to make them work in the establishments such as boxes of the night, cabarets and circuses, where there is moreover a risk of sexual exploitation. Other countries on the contrary, like Thailand, allow the child work in the night clubs and the bars as from 15 years^25(*). As for the formation, it can be a subterfuge making it possible to the employers continuously to impose a heavy work on children not having reached the minimum age. It is thus essential to carry out controls and with inspections to make sure that the young people receive a true formation under suitable conditions and are not constrained on this occasion to carry out dangerous tasks. Convention makes obligation at the proper authority to take all measurements necessary including adapted sanctions, in order to ensure the effective application of its provisions. The sanctions noted here are those which will be envisaged by the national legislation for the infringements with the provisions giving effect to convention.

The near total of the countries obtained a legislation today aiming prohibiting the employment of the children not having reached a certain age and at regulating the working conditions for those which reached the minimum age. The majority fixed an age more raised for dangerous work, prohibiting certain activities with the young people of less than 18 years. Nevertheless, of many gaps remain especially with regard to the field of application of these laws and their concrete application, sometimes for lack of resources necessary to ensure control and the application of it, sometimes fault of political good-will, but often simply because the authorities are disarmed vis-a-vis a largely invisible phenomenon and which thrives on social plagues as deeply enracinés as the cultural poverty, discrimination and prejudices.

The examination of the various legislations of the 155 Member States of ILO^26(*) made it possible to note that, if the majority of the countries adopted a legislation envisaging a basic minimum age for the admission of the children to employment or work, numbers of them do not conform to the convention n°138 which prescribes to fix a single minimum age for the admission at all the types of employment : only 33 countries did it, and that is practical current only in Europe. The usual formula consists in fixing a minimum age which applies only to certain sectors or activities. Another formula, which a quarter of the Member States chose, consists in fixing different ages for various economic sectors, while excluding completely certain sectors or activities. Approximately 45 countries conform to the spirit of convention since they fix the minimum age of admission at employment at 15 years and 37 countries fix it at 14 years. The 15 years limit has especially course in Europe and that 14 years in the rest of the world. The minimum age is 16 years in 23 country and 15 to 16 years in four others. Consequently, 122 countries at least have a legislation prohibiting the child work of less than 14 years, at least in certain sectors. On the other hand, in 30 countries, the children of less than 14 years have the right to work and in 6 the minimum age is only 12 years. It is in Africa and Asia, the largest suppliers of childish labor that the fork minimum is broadest : the minimum age varies there from 12 to 16 years. Moreover, because of relative flexibility of convention n°138, agriculture is excluded from its field of application in 38 countries located for the majority in Asia. On the other hand, the industrial activities always return in the field of application of convention, and this in all the countries. One of the most current exclusions, envisaged by an about sixty country, relates to the family companies, defined in a more or less broad way, as well as the domestic services.

About half of the countries authorize the children of a lower age at least general to carry out certain types of light work : 13 countries withdraw certain types of work from any restriction, but the majority fixes for this work a minimum age of 12,13 or 14 years.

These exclusions highlight perfectly the serious legal gaps or at least the important limits as for the part which the legislation is supposed to play in the fight against the child work. Indeed, as we saw previously it are in these excluded branches of industry, i.e. in the agricultural sector and the domestic services, like in the small workshops and the family companies operating in the sector not structured, that one finds the majority of the children who work. To cure these gaps, the international community decided to adopt a great convention taking again all the principles having to govern the rights of the children, by the means of the United Nations.

SECTION II
The International Convention relating to the rights of the child and his application

The International Convention relating to the rights of the child is currently the legal instrument most complete as regards rights of the child. Adopted in 1989, this convention thus intervenes after the adoption of conventions of the International Labor Organization which we studied previously. One can then wonder about the interest to adopt a new convention on the rights of the child. For including/understanding the motivations of the United Nations well, it is necessary to study the genesis of this text (Paragraph I) before seeing its contents and its application in the national laws (Paragraph II).

Paragraphe I  :
Genesis of the International Convention of
rights of the child

The international community began with slowness and relatively recently, in the way having led to the International Convention of the rights of the child. With the idea that the children had special needs succeeded the conviction that the children had rights, and the same range of rights as the adults with knowing of the rights, civil and political, social, cultural and economic. The first legal stage was reached in 1924 when the Company of the Nations ratified the first declaration, said Déclaration of Geneva, on the rights of the child. The charter of the United Nations in 1945 has, its side prepared the ground for convention by exhorting the countries to promote and encourage the respect of the humans right and of fundamental freedoms « for all ». The universal Declaration of the humans right adopted in 1948, clearly revealed a will to recognize and protect the rights of the children. It proclaims that « all the being human are born free and equal in dignity and rights... », stresses that « maternity and childhood are entitled to a help and a special assistance » and sees in the family « natural and fundamental elements of the company ». Always in 1948, the General meeting also adopted a second Declaration on the rights of the child ; it is a brief text which takes over Declaration of Geneva : « By the present declaration on the rights of the child... the men and the women of all the countries, considering that humanity must give to the child best itself, state to have a duty to satisfy this obligation in all connections... » Almost immediately after this second declaration, it was taken the decision to work out a third declaration even more detailed which led to the drafting of a third Declaration of the rights of the child adoptive by the General meeting in 1959. However, these declarations state an intention of moral nature : they are not constraining legal instruments, as the two international pacts which will be adopted in 1961. These two relative international Pacts, respectively, with the civil laws and political^27(*) and the social and cultural economic rights^28(*) have obligatory force for the States left and thus constitute for the countries a legal obligation as well as moral to respect the humans right of each individual. The Pact relating to the civil laws and political, aimed at prohibiting slavery, serfdom and obligatory work, like protecting the minors and envisaged the establishment of a Committee of the humans right made up of 18 independent experts who could be seized by a State left or a private individual claiming to be victim of a left violation of the rights stated by a State. The international Pact relating to the economic, social and cultural rights contained provisions concerning obligatory and free primary education teaching. These two pacts were ratified by 135 States out of the 185 Member States of UNO.

So that the rights of the child carry the seal of the international law, one thus needed a convention or a pact. Also, in 1978, with the threshold of the international Year of the child sponsored by the United Nations, Poland it officially proposed a project of text concerning a Convention on the rights of the child. The following year, the commission of the humans right of the United Nations created a working group charged to alter and pack the Polish text of origin. The working group largely took as a starting point the the universal Declaration of the humans right, of the Pact international relating to the civil laws and political and of the Pact international relating to the rights economic, social and cultural to work out what became the 41 Leitartikeces of the International Convention of the rights of the child. The General meeting of the United Nations adopted unanimously the Convention on the rights of the child on November 20, 1989. To date, the International Convention of the rights of the child is the instrument relating to the humans right most largely and quickly ratified history. All the countries ratified it today, except the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, the Islands Cook, Oman, Somalia and Switzerland^29(*).

Paragraphe II  :
An ambitious convention but still too recent
to measure made progress

The convention of the United Nations of 1989 relating to the rights of the child^30(*) is the international instrument most complete at present as regards child work. This convention defines the child as all « old human be less than 18 years, except if the majority were reached earlier under the terms of the legislation which is applicable for him ». It aims at defending a whole series of rights of the child, among whom that « to be protected from the economic exploitation and not to be compels with any work comprising of the risks or likely to compromise its education or to harm its health or its development physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social »^31(*).
While indirectly referring to the international standards of work, this convention imposes on the States started from fix a minimum age or minimum ages of access to employment, to regulate the duration as well as the working conditions and to apply suitable sorrows and sanctions to ensure the effective application of these provisions. ^32(*)

The International Labor Office regularly communicates information on the application of the relevant provisions of this instrument to the Working group of presentation of the Committee of the rights of the child, who examines the reports/ratios of the States left relating to his application.
Certain articles of convention relate to the other extreme shapes of work children, for example, the sexual exploitation and violence^33(*), removal, the sale and the draft of children at some end that it is and all other forms of exploitation prejudicial to any aspect of their wellbeing. This convention invites the States left to take all measurements possible and adapted to facilitate the physical, psychological and social readjustment of any child victim of any form of negligence, exploitation or maltreatments^34(*). The right of the child to education is also recognized by the Convention on the rights of the child who lays out that primary education teaching should be obligatory and free for all^35(*).

Convention caused a major change which already starts to have notable effects on the attitudes of the international community with regard to his/her children. Since a State ratified Convention, it is juridically held to take all adequate measurements to help the responsible parents and other parts to hold the obligations which it imposes towards the children. At present, 96% of the children of the world live in countries juridically obliged to protect the rights of the children. To fulfill their obligations, the States are sometimes obliged to make fundamental modifications to the laws, national institutions, plans, policies and uses so aligning them on the principles of Convention. The first priority must be to cause the political good-will to do it. As had recognized it the writers of Convention, there will be real change in the life of the children only when ethics and the social attitudes gradually evolve/move to become in conformity with the laws and the principles, and, when the children, become actors of this process, know sufficiently their rights to claim themselves some. The Committee of the rights of the child is the body officially charged to supervise the process. The States begin to subject in the two years following the ratification and thereafter every five years, a report/ratio to the measures which they will have adopted to modify their national legislations like formulating policies and action plans. The Committee made up of ten experts, gathers the information checked near nongovernmental organizations (ONG) and intergovernmental, including the UNICEF, and these groups can prepare reports/ratios independent of those of the governments. The Committee and the government concerned meet then to discuss the efforts made in the country in favor of the rights of the child and the measures to be taken to overcome the difficulties. This system of report/ratio proved to be dynamic and constructive, opening a dialog which helps to make progress the rights of the child. Unfortunately, much of country neglected to forward their reports/ratios within the deadlines.

The process of application of Convention is yet only with its stammerings but this international treaty in favor of the children already starts to make feel its effects. As the UNICEF in 1996 in its publication indicated it « The progress of the nations », 14 of the 43 countries whose reports/ratios could have been examined at that time had integrated the principles of Convention in their Constitution, and 35 had adopted new laws or had amended the existing texts to conform to it. Lastly, 13 countries had incorporated Convention in their school syllabus, capital step to start to inform the children of their rights.

