Well, some days ago, I read about Mr. Kailash Satyarthi, a prominent children’s rights activist, in Alternatives Economiques (a French business magazine). He founded with the Bachpan Bachao Aandolan, an organisation dedicated “To identify, liberate, rehabilitate and educate children in servitude through direct intervention, child and community participation, coalition building, consumer action, promoting ethical trade practices and mass mobilisation.”
The BBA site allows one to ask Mr. Satyarthi questions. Here are the questions that I asked and the response that I got:
Q: Don’t children have to work because of poverty?
A: While it is undeniable that children work, in part, because of poverty it is not the only reason, or as important as many people assume. Children often replace adults in the job market, depressing their wages and hindering economic growth. In India, 60 million children are working while 70 million adults are unemployed. Recent studies have begun to question poverty as the major cause of child labour, discovering that other factors, such as failing education systems, are equally important in perpetuating child labour. Countries with very similar levels of poverty often have very different rates of child labour, on the other hand, a country that is much richer than its neighbouring country can have almost equal occurrence of child labour.
(Quite shocking, isn't it?)
Q: How will poor families survive without the additional income of the children?
A: Many studies show that children’s wages contribute so meagrely to the family’s income that they are of little significance to the overall family income. And, a large number of child labourers come from households where the parents are unemployed or under-employed, while employers give preference to children as a cheap source of labour. Moreover, it is precisely the vast number of children in the workforce that bring down adult’s wages, their bargaining power is reduced and they suffer from large-scale unemployment. The cost of children missing out on education is much greater to both the individual development of a child, as well as development of society as a whole. Evidence suggests that existing social norms, tradition, exclusion and discrimination of certain groups as well as a badly or ‘indifferently’ functioning educational system are the most important reasons why children are working and not attending school. It is the responsibilities of States and the international community to ensure that programmes are in place to mitigate the immediate negative impacts of the withdrawal of children from labour for poor families.
Q. How can I, as an individual, concretely contribute to the fight against child labour?
A.If you ever see a child working any where, raise voices against it. Do not take services food/tea etc from such restaurants, Dhaba', tea stall or canteen/houses who employ child labourers. Launch a written complaint about such acts to the nearest labor officer or police station.
You can also inform us about, and can join us in rescue and rehabilitation of that child.
Or you can also join other organizations and networks working against child labour.
