Soft battles

The effects of the present global economic and financial crisis, rather than its causes, have been the central preoccupation of organisations such as the International Labour Organisation in recent times. The ILO, in particular, has focussed on the impact of the crisis on populations within the least developed and developing countries, especially children.

The economic downturn, says the ILO, should not become an excuse for diminished ambition and inaction. There is widespread fear that governments and international donors would use the crisis as an excuse to cut back on aid commitments for key social sectors. According to the World Bank, nearly 40 per cent of the 107 developing countries are highly exposed to the poverty effects of the crisis.

The ILO claims that its latest global report on child labour titled Accelerating Action against Child Labour the third in its series comes at a critical juncture. Four years ago, it says, there was reason to celebrate as many countries had ratified the two main conventions on child labour namely, the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention of 1999 (No. 182). A majority of the countries barring a few belonging to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) promised to act upon the conventions. Interestingly, the global cost of eliminating child labour is minuscule compared with the public expenditure that governments have set aside for restoring their countries' financial sectors or the fiscal stimulus packages offered.

The first ILO global report, published in 2002, was aptly titled A future without Child Labour. The next report, which came out in 2006, was titled The end of Child Labour Within Reach. Its focus was on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour, and all member-states were to design and put in place appropriate, time-bound measures by the end of 2008. The latest report does not suggest anything that can raise optimism. If anything, there has been a decline in the rate of reduction of children employed in hazardous work.

Until 1999, there was no international understanding or agreement on what constituted hazardous work nor was there any prohibition on employing children to do such work. In 2006, the ILO set an ambitious goal of eradicating child labour by 2016. At the halfway mark of that deadline, the goal looks elusive. The concern is all the more as the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour enters its 20th year in another two years.

There have been some positives too in the form of increased tripartisanism, greater South-South cooperation and more purposeful social dialogues on child labour, besides a decline in child labour among girls and in hazardous areas. There is growing global consensus that education for all is a desired goal.

On the flip side, progress is uneven across and within countries despite the adoption of global pacts on decent work. Ratification on paper, unfortunately, has not meant a meaningful mitigation of child labour in absolute terms. Despite the international clamour on the issue, governments have been found wanting in precisely those areas that require higher spending and investment in order to prevent children from entering the workforce. That is one reason why the numbers of children at work and out of school continue to remain high, especially in South Asia. The ILO report makes candid observations regarding the diluted commitment of donor countries as well as the near-stagnation in the drive to eliminate child labour. In fact, child labour among boys and young people in the 15-17 age group has gone up since 2006.

The report also wonders why international interest on sub-Saharan Africa waned despite the second report identifying it as a region needing attention. Countries had agreed in principle that working-out-of-poverty policies were required along with social protection and employment measures. This, it was felt, would result in sustaining aggregate demand while mitigating the impact of the crisis on families living in poverty. It is evident that the above has not happened, barring in a very few cases such as Brazil.

The report reaffirms what it has been saying all along universal primary education (complete primary education and even two to three years of secondary education); the establishment of a basic social protection floor; and the creation of productive employment opportunities. It also says categorically that child labour fatigue must be prevented and that it is more the poverty of policy rather than poverty itself that has kept children out of school and in child labour.

The success stories of Brazil and China need to be replicated, it says. Armed with data from over 60 new national surveys conducted during 2004-2008, the report presents a nuanced picture. There has been, in all, a modest decline in child labour. But there is virtually no explanation why 215 million children continue to be engaged in labour, of them 115 million in hazardous work. The agriculture sector employs the most number of children.

There has been a 20 per cent increase in child labour in the 15-17 age group; in absolute terms, the number has gone up from 52 million to 62 million. There has been an increase in child labour in the 5-17 age group, too. However, since 2004 there has been a decrease in the permissible categories of work for children. One other positive feature is the decline in employment of girl children in hazardous work; more girl children were found employed in the services sector, while boys dominated agriculture.