The development of an international will to fight the child work is from now on made thing but what at the national level happenhappens ? Indeed, even if it appears simple to enact great ideals within a International Convention, the task is often much more difficult when it is a question of politically translating these fine wordss within the national laws of often poor and not very stable countries . Convention states the obligation made in the States envisage a regulation as regards dangerous work, but we should see now if this enacted will were followed by the States left. Unfortunately, little country currently defines the concept of dangerous work in their general legislation. Usually this dangerous work is defined in general terms as those which threaten health, the safety or the morality of the children, thus taking again the vocabulary used by convention n°138. Moreover, little of legislations envisage general prohibitions. Most of the time, are enumerated industries the prohibited professions and dangerous activities with the children, like, for example, the minings, maritime work, work on machines moving, the handling of explosive or harmful substances, construction or demolition, transport and the spectacles. Often also, the national legislation refers to work physically arduous for the young people or disproportionate with their forces. In certain cases, the concept of dangerous work is extended to situations where the lack of experience or maturity is likely to threaten safety of others. Another approach consists in defining the risks related to the physical environment or the particularly harmful ergonomic risks to which the children should not be exposed. It is thus seen that the concepts of aptitude of the child for work or painfulness of work remain subjected to extremely variable interpretations according to countries', and this all the more according to the type of activity more represented in the country. The measurements taken as regards dangerous work will be centered on the extractive activities in a country with mining production like Colombia, on the domestic services in the very poor countries like Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or on the show business in countries like Thailand.

The deplorable conditions of work, and thus of life, million children thus from now on are taken into account, and strongly fought on a world level. However, in front of the extent of the task to be achieved, and the relative effectiveness of the international standards, the international community decided into 1999 to change strategy, in order to be effective more quickly.

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 day^36(*) 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.

Paragraphe II :
Causes external with the needs for the families

One of the factors of the child work, and undoubtedly one of principal, is the failure of universal schooling. The UNICEF estimates that today more than 130 million children are not provided education for, figure which would reach even the 404 million if one includes all the children of less than 18 years. It is very easy to establish the link between this figure and that of the children to work. Among the 250 million active children in the world, the International Labor Office evaluates to 120 million the number of those which work full-time and thus having schedules of work incompatible with any possibility of studies : 38% work more than 40 hours per week and 13% at least 56 hours. Moreover, for the children who do not work yet, quantitative and qualitative deficiencies of the educational infrastructures, prevent them from having an education worthy of this name. Consequently, the parents prefer to send their children in the fields, for example, rather than at the school where what one will teach them them will not be of any utility. However, one should not show these parents not to want to send their children to the school, but to understand that two essential reasons push them to act thus : first of all, the school expenses are very high for a poor family and finally, while it is at the school, the child does not work and thus does not contribute to the incomes of households. Indeed, the state education, supposedly free, in general involves a very heavy investment for a poor family which must take responsibility for her the books, uniforms and other school stationery, transport charge, even sometimes to pay money with the teachers. That also explains why many children are obliged to work to pay their school fees, but everyone agrees to saying that after one working day, a child is not under the best conditions, to draw all the benefit from the teaching which it receives.

Moreover, much of children access to education does not have, quite simply because they do not have a school near their dwelling. We will see later on that the fight against the child work must imperatively pass initially by a considerable effort as regards education in the developing countries. It is only by proposing an education accessible to all, geographically and financially, and making it possible to the children to consider an improvement of their situation, that the child work will move back.

For including/understanding the extent of the child work well, it is necessary also to have for the spirit that childish labor is very required and sought by the employers. The reasons are very simple, they are economic reasons. It is considered indeed that the employers resort to this labor, in spite of prohibitions, because it is to them less expensive than the adult labor. Indeed, in much of case, the workers children do not cost absolutely anything or almost, and this in particular in the companies of small size, which are, let us recall it the largest childish employer of labors. However, the economic viability of this type of company often depends on this not remunerated labor. Considerations of cost enter also concerned in the case of the small establishments not declared and financially precarious that one meets in mass in the abstract sector of the developing countries. Under the pretext, that the employers give them the possibility of learning the rudiments from a trade, the pay of the children is often reduced to a little pocket money granted of time other by the employer. In the domestic services, the roof and cover are frequently the only remuneration of the work carried out by the children, and that when the employers are not too severe, because often the children have to hardly eat and sleep outside. The same applies to the children who work to refund the debt of the parents, within the framework of the constraint for debts, and which are thus not paid because their wages is supposed to refund the debt, which is seldom the case. That the children are less better paid than the adults is true in the majority of the cases, but often that is used as excuse to the employers who call upon that the overcost caused by the use of adults in the place of the children would prevent their company from being competitive. It is often claimed that the children are irreplaceable in certain industries of export which would cease being competitive if they saw private possibility of childish labor ; it was in particular the argument called upon by the manufacturers of carpets woven with the hand in India. However, a study undertaken by the International Labor Office showed that for these industries, the child work was not essential to the economic survival of this industry, because the overcost of the use of adults was surprisingly modest in proportion of the price to which the carpets are sold in the importing countries : between 5 and 10% of the price^39(*). Under these conditions, one can wonder why the employers continue to employ this childish labor, the more so as the boycott movements of the products manufactured by children multiply and cause a drop in the sales of these employers. The reason in is simple, in the industry of the carpet, the final recipients are the owners of trades, which are themselves poor and work with very weak profit margins, therefore by employing children, they can double their incomes. Lastly, beyond the economic slope of work, there is an important psychological slope, explaining the recourse to this labor : the children are less conscious than the adults of their rights, they make less stories, are disciplined, go away less and especially they more easily accept a hard employment without complaining. Their activity being generally illegal, they do not risk in addition to going to complain with the authorities or affiliating themselves with a trade union. Childish labor is thus very malleable and one can thus exploit it more easily, because it does not complain. Another argument used by the employers would be that the children would be irreplaceable because of their « fingers of fairy » : for example, it is often said that only the children, who have the very fine fingers, would be able to tie carpets with a strong density of points. However, and that is not any more to show from now on, some of the most beautiful carpets are manufactured by adults, therefore if one can do without the dexterity of the children to weave the carpets, one sees badly in which activities their fingers of fairies would be essential ! Moreover, most of the time, the children are employed with tasks such as handling or packing in industry, tasks that an adult little completely to achieve as well. This argument of childish dexterity is not thus any more from now on one valid argument, to be able to excuse the behavior of employers not very scrupulous, eager quite simply to do an utmost of profits on the back of the children, without worrying about the consequences on the health of those.

Lastly, the last major cause of work children, is the epidemic of AIDS which has prevailed for several years in Africa and Asia. With nearly 30 million adults and children infected by the HIV in 2000, sub-Saharan Africa indeed constitutes the area touched hard. This area only records with it 50% of the 8.500 new infections which occur each day in the world. The HIV is not limited any more to the cities but is spread now at a speed alarming in the rural zones and it touches the country population, in particular the most productive people i.e. those old from 15 to 45 years. Consequently a great number of heads of households died of the AIDS, and the families are inserted more and more in poverty and the responsibilities are increasingly heavy for the survivors, particularly the children. Questioned on the child work in the plantations of tea of Tanzania, Mr. Norman Kelly, General manager of the plantation Brooke Jump, answers: «Adult labor decreases quickly because of the strong incidence of the HIV/AIDS among the workers.»^40(*) A study carried out by the UNICEF in six countries of the Southern Africa and East Africa notes that «the HIV/AIDS dismantles the families and increases the possibilities of exploitation of the children by work... Just at the age where the children should go to the school, their doors and new responsibilities for heads of households force them to give up their schooling». This cause of work children, cannot unfortunately be fought by the International Conventions, but by an immense work of prevention of the risks of the AIDS in Africa and Asia, colossal work not easily realizable.

Conscious of these multiple causes and its impotence to fight them quickly, the international community then decided to enact a convention intended to fight firstly against the worst shapes of work children.

SECTION II  :
THE CREATION OF STANDARDS AGAINST « WORSE FORMS OF WORK
CHILDREN »

Adopted in 1999, Convention n°182 on the worst shapes of work children, intervenes after the adoption of other more complete and more general international standards. One can thus wonder about the interest of this new convention
(Paragraph I), before seeing its contribution with the already existing legal system precisely (Paragraph II).

Paragraphe I  :
Why a new more restricted convention ?

The already existing international standards, such as conventions on the forced labor or the minimum age, as well as the International Convention relating to the rights of the child, could not prevent the energization of million children since their entries into force. Indeed, these conventions are not concretely applicable because of the causes which we have just stated, because they do not take really those in consideration. For essential that they are, the laws did not succeed in eliminating work from the children. Everywhere in the world, not only prohibitions are violated, but even the laws which have as an ambition only to regulate certain work, without prohibiting them, are not respected. The elimination of the child work thus passes it by a prohibition in block, or a more pragmatic approach ? The international community, seems to have chosen the second possibility, while deciding to attack itself, to start, with « worse forms of the child work ». With this intention, it adopted a new standard, having a field of application less broad than conventions than we saw previously. The goal is quite simply to begin with éradiquer the most intolerable shapes of work children, and then only when all the conditions to do it are met, to eliminate most completely possible work from the children, i.e. in its forms « tolerable ».

It was thus necessary, for even enacting a convention aiming at éradiquer the most intolerable shapes of work children, to agree on this concept of intolerable forms. An essential debate was born then : how to define the border enters
« intolerable » and it « tolerable » ? This debate saw to be opposed on a side, the abolitionists of the child work, in particular the trade unions of the international Confederation of the free trade unions, which affirm that the place of the child is at the school and not with work, whatever the work, and other side the not-abolitionists, primarily made up of nongovernmental Organizations acting on the ground and who wanted to be realistic, while considering it impossible to propose a short-term alternative to all the hard-working children of the world. One thus found on this occasion, the debate which existed in France at the end of the XIXème century between the need for removing or to frame the poor child work. However, at that time, the vision abolitionist ended up triumphing, thanks to the schooling of all the children and to a protection of poorest. However, today, the debate is inevitable for the developing countries because it is indeed difficult to remove day at the following day the child work if the primary education requirements for those are not met, or if essential infrastructures miss, such as schools. But that should not however prevent from developing a long-term vision : on this question, the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists meet at least on the diagnosis, namely that to put an end to the activity of the children, it will not be enough to a regulation of the work, but which it will be necessary to begin of true reforms to eliminate absolute poverty.

