Child Labour What Could be Done?

I.         Introduction

The issue of child labour has been gaining considerable international attention particularly as it is linked to the rights of the child. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted by the General Assembly in 1989, calls for the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and any work that is likely to be hazardous, interfere with the child’s education or harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. It is not accepted when children work at a young age, for long hours, with little pay, in hazardous conditions or in slave-like conditions (UNICEF, 1993).

With the difficulty of measuring the size and shape of child labour, ILO estimated that in 2000 some 211 million children aged 5-14 years are engaged in some form of economic activity around the world. Of these, roughly 186 million children are engaged in child labour to be abolished, including the worst forms of child labour (ILO, 2002).

The reasons children work are linked to both supply and demand factors, which need to be analyzed in-depth in order to design appropriate country-specific remedial measures. On the supply side, causes include poverty, popular perceptions and local customs and traditions regarding the work of children, in addition to limited availability or low quality of schooling. On the demand side, employers prefer to hire children not only due to their lower cost but also children are usually easier to manage than adults and do not enjoy the same rights and protection as their adult counterparts.

Developmental agencies have been continuously faced with the question of what could be done to better the lives and opportunities of these children and to help them get out of this cycle of poverty and disadvantage. This is with particular recognition of the structural underlying causes that are leading children to work at a very young age and in conditions that are harmful to their growth and development, and the demand and supply factors that continue to push these children to work. In an attempt to address this issue, this paper aims to present a strategy currently applied in the Egyptian context and supported by UNICEF. This strategy includes both preventive and protective dimensions for dealing with children at work and child labour.

II. The Case of Egypt

Estimates of child work prevalence in Egypt generated by recent surveys vary widely, mainly due to how the surveys define child work and the type of methodologies they used. For example, the Labour Force Sample Suvey of 1988 and Egypt Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (EMICS) of 1996 estimated that 12% of children 6-14 are working while the Demographic and Health Survey of 1995 estimated the prevelance of work among 6-14 year olds as only around 3%.

Evidence from small-scale sample surveys suggests that many children work in conditions that violate the CRC and other international conventions governing child labour.  A 1999 survey conducted in Greater Cairo found that both male and female child workers worked an average of more than nine hours per day (exceeding the maximum number of working hours permited by law – six hours) and more than six days per week (Nassar, 1999). Available evidence also suggests considerable hazardous work conditions leading to workplace injuries. A 1991 Greater Cairo study found that 43 percent of children had sustained a work-related injury of which two-thirds have been injured more than once (NCSCR, 1991).

In additional to potential harm inflicted on the children from hazardous conditions in which they work, children working are also at a disadvantage with regards to their education. This limits their current and future development prospects and opportunities. According to the Labour Force Sample Survey of 1998 survey, 45% of paid child workers are deprived of schooling.

Almost all child labour studies conducted in Egypt highlight family poverty and the need to supplement family income as the main reasons for children entering the work force. School-related factors also have a clear relationship to child work, which include academic failure and working as a better way than school to learn a profession. According to the Greater Cairo Study of 1991, half of employed children sought work to increase their family income and their earnings account to almost 23% of the household income. Moreover, the same survey indicated that 53% of working boys cited academic failure as one of the main reasons for working.

Despite this situation, Egyptian children enjoy significant legal protection from exploitative work. The Child Law passed in 1996 prohibits the employment of children below the age of 14, and the new Labour Law expected to come out in the near future will also link the age of employment to the age of completion of compulsory schooling (to be in-line with the ILO Minimum Age Convention No. 138). The Child Law, however, allows governors, in agreement with the Minister of Education, to permit the employment of children 12-14 years in seasonal work deemed not harmful to health or affecting school attendance, and 12-14 year-olds may also participate in vocational training. According to the law, employers are required to administer a preliminary medical check-up and annual check-ups, the child cannot work more than six hours with a maximum of four consecutive hours, and should be provided with 200 grams of milk a day. The law also regulates the types of work that those below the age of 15 cannot work in, like oven handling in bakeries, ice making factories, processes of bleaching, dyeing and printing fabric, and those under the age of 17, such as mining, melting and processing glass, car paint and tanneries.  Moreover, Egypt has ratified both ILO Convention No. 138 (Minimum Age Convention), and ILO Convention No. 182 (Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour).

There are, however, shortcomings with regards to the existing legal protection. The law does not cover children’s work in domestic service and family undertakings although considerable in number. Moreover, there are clear weaknesses in the enforcement of the current law as evident from the violations mentioned earlier in this section.