Brazil's example

What Brazil did was noteworthy, and this continues to be quoted in report after report on education and child labour. In the late 1980s, the government took a commitment to end child labour and enacted legislation to protect children and youth. This made one thing clear that child labour and the right to education are incompatible.

In the 10 years that followed, the work activity rate in the 10-17 age group fell by 36 per cent; the decline was sharper in the five-nine age group. The number of working children fell from 6,36,248 in 1992 to 2,48,594 in 2004. Apart from the government's own commitment, a high degree of social mobilisation, a tripartite approach involving trade unions and employers, a conditional cash-transfer system and the tactic of keeping children twice as long in school were some of the mechanisms that helped achieve this goal.

Kerala model

The report singles out the Kerala model of social development. It involved giving priority for land reforms, food security, education and public health. Predictably, Kerala's expenditure on primary education was much higher than that of other States.

Quoting from Myron Weiner's 1991 book The Child and the State in India: Child labour and education in comparative perspectives, the report says that in the 1960s, Kerala was spending 35 per cent of its revenue on education, much more than India's richer States. By the early 1970s, the work participation rate of children in Kerala was 1.9 per cent as opposed to 7.1 per cent at the national level. Kerala, says the report, can be a model for other States and it can also be part of a sub-regional strategy for India and South Asia in general.

For the past 20 years, India has tried unsuccessfully to eradicate child labour. It was one of the earliest signatories to the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, in 1992. But unlike Brazil or even the State of Kerala, the country as a whole did not accelerate its expenditure on education nor did it evolve any innovative and long-lasting measures to guarantee a way out of poverty. The promise made in the Constitution that the state shall endeavour to provide within a period of ten years free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years has been extended decade after decade. So much so that the commitment has been whittled down to the six to 14 age group and universal education is now the responsibility of individual State governments, which however lack the political will to realise it.

Interestingly, the ILO notes that education by itself is not the sole solution. It has to be matched with the spending on education, especially primary education. This is not to say that secondary and higher education be neglected.

Non-formal education

The report is critical of the non-formal systems of education being pursued in India and some other countries. It says that non-formal education cannot be an unconditional strategy for the eradication of child labour; it needs to viewed as a means and is not an end in itself.

The second global report had cautioned that the non-formal systems can have unintended consequences for the formal system, and may fail in its intention of acting as a transition mechanism for working children. In other words, it could become a second-best rather than a second-chance option.

Consider this. South Asia accounts for the bulk of child labour in absolute numbers. Now compare the allocations for education and defence in some South Asian countries. About half of the low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa spent less than 4 per cent of their national income on education. The figures were worse for South Asia. Bangladesh spent 2.6 per cent, Pakistan spent 2.7 per cent and India, a growing economy, spent 3.3 per cent. India's budgetary allocation for education is less than that of some African countries even though the average Indian income is higher than in these countries.

According to a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report, in the 10-year period from 1995 to 2005, India devoted 2 per cent of its Central government expenditure on education and 13 per cent on defence; Pakistan devoted 1 per cent on education and 20 per cent on defence. In contrast, Brazil's expenditure on education was double what it spent on defence (3 per cent); and Turkey spent 10 per cent on education and 8 per cent on defence.

Given the present situation and the waning commitment, overall progress is bound to be slow and South Asia will account for the bulk of child labour in sheer numbers for some more decades. India and Pakistan together contribute to the maximum number of out-of-school children in the world today. The rate of decrease in child labour is not encouraging. The percentage of girls who are out of school dropped from 58 per cent in 1999 to 54 per cent now.

The report says that China, which has since 1979 taken more people out of poverty than any other country, has put most of its children in basic education.

In September 2009, the ILO in its report to the Group of 20 (G-20) nations on action taken by countries, concluded that not enough was being done on child labour and trafficking. This situation, if left unchecked, will have disastrous effects on the developed world too.