Nevertheless, one can wonder it is not a question oneself there of a renunciation of the international community, which in front of the extent of the child work, lowers to some extent the arms, and is satisfied to attack with most serious and thus more shocking for the public opinion. Indeed, it is not easily conceivable that one deliberately leaves children to work, whereas one saves some of them others, under pretext which them work would be more tolerable. However, it is not in these terms that it is necessary to consider the report of the children : it is obvious that all the hard-working children must be torn off with their work to reach an education of quality, but unfortunately, in the current state of the development of certain countries, this objective is inaccessible. Consequently, and that seems me to be the best possible approach, the international community and in particular the International Labor Organization decided to make to some extent « with the means of the edge » and to initially attack the most serious attacks towards the children. Once this achieved objective, and these saved children of the exploitation, the international community will have to bring all help necessary to the developing countries, so that those can propose solid alternatives to the children and the poor relations, in order to prevent those from having to resort to the work of their children.

In his report/ratio on the situation of the children in the world in 1997, the UNICEF held already this speech : the UNICEF wanted to fight the myth according to which the child work would never be eliminated as much as poverty would remain. For this organization, even if it is trying to conclude that the child work and poverty are inseparable, and that the calls in favor of the immediate elimination of the most dangerous forms of the child work are utopian, it should not especially be forgotten that the exploitation of these children profits with the employers for whom it is an additional source of profit. This is why, the employment of the children to dangerous work could and was to be eliminated independently from vaster measurements aiming at limiting poverty. In any event, so today the international community wants to be credible in its speech, it cannot require these countries which they implement indeed, laws prohibiting the child work. Indeed, the situation generated by this requirement would be then worse than the current situation : the families cannot often do without the income generated by the work of their children, therefore the children will continue to work but even more clandestinely still than today and thus under conditions even more precarious, and will be even with difficulty protégeables because inaccessible.

Moreover, one cannot force these poor populations not to make work their children because they do not have any other alternative for them : these children do not have access to the school, either because it is too expensive, or quite simply because there is not school near their dwelling. Consequently, not only these children will not be educated, but in more they will not be formed to work the ground which they will have to cultivate later, and the girls will not be able to hold the hearth, as they will have to make it when they will be married. Moreover, experiments were already made, of pure and simple closing-down of factories employing of the children illegally, and the results were more than disappointing : the children who worked in these factories obviously ceased working there, but having been thrown to the street without reclassification, they found paid all another employment even harder and less better. It is thus completely useless, to want to apply the International Conventions strictly, under penalty of seeing the situation of these children becoming even more difficult, despite everything the good intentions of which proof these conventions make.
It thus appears preferable today to attack the most serious shapes of work children in priority, and to in parallel set up in these developing countries, of the structures able to accommodate and train these children.

However, one can also wonder about the need for adopting a new convention, whereas the International Conventions into force as regards prohibition of work children, are not applied by the countries signatories. Indeed, convention n° 138 that we studied previously is the international standard with regard to the child work, but it is ratified little by the developing countries, and especially it is not applied. Therefore, why, to enact a new international standard, whereas it would be enough to make apply that already existing ? The reason is however simple : the ultimate goal of convention n° 138 is the complete abolition of the child work, but it is largely allowed today that this process will take time and that the children working under extreme conditions cannot wait, until the problems of long-term development are solved. This need encouraged the adoption of new standards concerning the worst shapes of work children, in order to ensure that these forms are the priority of any national and international action.
Moreover, one mobilization in favor of new standards will in addition make it possible to maintain the dash necessary to the action. The fact of concentrating on the worst shapes of work children has as favors additional than the policies designed to treat the question of the most stripped children, are likely to benefit the other children who work, and who the attention paid to the examples more feeling reluctant under the social angle can contribute to maintain engagement and the social consensus necessary to the total abolition of the child work. At the same time, convention n°138 remains the base of any national and international action in favor of the complete abolition of the child work, and the recommendation n° 146 which accompanies it, provides the complete hot lines for the elimination of this work and for the adoption of national policies which meet the needs for the children and their families.

Paragraphe II  :
The contribution of Convention n°182

Twenty years after having adopted convention n°138, of general interest, the International Labor Office thus changes strategy, by estimating that it would be unrealistic to want to act on all fronts with time. It thus seemed preferable to him to offer a certain room for maneuver to the States, in their proposer in the immediate future to treat only part of the child work ; nevertheless, the bet of the International Labor Office is to thus open the way with a process of elimination in the long term touching all the forms of work.

This convention was discussed during the International Labor Conference in June 1998^41(*), and the great questions which were discussed there related to primarily the obligation of elimination « immediate » of the worst shapes of work children, the definition of these forms, and the role of the nongovernmental organizations and other groups concerned with convention. The text of the project of this convention examined during the conference used the expression « the extreme shapes of work children », but the hard-working members suggested replacing the term « extremes » by the term « worse » estimating that that Ci would be more comprehensible for general public and would translate the idea that the certain shapes of work children are worse than others. Others deputy estimated as for them that the term « worse » was too vague and that mention « extremes » would offer a more solid base to operate judgments and to take care that all work being of an extreme nature is resumed. The Conference was finally appropriate to retain the expression « the worse shapes of work children », and to define its significance and its context in Convention.
The members of the Conference, had then to agree on the form which this project was to take ; they decided that there would be a convention together with a recommendation which would supplement the basic instruments of ILO as regards child work, namely convention and the recommendation about the minimum age of 1973. Many interventions stressed the need for adopting a short, precise convention and comprising guiding principles likely to be ratified and actually applied in the countries developed as well as under development. Taking into account the gravity of the problem, and urgency to intervene, a distinct preference was expressed for a juridically constraining convention and a complementary recommendation which could facilitate the implementation of convention and offer more detailed hot lines as for practical measurements.

The Conference also made important decisions with regard to the definition of the worst forms of work, formulated so as to include all the forms of slavery of the children, use of the children for purposes of prostitution or illicit activities, and dangerous work which puts in danger health, the safety and the morality of the children. The mention of illicit activities was preferred with that of illegal activities, in order to align itself on the treaties of the United Nations on the narcotics^42(*). Moreover, in spite of the will of hundreds of organizations of workers and certain governments, convention does not quote specific types of dangerous work and does not integrate in the convention of specific criteria allowing to determine dangerous work. Indeed, if the list of convention were too precise, it could restrictive and quickly be exceeded, or not to hold account adequately levels different of technology and practices as regards safety in the various countries. Consequently, its effectiveness could then be threatened, because of an overzealousness of its writers.

The Conference of 1998 concluded that consultations should take place with the organizations of employers and workers for better specifying dangerous work at the national level and to define and implement the action plans which convention claims.

The general Conference of the International Labor Organization thus adopted on June 17, 1999 convention n°182 on the worst shapes of work children. It recalls to it in preamble, « need for adopting new instruments aiming at the prohibition and the elimination of the worst shapes of work children », and that the effective elimination of the worst forms of the child work requires an immediate overall action. One sees as of the preamble, that this convention does not claim to be a miracle solution with the problem of the child work, because this one is « to a large extent caused by the poverty and that the long-term solution lies in the constant economic growth leading to the social progress, and in particular with the attenuation of poverty and universal education » but nevertheless, it will be used to define the intolerable forms of the child work who will have to be immediately prohibited^43(*). As for the other International Conventions, the term of child will apply to any old person of less than 18 years and convention must be applied to them even if the national legislation provides that childhood finishes earlier. Article 3 enumerates the various intolerable shapes of work children, namely : « all forms of slavery (...), such as the constraint for debts and the forced labor ; the use, the recruitment or the offer of a child at ends of prostitution (...)or of illicit activities, in particular production or traffic of narcotics ( ...) ; and finally work which by their nature, or the conditions under which they are exerted, been likely to harm health, the safety or the morality of the child ». This last intolerable form of work, being a rather vague concept, will have to be precisely defined by the national legislation. Convention thus enumerates some of the worst forms of the child work by leaving at the national level a certain latitude to determine which are the dangers which make than a work concerns the category of the worst forms.

This convention was adopted unanimously of the 174 Member States of the International Labor Organization and came into effect on November 19, 2000. The Recommendation on the worst forms of the child work which accompanies Convention exhorts the Member States to make worse forms of work of the children enumerated in convention, the penal infringements and to take penal sanctions. This recommendation defines dangerous work as « work which exposes the children to physical maltreatments, psychological or sexual ; work which is carried out under ground, water, with dangerous heights or in confined spaces ; work which is carried out with machines, material or tools dangerous or which implies to handle or carry heavy loads ; work which is carried out in an unhealthy medium being able, for example, to expose children to substances, agents or processes dangerous, or in conditions of temperature, of noise or vibrations prejudicial with their health ; work which is carried out under particularly difficult conditions, for example during long hours, or the night, or for which the child is retained in an unjustified way in the buildings of the employer ».

Mr Somavia, General manager of the International Labor Office, in amusing of the adoption of this convention, estimated that with this one, the Office « from now on the means of making urgent eradication of the worst shapes of work children a new world cause had » and that « this cause should from now on be translated, not by words but by acts, not by speeches but by policies and laws ». Indeed, this convention n°182 on the worst shapes of work children, is of a binding nature for the States signatories, but not the recommendation which supplements it. However, one can notice that the injunction made in the States set up the worst shapes of work children in penal infringements and take penal sanctions against those which are made guilty from there, is not inside the convention which it leaves the free choice between penal sanctions or « if necessary, other sanctions »^44(*), but in the recommendation. Consequently, this very important, and even essential obligation for implementation the effective of an effective policy of fight against the child work, does not have vocation to be obligatory for the States signatories what one can deplore.