III. UNICEF, Egypt Country Office’s Strategy to Deal with the Issue of Child Labour

In tackling the present situation of working children and child labour in Egypt, UNICEF in Egypt has been supporting a strategy in the urban areas of Cairo and Alexandria in partnership with NGOs, which includes both preventive and protective dimensions. Preventive measures reach out to those children that are risk of becoming working children and protective measures are targeted to those currently engaged in the workforce. Following is a synopsis of the strategy with both its dimensions. 

A. Preventive Dimension

UNICEF has been supporting a community monitoring mechanism aiming at early tracking and providing support to children-at-risk, both girls and boys. The cases are identified at the community level by social workers and community leaders, who then forward the cases to a monitoring/expert committee that proposes appropriate interventions.

Most of the cases identified so far include potential school dropouts, children in families with financial difficulties, children in families with inter-familial problems, and children experiencing health problems. Assistance provided to the identified children includes education interventions such as supporting the children’s re-integration in schools, subsidizing school support classes and covering school fees, in addition to linking the families of children-at-risk with social assistance schemes/pensions supported by the government targeting vulnerable families, and referral to governmental health services. The social workers are requested to make sure that the suggested interventions are implemented, and monitor closely the cases for some time, sometimes reaching years, until the child is considered out of the ‘danger zone’.

Another preventive approach is also applied which is providing credit and training to mothers of working children and vulnerable mothers to enhance their income generating ability. The purpose of this approach is to try to increase the income of the household so as to release the pressure pushing the children to work and enable the vulnerable mothers to send their children to school.

B. Protective Dimension

Complementing the preventive measures, UNICEF has been supporting protective measures to improve the working conditions of working girls and boys (between the ages of 8 – 18) and to contribute to developing their personalities, talents and abilities. The main protective activity is a day-off weekly gathering when the working girls and boys receive a full-range of services – nutritional meals, participate in recreational and sports activities, participate in cultural and social activities, and have regular medical check-ups.  As the children are not part of the formal education system, by either not enrolling at all in school or dropping-out, they are provided with alternative education through literacy classes conducted at hours convenient for the children.

Additional protective measures include training and raising the awareness of workshop owners and working children on occupational safety measures complemented by periodical meetings with workshop owners and employers, the aim of which is to monitor the conditions of work and make sure that potential harm is limited. Also, building a link with the parents through visits to the families by the NGO social workers and parental education training workshops on health, social, psychological issues is another protective activity. In many instances through this link with the families, further cases of children-at-risk are identified to be addressed by the preventive dimension presented earlier.

The above-mentioned preventive and protective dimensions have been directed to both girls and boys and are implemented in three urban areas, namely West Alexandria (Alexandria), West Helwan (Cairo) and El Nahda (Cairo) through partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In Cairo, UNICEF is collaborating with the Egyptian Red Crescent Society, while in Alexandria, the intervention is managed by a supervisory committee formed from representatives of three NGOs – namely Regional Maritime Scouts Association, Sidi Ali El Sammak Association and Sidi Gaber Association – and headed by the Chief of the West Alexandria District who coordinates the different components. 

IV. Epilogue

We need to be realistic when dealing with the issue of child labour and recognize that it cannot be eliminated as quickly as is aspired due mainly to its complexity and structural causes.

It is critical to deal with the supply factors of child labour mainly the economic situation of the families and the quality of the schooling system. These need large-scale policy interventions. Schools need to be more accessible and with improved quality that will be more attractive and useful for children in poor families. The children and their families need to feel that the schooling system is beneficial and functional to them by being linked more, for instance, with the needs of the labour market.  Moreover, in any society there are groups that for reasons of inequity of distribution of resources, unstable economic structures and unemployment, are unable to support themselves financially and, therefore, need to be supported through social assistance schemes that will help in releasing the pressure that makes them send their children to work. In addition to dealing with the supply factors, special attention needs to be directed to the demand factors through effective enforcement of existing laws and legislation that put pressure on the employers so as not to employ child labour. In Egypt, the current legislation although is in accordance with the international conventions has been poorly put into practice particularly with regards to workplace monitoring.  It is important to try to address both the demand and supply factors contributing to child labour.

Moreover, we cannot ignore that we need to remedy the situation that already exists and will continue to exist for some time. We should work on protecting those already working from potential harm and to provide them with a chance of learning through vocational training schemes and appropriate learning models in addition to providing them with the opportunity to enjoy being a ‘child’. It is important to try to trace those that could become working children and child labourers and intervene at an early stage before their situation worsens.

I would like to end with posing a couple of questions for discussion:

• Who should be responsible for protecting and preventing child labour? What should be their main strategies? And how could the strategies be sustainable?
• How can we best intervene with children if they are falling out of the education system before the minimum age of work? How can we use this period to give the child an opportunity to learn a skill and prepare the child for work in a skilled profession?