This convention n° 182 thus comes to supplement the legal arsenal available to the international community to fight against the child work, and in particular convention n° 138 on the minimum age. Convention n° 182 is centered on part of the child work whose treat convention n° 138 and also, to a lesser extent, convention n° 29 on the forced labor, as well as other international instruments aiming at the abolition of slavery and the similar practices, and on the Convention of the United Nations relating to the rights of the child. However, it further goes and is more precise than convention n° 138 on certain aspects : for example, it is more specific as for the types of work the children who are prohibited for less than 18 years, in what it enumerates explicitly, like the worse shapes of work children, slavery and the recruitment or the offer of children at ends of illicit activities. Moreover, contrary to convention n°138, convention n° 182 does not comprise exception for certain sectors of the economy. Consequently, the worst shapes of work children must be prohibited and eliminated in all the branches of industry, which is in conformity with the wish to treat types of work which are intolerable for all the countries, whatever their level of development and their specificity of production. Lastly, this new convention also differs from convention n° 138 in what it requires the immediate elimination of the worst shapes of work children in explicit provisions centered to concrete measures, in particular those which impose the definition and the implementation of action plans, of measurements of prevention, the withdrawal of the children at worst the forms of work, readjustment and social rehabilitation, and in what it asks that measures are taken to found a co-operation and an international assistance within the framework of the elimination of the worst shapes of work children^45(*).

However, even if this convention is too much recent, so that one has an idea of his concrete application, it seems difficult to believe and hope that these terms will be respected with the letter by States which already signed International Conventions, but which still do not have the means of applying them. It is necessary this convention parallel to, to continue to act on the ground to improve the situation of the children.

CHAPITRE II  :
THE SEARCH OF MORE CONCRETE SOLUTIONS AND ALTERNATIVES TO THE CHILD WORK

The international community began to quickly eliminate work from the children under dangerous conditions and, later on with éradiquer completely the plague which constitutes the child work. However, it would be completely utopian, to think of being able to withdraw the children purely and simply work which they carry out without their proposing of the solutions of replacement. The result would be then completely contrary to that discounted and would increase considerably the misery of these children.

Among these solutions of replacement all the States must provide the children not working an education of quality and accessible to all ; it is in this paramount requirement that undoubtedly the principal solution resides at the problem of the child work, and therefore to support education is a starting point essential to the eradication of the child work (Section I). However, the fight against the child work must be carried out on several faces at the same time to be effective. It is essential to obtain a broad consensus within the public opinion and of the community concerned, so that the situation of these children develops
(Section II).

SECTION I  :
To support education : an essential starting point

So that education is a true solution with the problem of the child work, one needs that it is offered to all the children, including those which are currently with work but those are most of the time not very inclined to leave their work
(Paragraph I), because they undoubtedly estimate rightly that education is not appropriate to their waitings (Paragraph II).

Paragraphe I  :
To succeed in bringing the children to the school

The assessment of « education for all » realized in 2000 by the UNICEF, the most complete evaluation ever carried out as regards development of education, shows that the rate Net of inscription at the primary school increased in the Nineties in all the areas of the world. However, the objective stated in the International Conventions, such as the International Convention relating to the rights of the child, of the universal access to basic education was not achieved. There remains indeed, nearly 130 million children who are not provided education for ; this figure would be even 404 million if one considers the whole of less than ten eight years. Thanks to these figures, it is rather easy to establish the link between the child work and nonthe access to education, since among the 250 million children who work, the ILO estimates at 120 million the number of those which work full-time, and cannot thus profit from a schooling.

The installation of an education of quality in countries where the child work is very developed runs up against a not easily comprehensible problem : the children always do not wish to go to the school but prefer on the contrary to continue to work. Indeed, the hard-working children themselves do not show a great enthusiasm with the idea to enter a system of education which, most of the time, already disappointed the majority of those which attended it for a short period. They denounce the treatment inhuman and degrading whose are victims much hard-working children during the hours of school, and especially the maladjustment of the school. They want well to learn how to read and write but they do not ask however that the school is the principal activity of childhood. In a study undertaken near the children of the streets in Brazil and Paraguay a considerable part of the questioned children said to prefer to continue to work rather than to turn over to the school. Having known the dangerous freedom of the street, these children are indeed the least likely to run themselves again within the framework of a traditional school. It then becomes all the more difficult to meet their educational needs. In any event, that it is by choice or financial obligation, of the million children cannot leave their work : it is necessary thus that it is the school which comes to them so that they can benefit from its benefits.

Almost all the attempts made to bring education to the children who work were carried out within the framework of programs independent of the education system. One of the most known programs is undoubtedly the program of the rural Committee for the rural development of Bangladesh (BRAC) which deals with children from 8 to 14 years. This program recognizes that the majority of the children who it frequent devote most of their day to be worked in their hearth or the fields : consequently the school day does not exceed two hours and half. Moreover, it is imperative that this type of structure takes account of the daily and seasonal rates/rhythms of the life, such as the periods of harvests. These establishments are installed close to the dwellings of the pupils avoiding to them ways too far after working days sometimes quite tiring. The distance of the schools to see their absence in broad geographical areas is also one of the causes of their nonfrequentation by the rural populations. Lastly, and it is an essential point there, because it is the reproach running made more at the school in the developing countries, teaching insists on competences practice corresponding to the environment of the child. The results of this program are excellent since more than 95% of the pupils complete the three years cycle and most of the time continue at the traditional primary school. There are approximately 3.000 schools of the BRAC offering an access to basic education to nearly a million children bangladais, in the campaigns or the cities.

Another solution to facilitate the access to the education of the children to work is to directly bring education to the children. The idea of « teachers of street » is developed today everywhere in the world. It was born in Latin America where teachers contacted the children of the streets in order to help them to turn over to the school. These programs then developed throughout the world under the name of « schools of the streets » or of « mobile schools » or of « return to the school », and touched more than 60.000 children in the Philippines. The teachers use the pedagogy of the wish to allow the children to draw up plans with a future. The children thus learn how to read and write but they can work at the same time or make a vocational training. Moreover, one considerable aspect of these schools of the streets is that they allow a certain framing of these children, sometimes avoiding to them falling into the traps which they can meet the every day in the street. The teachers also allow these children to reach certain medical care, and provide regular shelters and meals, thus improving their medical situation.

The supreme goal of education for all is of long-term éradiquer the child work. Indeed, the step is registered on several generations : the withdrawn children of work and receiving a qualification, would have a less arduous work and remunerated better and will thus not be obliged, once adult, to send their children to work. The vicious circle of poverty involving poverty would then be broken, with the profit of the circle of the instruction : the parents having profited from the benefits of a basic education will be more inclined to want to inform their children. However, to be able to implement these principles, very creditable, one cannot be satisfied to punctually set up schools of the streets. Nonformal education, i.e. apart from institutional structures, even if it has many advantages and excellent results, should not make forget that it is an institutional system of basic education very important that the developing countries must set up as soon as possible.

Once this system set up, it will be necessary to modify the teaching which cannot remain just as it is because it is not in adequacy with waitings of the families and the children. There are indeed necessary to succeed in making remain the children at the school thanks to gravitational programs and an increased accessibility.

Paragraphe II  :
To offer to the children an adapted education

One of the current characteristics of education in the developing countries is the very short time which spends the children to the school. Indeed, even when the inscription at the primary school reached of the honourable levels, one notes that many children give up their studies : 150 million children left the school before to have finished their fifth year of primary studies^46(*). One can advance two causes with this phenomenon. First of all the schooling is not free and to pay the books and the lunches represent sometimes a heavy sacrifice for a poor family, the more so as while it is at the school, the child does not earn money while working. A basic education aiming at eliminating work from the children must save this expenditure with the stripped families. It is necessary thus that the financial resources make it possible to cover much more than the treatment of the teachers, the installation and the maintenance of the school buildings. The chronic insufficiency of the financing of basic education in the developing countries is a problem which requires a solution, and this one is responsibility for the whole world, in particular because of the heavy burden of the debt which crushes such an amount of developing country.

The debt of the Third World reaches tops today : according to the World Bank, the debt of sub-Saharan Africa was into 1996 of 227 billion dollars, that of the South Asia of 152 billion dollars. The debt of many countries of Africa east two to three times higher than their gross national product, and the refunding of this one absorbs most of their resources. Moreover, during this time, the government aid with the development provided by the rich countries reduced considerably. UNO had fixed for objective which this help would achieve 0.7% of the gross national product industrialized countries of G7, but in 1998, it only accounted for 0.19%. With an enormous debt to refund and resources which do not increase, without counting a population in constant increase, the developing countries have great difficulties in make education a national priority. Moreover, of these financial difficulties, the International Monetary International Monetary Funds imposed on these developing countries plans of financial cleansing which force to strongly compress the public expenditure. It appears obvious that if the rich countries want to keep to their commitments of fight against the child work, they will have to agree of the efforts of a financial nature against the poor countries. Indeed, those will not be able to set up a system of basic education free and accessible to all without this help.

Then, much of rural zones do not have any school system and one needs an unquestionable courage then to traverse the every day of the kilometers to feet to go to the school. In order to rectify this situation of school abandonment, it would be necessary that in rural zone the school goes ahead of of the child, for example by creating small classes of several levels, to provide education for the children with reasonable distances from on their premises. A school accessible to all the children from a small rural zone would encourage, without any doubt, the parents to send their children in class, in particular owing to the fact that the teacher could make to explain pressure on them and them the need for educating their children. So much of children of the same zone find themselves in class, the forsaken children will be able to also ask their parents to join them.

However, if one wants truly to incite the children, and their parents, to benefit from the school, should especially be improved the taught programs. Indeed, so that the schools attract and retain the children, it is necessary that teaching is considered to be relevant by the pupils and their parents. One of the first conditions of success will be thus to bind the lessons to the Community life. In the places where the majority of the children are with work, one could not logically continue to teach as if they did not work. It is necessary to let know, consequently occasion, which types of activities are particularly dangerous, thus supporting a better knowledge of their rights in their in particular explaining the laws on work of the children. One must also give them practical competences for the everyday life. Indeed, the programs should not especially be rigid, but on the contrary to be centered on waitings of the children. Exempted teaching must be able to be flexible and to adapt to the category of population to which it is addressed.

Nevertheless, some is the area where it is exempted, teaching must at least allow all the children of knowing to read, write and count. The children of the rural zones should not be to have programs privileging the recitation, but rather those giving of the practical solutions to their daily problems. Finally and especially, the school must be able to adapt to the Community rate/rhythm of life. The poor families require for all labor available in times of harvests for example, and it is imperative that they can if they wish it to be able to count on the assistance of their children for these periods. It is thus necessary that the school timetable can be modulated, according to the areas and of the periods. Indeed, a family which cannot request from her children a help during harvests, will be very reticent to send them the year according to to the school.

The schools present in Africa see a very high school absentee rate in period of harvest, but it is necessary that this absenteeism is made possible by the school itself. It is the strategy adopted by the Indian State of Kerala where the child work is almost non-existent and the rate of elimination of illiteracy of 91%.L' inscription at the school is free there and a meal is offered to all the schoolboys who can go away easily for the periods when the parents need assistance^47(*). However, the success of this province is not solely with these flexibilities, but also with a real political good-will to support teaching.

Moreover, exemption from payment, accessibility and flexibility, teaching will also have, to be able to develop suitably, to be practiced by qualified people. Indeed, the financial crisis which struck the education of the developing countries, contributed to degrade the remuneration and the situation of the teachers, especially at the primary education level which is however most important. So the quality of the professors who return in the system dropped it too : many teachers had to give up teaching or to take a second, to see the third employment. It is obvious that in these circumstances, of many children cannot consider the school as a place which will widen their horizon and will offer new possibilities to them. So even the professors are obliged to follow several occupations, how the school could it offer an education to them enabling them to obtain a stable employment ? It is thus necessary to privilege the training and the wages of these teachers so that they can do their work under the best possible conditions. Moreover, it will be necessary to replace teachers who have negative ideas towards the poor children, basic caste or who work. Indeed, these children are often victims of important prejudices and can undergo ill treatments during the school, which can only encourage them to leave it. It would thus be necessary to support the use of teachers of the same community as their pupils and to sensitize them with the situation of the children. The use of young teachers, belonging to the same community that that their pupils, could only prove to the children whom education allows a social and economic life more prosperous, and to incite them to benefit from the school.

The resources allotted to education must imperatively be found quickly, so that the objectives of universal schooling are achieved. The industrialized countries will have obviously to make a consequent effort in this direction. The international institutions and the development banks must support the national efforts as well as possible aiming at giving again the absolute priority with primary education teaching. Basic education for all is realizable, if one gives to him the priority required by the Convention on the rights of the child. It is not only one question of resources, but also of political choices. It was estimated that the additional expenditure necessary so that all the children can be provided education for from here the year 2000 was six billion dollars per annum, is less than 1% of what the world spends each year in armaments.

However, the key of the elimination of the child work does not reside solely in the development of a system of education.

SECTION II  :
Importance of the social mobilization in the fight against the child work

The social mobilization has undoubtedly a key role to play in the fight against the child work in the world. Indeed, the abolition of the economic exploitation could not be done without a broad consensus in the world opinion. Nevertheless, this mobilization, as sincere as are its reasons, can sometimes have perverse effects, in particular as regards boycotts of products manufactured by the products (Paragraph I). It remains however, an essential factor to make evolve/move the situation of these children (Paragraph II).

Paragraphe I  :
The boycott of the products resulting from the child work :
a false solution

The boycott of the products manufactured by the children is an undeniable tool of pressure. International engagement and the pressures which accompany it are without any doubt useful. However, the sanctions touch only exporting industries which do not exploit, contrary to certain generally accepted ideas, which a relatively small percentage children. Exporting industries are the most visible sector in which the children work. The soccer balls manufactured by the children in Pakistan to be used by the children in the industrialized countries are without any doubt emblematic. Nevertheless, one should not forget tens of million children who work in the sectors not centered on export. In fact, only a very small percentage of the hard-working children are employed in industries of export, probably less than 5%. Nevertheless, the testimony of small Iqbal Masih, former Pakistani slave assassinated in 1995, had revealed the true face of the manufacture of carpet in Pakistan. The result had been immediate : the sales turnover of the export of the carpets in Pakistan fell vertiginously. For this case, the effect of the boycott had been very interesting, since under the international pressure, and especially of the fall of the sales turnover, the Association of the manufacturers and exporters of carpet of the country agree to sign in 1998 an agreement with the ILO, concerning the withdrawal of 8.000 children of work.

Of course, it is not a question of saying « let us buy French » or « especially let us not buy as soon as one sees made in Clouded or made in Bangladesh ». It is not a question to boycott Chinese products to sanction second once of the Chinese workmen who, not only do not have freedom on the place of work, but which moreover would lose their employment because they would not have any more outlets.

The boycott is indeed a weapon with double edge which it is necessary to use with much prudence. The long-term consequences of these sanctions are not always foreseeable and one is then likely to make more evil than good with the children. The history of the bill Harkin is completely revealing dangers of the boycott. This project, presented at the American Congress in 1992, of which the goal was to prohibit the importation of products manufactured by the children of less than 15 years, had caused a true panic in the industry of clothing in Bangladesh which exports 60% of its production towards the United States. Before even the adoption of this text, the factories returned day to the following day the 500.000 hard-working children, who were for the majority of girls. A study sponsored by international organizations sought some of these children to learn what had arrived to them after their dismissal : a great part of them were devoted to other activities often more dangerous and less better paid, even with the prostitution. This project is the perfect illustration of the good intentions of the international community which can make much more evil with the children than of good. This example should be included/understood that because of the potential danger that any sanction contains, it is each time advisable to evaluate of them the short-term and long-term effects on the life of the children.

It seems more suitable, and less dangerous, to conclude with the companies from the charters from good control. Campaigns, going in this direction saw the day in the middle of the years four twenty ten in Europe, on the initiative of organizations of consumers, trade unions and nongovernmental organizations (ONG). These campaigns, called « Ethics on the label » in France, prefer with the boycott, the public interpellation of the marks so that they adopt a code of conduct, together with independent controls, which implies necessarily the end of the relations with the subcontractors who violate the social rights. In connection with these campaigns, of the surveys showed that the consumers were ready to pay a possible overcost to avoid the child work. However, it is not obligatorily to the consumers to pay expensive, but with the intermediaries to gain a little less. If one studies the composition of the cost price of a shoe of Nike sport for example sold 53 euros, the price of labor is established to 1.72% is 1 euro. On the other hand the expenses of publicity represents 4.58% either 2.5 euros and the share of the retailer to 39.88% or 21 euros^48(*). It is thus seen that while reducing this would be only third the share publicity, and by transferring this third in the form of wages, one would double the versed wages.

However, even if many companies included/understood the interest of such a charter for their image, they did not accept all the same rules. Some adopted a code written by ONG, but of others chose internal charters suspected by ONG of partiality and whose controls comprise sometimes important gaps. The ILO analyzed 215 codes of conduct and only half approached the child work, and a quarter the forced labor. Moreover the adoption of a code of conduct its effective application does not guarantee at all. The public engagement of the companies is thus still lacunar and for this reason ONG have creates the social labels.

The social labels constitute alternate circuits of consumption : ONG select products manufactured under respectful conditions of rights social and bought to small producers of the Third World at a reasonable price, which enables them to leave poverty. The goal is to reverse the current trade founded on the exploitation of the Third World, to establish relations of equitable trade aiming at supporting its development. These products are then marketed in the rich countries under specific labels. This type of policy is spreading itself throughout the world. The Abrinq foundation, group of almost 2.000 homes of businesses and manufacturers of toys which was constituted in 1990 to defend the rights of the child, decree a special label « friend of the children » at the companies which prove that with any stage production did not have recourse to the child work. During the first ten months of the program, 150 companies deserved the approval of Abrinq. Mr. Magri, coordinator of the programme of granting of the label is astonished itself by the success of this label : « We did not hope only in if little time, the companies not only would agree not to employ childish labor, but would also exert pressures on their suppliers so that they make some in the same way ».

From now on certain multinationals developed strategies to improve the practices of employment at the local level, asserting in certain cases the right to cancel, without allowance, of the orders carried out with childish labor. The question of the child work thus becomes impossible to circumvent for industries making trade with the developing countries.

It is at the international level that one is likely the most to influence the behavior of these companies. A debate currently makes rage on the advisability of integrating in the rules of the world Organization of the trade a social clause setting the minimal standards of behavior to open with the companies the right to make deals on a worldwide scale. In the number of the conditions prohibition would appear to employ children. However, one should not which this social clause generates the same perverse effects as the boycott. The children should not have to suffer from the goodwills of the rich countries. It is necessary thus that these social clauses are generalized, but that true alternatives are proposed to the families and the children so that the child work can disappear one day. Nevertheless, these sanctions or these incentives, even if they do not attack the essential cause of the child work who is poverty, are directed against the contractors profiting from the economic exploitation of the children. They thus have the advantage of attacking one of the principal causes of the child work : the search for profits increasingly larger on behalf of not very scrupulous contractors.

However, the social mobilization necessary to any action against the child work is not limited to financial or commercial sanctions.

Paragraphe II  :
Need for creating a broad social consensus
against the child work

The social mobilization is a decisive step which guarantees an engagement favorable to the change. During the twentieth century, the social mobilization was used of many manners to achieve goals as different as the application from the laws concerning the racial and sexual equality, or as a change voluntarily agreed in favor of the environmental protection. Currently, the term of social mobilization indicates such a variety of actions of groups that the area of agreement on its exact significance is very reduced. Nevertheless, everyone agrees to affirm that any social mobilization aiming at a lasting change and permanent requires : a determination and an engagement to change ; a consecutive action with an awakening ; a dialog and a negotiation which support the respect of the differences and the coordination of the efforts.

The Eighties and Nineties were remembered by the awakening of the civil company to the child work, at one time when the world more largely took conscience than the economic exploitation of the labor of the Third World was one of the conditions of the globalisation of the economy. The wide-area networks were then devoted to the sensitizing of the opinion. During ten last years, the question of the child work became a topic dominating over the international scene. At the same time, associations of consumers engaged on the social plan, the union action, the creation of the international Program for the abolition of the child work (IPEC) and the establishment of strategic partnerships with of ONG contributed to raise the indignation of the public against the exploitation of the children. Increase in the number of organizations militant in favor of abolition of work of the children, the public discussion and the attention of the media, the initiatives taken by industries such as « codes of conduct » are as many answers to a major awakening : the exploitation of the children is a violation of their most fundamental rights. The social mobilization is worth by the impact of its action, which exceeds the sum of the various initiatives taken, and by the engagement of all the levels of the company for a common objective. The various initiatives and spontaneous catches to restrict the child work are rich of teaching for the preparation of a planned social mobilization. To be able to contribute to the movement against the child work, the currently made efforts must be integrated in a vaster process, voluntarily directed which is based on social alliances. However, without the collaboration and the will of the governments, there are hardly chances that the initiatives of the social mobilization are crowned success or produce lasting changes. Indeed, the social mobilization should not serve only to move the public opinion by the situation as these children, but especially to improve this situation concretely. Moreover, the action of the Western consumer can relate to only one minority of active children, those which concern the international trade. This is why, it is necessary to act as priority on the spot, on the other forms of work.

It is in the countries concerned that the social mobilization must be done. On the spot, it is necessary well to include/understand which types of changes are necessary to the various levels, which are the principal social actors, their assets and their points of view. It is only by making this step which one will be able to make move back the child work ; it is essential when one prepares a campaign against the domestic exploitation of the children, that the principal partners are associated this countryside. ONG local, associations of domestic employees, the local female organizations, the children who work like domestic employees, the media and the local businessmen must be integrated into this action. Indeed, the dialog is in the middle of the social mobilization, the exchanges of information and of experiments are the angular stones of any communication worthy of this name. It is indeed very rare that an imposed intervention of outside, without discussion nor debate, that is to say included/understood and accepted by the people that it is supposed to help. However, to engage a dialog and to introduce a change with those which, intentionally or by ignorance, perpetuate the child work, constitute a challenge of size. Nevertheless, one cannot truly commit oneself bringing a change without taking account of the point of view of the employers who, often, regard themselves as the benefactors of the children of the poor families that they employ. Those which stick firmly to positions of principle against work of the children must agree to dialog and negotiate with those which are convinced. The private sector plays indeed today an increasingly crucial part in the field of the development and in particular in the abolition of the child work. Because of their contribution to the economic development of their country and communities in which they are installed, the employers must be sensitized with the effects of their actions on the development of human resources. According to practices' which they follow as regards work, they can delay or accelerate the development of the policies of fight against the child work.

It is thus necessary to render comprehensible with the employers, in particular with the owners of small companies, that while putting an end to their dependence with respect to the child work and while taking a care particular to the development of the children who work, the employers render service to their company and the long-term health of the businesses and industries. The organizations of employers have in this matter a great role to play to educate the employers of the sectors formal and abstract of the long-term benefit of practices of management excluding any exploitation from childish labor.

The trade unions of hard-working children, who start to develop thanks to the support of ONG and social workers, also have a role important to play in the programs which are intended to them. These groups of children, organized around the same district or of the same trade, are clearly anti-abolitionists : they analyze their work like an economic need, but ask decent terms of employment. These representations of the first concerned often propose very interesting solutions likely to clarify the action of ONG and institutions, such as the flexible forms of education.

That it is on behalf of the representations of the employers or the hard-working children, these forms of expressions are always to privilege because they improve the working conditions of ONG. Indeed, the essence of the solution to the problem of the child work will undoubtedly come from the work carried out daily by these ONG on the ground. These groups indeed can, because of their proximity, investiguer with determination and aggressiveness the abuses made against children on the places of work as well as the failures of the official authorities. They are to some extent, the defenders and the spokesman of the laws and exert on the governments a considerable pressure.

Thanks to their experiment in the field of the activities of plea and by emitting criticisms constructive, ONG also throw a bridge between the population and her representatives on all the levels. It is in fact ONG which took the head of the movement of fight against the child work and who endeavoured to promote the principle of the rights of the child during last decades. Unfortunately, much of countries afflicted by serious problems of work with the children do not have the chance to have groups sufficiently strong and organized to defend the rights of the children as regards work. For this reason, it appears urgent and necessary to support technically and financially such groups and to create the new ones if need be. Thanks to the experiment that they acquired and with human resources of which they lay out in the whole world, ONG international could be particularly useful to promote, form and support at the national level the rights of the children. It is in particular thanks to these ONG that the readjustment of the hard-working children could be done. It is they indeed which can propose alternatives to the families which withdraw their children of work.

The initiatives also should be promoted aiming at reducing the poverty of these families such as the development banks of which the goal agrees appropriations to the poor families which have an urgent need for it. Indeed, to release these families of their debts and the exorbitant interests to pour with the lenders will be a vital contribution to the prevention of the forced child work. These banks do not advance that small sums, but generally a small sum is enough to break the cycle of poverty and makes it possible either to withdraw his/her children of work, or not to send to it.

All these initiatives must strongly constant and be encouraged by the rich countries. There still, the financial contributions are essential, but a real political good-will to act is of primary importance. However, these are these ways that the fight against the child work will have to borrow in the years to come. It is now advisable to see whether renewed engagements of the international community at the time of the Extraordinary session of the United Nations in May 2002, will be followed concrete progress contrary to the commitments entered into to the world Summit for the children in 1990.

APPENDIX 1 : EXTRACTS OF THE PRINCIPAL CONVENTIONS ON
CHILD WORK.

Extracts of Convention n°29 concerning the forced labor,
adopted on June 28, 1930.

Article 1

1. Any Member of the International Labor Organization which ratifies present Convention engages to remove the use of the labor forced or obligatory in all his forms as soon as possible possible.

Article 2

1. For purposes of this Convention, the term «labor forced or obligatory» will indicate any work or service required of an individual under the threat of an unspecified sorrow and for which the aforementioned individual did not offer himself of full liking.

Extract of the international Pact relating to the civil laws
and policies, UNO, New York December 16, 1966.

Article 8

1. No one will not be held in slavery; the slavery and draft of the slaves, under all theirs

forms, are prohibited.

2. No one will not be held in constraint.
/No one has will not be compels to achieve a forced or obligatory labor;
B/the subparagraph has this paragraph could not be interpreted like prohibiting, in the countries where certain crimes can be punished of detention accompanied by forced work, the achievement of a sorrow of forced work, inflicted by a court of competent jurisdiction;
C/is not regarded as «labor forced or obligatory» as used in this paragraph:
I) Any work or service, not noted to the subparagraph B, normally necessary of an individual who is held under the terms of a decision of regular court or who, having been the subject of such a decision, is released conditionally;
II) Any service of military nature and, in the countries where the conscientious objection is allowed, any national service required of the conscientious objectors under the terms of the law;
III) Any service required in the disaster or cases of absolute necessity which threaten the life or the wellbeing of the community;
IV) Any work or any forming service left the normal civic obligations.

Extracts of Convention n°138 on the minimum age,
adopted on June 26, 1973

Article 1

Any Member for whom present convention is in force engages to continue a national policy aiming ensuring the effective abolition of the child work and at gradually raising the minimum age of admission to employment or work on a level allowing the teenagers to reach the most complete physical and mental development.

Article 2

1. Any Member who ratifies present convention will have to specify, in a declaration attached to his ratification, a minimum age of admission to employment or work on his territory and in the means of transport registered on his territory; subject to the provisions of articles 4 to 8 of this convention, no person of an age lower than this minimum will have to be allowed with employment or work in an unspecified profession.

2. Any Member having ratified present convention will be able, thereafter, to inform the General manager of the International Labor Office, by new declarations, which it raises the minimum age specified previously.

3. The minimum age specified in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article will not have to be lower than the age to which cease compulsory schooling, nor in any case at fifteen years.

4. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 3 of this article, any Member whose school economy and institutions are not sufficiently developed will be able, after consultation of the interested organizations of employers and workers, if there are some, to specify, in a first stage, fourteen years a minimum age.

5. Any Member who will have specified fourteen years a minimum age under the terms of the preceding paragraph will have, in the reports/ratios which it is held to present in accordance with article 22 of the Constitution of the International Labor Organization, to declare:

a) maybe that the reason for its decision persists;

b) maybe that it gives up being prevailed of paragraph 4 above starting from a given date.

Article 3

1. The minimum age of admission to any type of employment or work which, by its nature or the conditions under which it is exerted, is likely to compromise health, the safety or the morality of the teenagers will not have to be lower than eighteen years.

2. The types of employment or work cited in paragraph 1 above will be determined by the national legislation or the proper authority, after consultation of the interested organizations of employers and workers, if there are some.

3. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 1 above, the national legislation or the proper authority will be able, after consultation of the interested organizations of employers and workers, if there are some, to authorize the use or the work of teenagers as of age the sixteen years provided that their health, their safety and their morality are fully guaranteed and that they received, in the branch of corresponding activity, a specific and adequate instruction or a vocational training.

Article 4

1. In so far as that is necessary and after having consulted the interested organizations of employers and workers, if there are some, the proper authority will be able not to apply present convention at limited categories of employment or work when the application of this convention at these categories would raise special and important difficulties of execution.

2. Any Member who ratifies present convention will have, in the first report/ratio on the application of this one which it is held to present in accordance with article 22 of the Constitution of the International Labor Organization, to indicate, with reasons with the support, the categories of employment which would have been the object of an exclusion under paragraph 1 of this article, and to expose, in its later reports/ratios, the state of its legislation and its practice as for these categories, while specifying up to what point it was given effect or it is proposed to give effect to the present convention with regard to the known as categories.

3. This article does not authorize to exclude from the field of application of this convention the employment or work aimed to article 3.

Article 5

1. Any Member whose economy and the administrative services did not reach a sufficient development will be able, after consultation of the interested organizations of employers and workers, if there are some, to limit, in a first stage, the field of application of this convention.

2. Any Member who prevails himself of paragraph 1 of this article will have to specify, in a declaration attached to his ratification, the branches of economic activity or the types of companies to which the provisions of this convention will apply.

3. The field of application of this convention will have to include/understand at least: minings; manufacturing industries; the building and public works; electricity, the gas and water; medical services; transport, warehouses and communications; plantations and other agricultural companies exploited mainly at commercial purposes, other than the family or low-size companies producing for the local market and not employing regularly employed persons.

4. Any Member having limited the field of application of convention under the terms of the present article:

a) will have to indicate, in the reports/ratios which it is held to present in accordance with article 22 of the Constitution of the International Labor Organization, the general situation of the employment or the work of the teenagers and children in the branches of activity which are excluded from the field of application of this convention like any progress made for a broader application of the provisions of convention;

b) will be able, in any time, to extend the field of application of convention by a declaration addressed to the General manager of the International Labor Office.

Article 7

1. The national legislation will be able to authorize employment with light work of the people from thirteen to fifteen years or the execution, by these people, such work, provided that those:

a) are not likely to carry damage to their health or their development;

b) are not likely to carry damage to their school assiduity, with their participation in programs of orientation or vocational training approved by the proper authority or with their aptitude to be profited from the received instruction.

2. The national legislation will also be able, subject to the conditions envisaged with the subparagraphs has) and b) of paragraph 1 above, to authorize the employment or the work of the people of at least fifteen years which did not finish their compulsory schooling yet.

3. The proper authority will determine the activities in which employment or work could be authorized in accordance with paragraphs 1 and 2 of this article and will prescribe the duration, in hours, and work or condition of uses in question.

4. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraphs 1 and 2 of this article, a Member who has made use of the provisions of paragraph 4 of article 2 can, as long as it is prevailed about it, substitute the ages of twelve and fourteen years for the ages of thirteen and fifteen years indicated at paragraph 1 and the fourteen years age to the fifteen years age indicated at paragraph 2 of this article.

Extracts of the International Convention
relating to the Rights of the Child,
adopted on November 20, 1989

Article first

Within the meaning of present Convention, a child means of all old human be less than eighteen years, except if the majority is reached earlier under the terms of the legislation which is applicable for him.

Article 19

1. The States left take all measurements legislative, administrative, social and educational adapted to protect the child against any form from violence, attack or physical or mental brutalities, abandonment or negligence, ill treatments or exploitation, including the sexual violence, while it is under the guard of his parents or the one of them, of sound or its legal representatives or any other person to which it is entrusted

Article 28

1. The States left recognize the right of the child to education, and in particular, in order to gradually ensure the exercise of this right and on the basis of equal opportunity :

a) They make teaching primary education obligatory and free for all ;

b) They encourage the organization of various forms of secondary education, as well general as professional, make them open and accessible to any child, and take adapted measurements, such as the introduction of the exemption from payment of the teaching and the offer of a financial assistance where necessary ;

c) They ensure all the accesses to the higher education, according to the capacities of each one, by all the suitable means ;

d) They make open and accessible to any child school and professional information and the orientation ;

e) They take measures to encourage the regularity of the school attendance and the reduction of the school rate of abandonment.

2. The States left take all suitable measurements to take care that the school discipline is applied in a way compatible with dignity of the child as a human being and in accordance with present Convention.

3. The States left support and encourage the international co-operation in the field of education, with a view in particular to contribute to eliminate ignorance and illiteracy in the world and to facilitate the access to the scientific and technical training and the modern methods of teaching. In this respect, it is taken particularly account of the needs for the developing countries.

Article 29

1. The States left agree that the education of the child must aim to :

a) To support the blooming of the personality of the child and the development of his gifts and its mental capacities and physical, in all the measurement of their potentialities ;

b) To inculcate in the child the respect humans right and fundamental freedoms, and principles devoted in the Charter of the United Nations ;

c) To inculcate in the child the respect his parents, of his identity, its language and its cultural values, as well as the respect of the national values of the country in which it lives, the country of which it can be originating and of civilizations different from his ;

D) To prepare the child to assume the responsibilities for the life in a free company, a spirit of comprehension, peace, of tolerance, equality enters the sexes and of friendship between all the people and groups ethnic, national and religious, and with the people of indigenous origin ;

E) To inculcate in the child the respect natural environment.

2. No provision of this article or article 28 will be interpreted of a manner which undermines the freedom of the persons or entities to create and direct educational establishments, provided that the principles stated in paragraph 1 of this article are respected and that the education exempted in these establishments is in conformity with the minimal standards that the State will have prescribed.

Article 31

1. The States left recognize with the child the right at rest and to the leisures, to devote themselves to the play and specific entertaining activities to its age and to take part freely in the cultural and artistic life.

2. The States left respect and support the right of the child to take part fully in the cultural and artistic life and encourage the organization with its intention of suitable means of leisures and entertaining, artistic and cultural activities, under conditions of equality.

Article 32

1. The States left recognize the right of the child to be protected from the economic exploitation and not to be compels with any work comprising of the risks or likely to compromise its education or to harm its health or its development physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social.

2. The States left take measures legislative, administrative, social and educational to ensure the application of this article. For this purpose, and the relevant provisions of the other international instruments, States left, in particular :

a) Fixes a minimum age or minimum ages of admission at employment ;

b) A suitable regulation of the schedules of work and condition of uses envisage ;

c) Envisage suitable sorrows or other sanctions to ensure the effective application of this article.

Article 34

The States left begin to protect the child against all the forms from sexual exploitation and sexual violence. For this purpose, the States take in particular all suitable measurements on the national plans, bilateral and multilateral to prevent :

a) Whether children are not incited or constrained to devote itself to an illegal sexual activity ;

b) That children are not exploited at ends of prostitution or others practice sexual illegal ;

c) That children are not exploited for purposes of the production of spectacles or pornographic material of character.

Article 35

The States left take all suitable measurements on the national plans, bilateral and multilateral to prevent removal, the sale or the draft of children at some end that it is and in some form that it is.

Article 36

The States left protect the child against all other forms of exploitation prejudicial to any aspect from its wellbeing.

Extracts of Convention n°182 concerning
« the worse shapes of work children »,
adopted on June 17, 1999.

Considering the need for adopting new instruments aiming at the prohibition and the elimination of the worst shapes of work children as a major priority of the national and international action, in particular of the co-operation and the assistance international, to supplement the convention and the recommendation relating to the minimum age of admission to employment, 1973, which remain fundamental instruments with regard to the child work;

Considering that the effective elimination of the worst forms of child work requires an immediate overall action, which takes account of the importance of a free basic education and need for withdrawing of all these forms of work the children concerned and for ensuring their readjustment and their social integration, while taking into account the needs for their families

Recognizing that the child work to a large extent is caused by poverty and that the long-term solution lies in the constant economic growth leading to the social progress, and in particular with the attenuation of poverty and universal education;

Article 1

Any Member who ratifies present convention must take immediate and effective measures to ensure the prohibition and the elimination of the worst shapes of work children and this, urgently.

Article 2

For purposes of this convention, the child term applies to the whole of the people of less than 18 years

Article 3

For purposes of this convention, the expression the worst shapes of work children includes/understands:

a) all forms of slavery or practical similar, such as the sale and the draft of the children, the constraint for debts and serfdom as well as the forced or obligatory labor, including the forced or obligatory recruitment of the children for their use in wars;

b) the use, the recruitment or the offer of a child at ends of prostitution, production of pornographic material or pornographic spectacles;

c) the use, the recruitment or the offer of a child for illicit purposes of activities, in particular for the production and the traffic of narcotics, such as define them the relevant International Conventions;

d) work which, by their nature or the conditions in which they are exerted, been likely to harm health, the safety or the morality of the child.

Article 4

1. The types of work aimed to the article 3D) must be determined by the national legislation or the proper authority, after consultation of the interested organizations of employers and workers, by taking into account the relevant international standards, and in particular paragraphs 3 and 4 of the recommendation on the worst shapes of work children, 1999.

2. The proper authority, after consultation of the interested organizations of employers and workers, must locate the types of work thus determined.

3. The list of the types of work determined in accordance with paragraph 1 of this article must be periodically examined and, if need be, be revised in consultation with the interested organizations of employers and workers.

Article 5

Any Member must, after consultation of the organizations of employers and workers, to establish or indicate suitable mechanisms to supervise the application of the provisions giving effect to the present convention.

Article 6

1.Tout Membre must work out and implement action plans in order to eliminate in priority the worst forms from work from the children

2. These action plans must elaborate and be implemented in consultation with the qualified public institutions and the organizations of employers and workers, if necessary by taking into account the sights of other interested groups.

Article 7

1. Any Member must take all measurements necessary to ensure implementation the effective and the respect of the provisions giving effect to the present convention, including by the establishment and the application of penal sanctions or, if necessary, other sanctions.

2. Any Member must, by taking account of the importance of education for the elimination of the child work, to take effective measures within a given period of time for:

a) To prevent that children are not engaged in the worst shapes of work children;

b) to envisage the direct assistance necessary and adapted to withdraw the children of the worst shapes of work children and to ensure their readjustment and their social integration;

c) to ensure the access to free basic education and, when that is possible and suitable, to the vocational training for all the children who will have been withdrawn the worse shapes of work children;

d) to identify the particularly exposed children at the risks and to come into direct contact with them;

e) to take account of the particular situation of the girls.

3. Any Member must indicate the proper authority in charge of the implementation of the provisions giving effect to the present convention.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

I- Works:

Ø Bartolomei of Cruz Hector and Euzéby Alain: « The International Labor Organization (ILO) », University Presses of France, collection Which I know ? 1997.

Ø Braun Helene and Valentine Michel : « Villermé and work children », Economica (History), 1991.

Ø To handle Benedicte : « Child work in the world », The Discovery, collection Reference mark, 1999.

Ø Mathieu Jean-Luc : « The international defense of the humans right », University Presses of France, collection Which I know ? 1993.

Ø Zani Mamoud : « The International Convention of the rights of the child : range and limits », Publisud, 1996.

III Publications of the UNICEF.

Internet site of the UNICEF : http://www.unicef.org/french

Ø « The situation of the children in the world, 1997 : children with work ».

Ø « Social mobilization and child work » information memorandum of the Conference of Oslo October 27-30, 1997.

Ø « Child education and work » information memorandum, Conference of Oslo, October 27-30, 1997

Ø « To eliminate work from the children by affirming their rights ». March 2001

II Publications of the International Labor Organization.

Internet site of ILO : http://www.ilo.org/french

Ø « Eradiquer the worst shapes of work of the child-Guide for the implementation of Convention n°182 of ILO ».

Ø « International law and child work : outline of the projects of instruments of ILO », Jankanish Michele, 1999.

Ø « Child work », Fourth question on the agenda of the International Labor Office, 87ème session, Geneva, June 1999.

Ø « Child work : the intolerable one in point of test card. » Report/ratio submitted to the 86ème session (1998) of the International Labor Conference.

Ø International conference on the child work, Oslo, Norway, October 27-3, 1997. « Measurements of action practice aiming at abolishing the child work » ; « The legislation and its application » ; « Strategies aiming to the abolition of the child work : prevention, release and readjustment (summary) ».

Ø « To fight the most intolerable forms of the child work : a universal challenge », Background document for the Conference of Amsterdam on the child work (February 26-27, 1997)

Ø « Child work : that to make ? » Document presented for purposes of discussion to the abstract tripartite meeting at the ministerial level, International Labor Office, Geneva, June 12, 1996.

Ø « Halt ! with the child work », Press kit, the ILO, Geneva, June 10, 1996

Ø « Report/ratio on employment in the world 1998-1999. Tendencies of employment on a world level : dark prospects.

IV Publications of the CISL.

Internet site of the CISL : http://www.icftu.org

Ø « Not time to play. Child work in the world economy. » June 1996.

Ø « Multinationals under the magnifying glass of the international labor-union movement » April 5, 2001.

Ø « The alternatives exist » June 1, 1999.

Ø « European Union- many practices of work lower than the standards accepted at the international level » July 14, 2000

Ø « The receipt of Kerala », Samuel Grumiau, June 1, 1999.

Ø « Small hands of Made in Bangladesh », Samuel Grumiau, March 2, 2001.

V OTHERS ARTICLES.

Ø « These children who work. Handbook on the child work intended for the workers of the public services. », International of the public services, (Internet site : http://www.world-psi.org)

Ø « A International Convention on the rights of the child »,
JP Rosenczveig, (Internet site : http://www.rosenczveig.com)

Ø « The policy by the menu », The interactive world, Web citizen, October 29, 2001 (Internet site : http://www.lemonde.fr)

Ø « When the children take with party the leaders of planet » The World, May 08, 2002

Ø « Childhood : difficult adoption of a world action plan » The World, May 11, 2002.

Ø « These children subjected at worst the drudgeries » Release, May 7, 2002.

Ø « UNO takes stock of the promises not held for childhood » Release, May 8, 2002

Ø « Child work in Bangladesh : an original experiment », Adrien Bron, November 8, 1996. (Internet site : http://www.citinv.it)

Ø « Three reflections of associations of consumers » (Internet site : http://www;crc.conso.com)

Ø « Child work : an economic point of view » Grootaert Christiaan and Which charmed Kanbur, International Review of Work, vol.134, 1995, n°2.

CONTENTS.

PART I : RELATIVE IMPOTENCE OF the INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN FRONT OF the EXTENT OF the CHILD WORK p.12

CHAPTER I : Child work : a situation
intolerable p.13

Section I : Extent of the phenomenon of the work of
children. p.13

Paragraph I : A not easily quantifiable phenomenon p.14

Paragraph II : A phenomenon not being limited to the poor countries p.17

Section II : A work being carried out in forms very
any other business. p.20

Paragraph I : Child work within a family sphere. p.20

Paragraph II : Child work in the formal sector. p.24

CHAPTER II : International will of prohibition
child work: a failure. p.27

Section I : Conventions of ILO relating to the work of
children and national impact. p.28

Paragraph I : A very prodigal organization as regards regulation of the child work. p.28

Paragraph II : An application however limited in the national legislations. p.32

Section II : The Convention on the rights of the child and
application. p.36

Paragraph I : Genesis of the International Convention of the rights of the child p.36

Paragraph II : An ambitious convention but still too recent to measure made progress. p.39

PART II : CHANGE OF POLICY OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY. p.43

CHAPTER I a concerned international community
to include/understand for better fighting. p.44

Section I : Causes of the child work taken into account
as a whole. p.44

Paragraph I : Causes related to the poverty of the families p.45

Paragraph II : Causes external with the family. p.50

Section II : The creation of standards against the «worse forms of
child work " p.54

Paragraph I : Why a new more restricted convention ?. p.54

Paragraph II : The contribution of Convention n°182 p.58

CHAPTER II it search for more concrete solutions
and of alternatives to the child work. p.63

Section I : To support education : a starting point
essential. p.64

Paragraph I : To succeed in bringing the children to the school. p.64

Paragraph II : To offer to the children an adapted education. p.67

Section II : Importance of the social mobilization in
fight against the child work. p.71

Paragraph I : The boycott of the products resulting from the child work :
a false solution. p.71

Paragraph II : The need for creating a broad consensus counters it
child work p.75

APPENDIX I : Extracts of the principal conventions on
child work p.79

APPENDIX II : Child work in figures p.89

APPENDIX III : Impact of the HIV/AIDS on the situation of the children p.93

BIBLIOGRAPHY : p.95

* ¹ Report/ratio UNICEF  «  The situation of the children in the world 1997  »

* ² PIERRARD P., Children and working young people of France, XIXe and XXe centuries, Working Editions, Paris, 1987.

* ³ Declaration of the rights of the child adoptive and proclaimed by the resolution on 1386 (XIV) November 20, 1959.

* ⁴ In 1946, this organization had as a name «  Funds international of help to childhood  » (UNICEF).

* ⁵ Convention come into effect on November 4, 1949 after ratification of 20 States.

* ⁶ Internet site  : http://www.globalmarch.ch/marche/marche.html

* ⁷ The United Nations, Commission of the humans right  : Rights of child (Geneva, Doc. n°E/CN.4/January 1996,/100,17 1996) p.8

* ⁸Child Surveys Ploughing  : Results off methodological experiments in furnace countries 1992-1993, ILO, Geneva 1996, press release of April 4, 1996.

* ⁹ Benedicte Manier: «Child work in the world» ED. The Discovery 1999, p.23

* ¹⁰ «Child Ploughing in Britain», Carryforward to the International Working Group one Child Ploughing, September 1995, p.34.

* ¹¹ All these examples are drawn from the report/ratio  «  Not time to play. Child work in the world economy.  » report/ratio of the CISL June 1996.

* ¹² UNICEF 1997

* ¹³ «  Work in the world  » 1992, the ILO, Geneva, 1992, P.14

* ¹⁴ The ILO, the abolition of the extreme shapes of work children, file of information, Geneva, 1998

* ¹⁵ Charles Jacobs and Mohammed Athie, «  Bought and Sold  », The New York Times, July 13, 1994

* ¹⁶ BONNET Mr. Regards on the hard-working children. The energization of the children in the contemporary world. Analyze and case studies,  «  Free books  », Editions Page Two, Lausanne, 1998.

* ¹⁷ Report/ratio UNICEF  :  «  The situation of the children in the world  » 1997

* ¹⁸ Convention n°138 adopted 26.06.1973  ; go back to entry into force the 19.06.1976

* ¹⁹ Article 1 and 2 of Convention n°138.

* ²⁰ Article 3 subparagraph 1 of Convention n°138

* ²¹ Article 2 subparagraph 1 Convention n°29 concerning the labor forced come into effect on May 1, 1932.

* ²² Article 2 subparagraph 4 Convention n°138

* ²³ Article 4 subparagraph 1 Convention n°138

* ²⁴ Article 5 subparagraph 4 Convention n°138

* ²⁵ UNICEF, the situation of the children in the world, report/ratio 1997, New York

(Web site  : www.unicef.org/french/sowc97/sowc97f3.pdf)

* ²⁶ The ILO  : «  Child work  : the intolerable one in point of test card  » Report/ratio VI (1), International Labor Conference, 89ème session, 1998, Geneva, 1996.

* ²⁷ Pact relating to the civil laws and political adoptee on December 16, 1966 and come into effect (after 35 ratifications) on March 23, 1976.

* ²⁸ Pact relating to the economic, social and cultural rights adoptee on 16 December 1966 and come into effect on January 3, 1975

* ²⁹ Report/ratio UNICEF  : «  the situation of the children in the world 1997  » above mentioned p.4

* ³⁰ Convention on the rights of the child  ; entry into force on September 2, 1990.

* ³¹ Article 32 subparagraph 1 Convention on the rights of the child 1989

* ³² Article 32 subparagraph 2 Convention on the rights of the child 1989

* ³³ Article 34 International Convention relating to the rights of the child.

* ³⁴ Article 39 International Convention relating to the rights of the child.

* ³⁵ Article 28 International Convention relating to the rights of the child.

* 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.

* ³⁹ The ILO  : «Is child ploughing really necessary in India' S carpet industry» Geneva, 1996.

* ⁴⁰ Revue Africa Starts again, vol.15 # 3 (October 2001), p.14 (File special  : the protection of the African children). Web site  : http://www.un.org/french/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol.15n °3/153kidf4.htm

* ⁴¹ The ILO, the Abolition of the extreme shapes of work children, file of information, Geneva, 1998.

* ⁴² Single convention on the narcotics, 1961  ; Convention of the United Nations against the illicit traffic of narcotics and psychotropic substances, 1988.

* ⁴³ Article 1 convention n°182 on the worst shapes of work children, 1999.

* ⁴⁴ Article 7 subparagraph 1 Convention n° 182 on the worst shapes of work children.

* ⁴⁵ Article 7 Convention n° 182 on the worst shapes of work children.

* ⁴⁶ Report/ratio UNICEF  : «  The situation of the children in the world  » 1997 préc.

* ⁴⁷ «  The receipt of Kerala  » by Samuel Grumiau, January 1, 1999 ( http://www.icftu.org)

* ⁴⁸ source CFIE, quoted in the booklet, «  Play the game, save the humans right  », published by the Collective «  Ethics on the label  », January 1998.