CHILD TRAFFICKING --ASSAM

Despite constant awareness programmes by NGOs and government agencies, Assam is still at the top among the seven states in the region when it comes to child trafficking and labour


In the past few years, the northeast, Assam in particular, has emerged as one of the biggest source areas and transit routes for child trafficking. I have come across dozens of cases where Assamese girls have become victims of trafficking and slavery. Most of these children are trafficked from Lakhimpur and Kokrajhar districts. The tea gardens of Udalguri, Sonitpur and Bongaigaon, among other poor areas of lower Assam, also happen to be source areas. Some people from West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya have set 'placement agencies' to supply domestic helps to metropolitan cities. Other agencies have engaged local agents from the northeast to procure children. Besides being trafficked to work as domestic helps, thousands of minor children are held in bondage in the 'zari-embroidery' and garment industry in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Additionally, a large number of adolescent girls are duped and they find themselves in prostitution or sold as brides in states like Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.

KAILASH SATYARTHI

WORST FORM OF CHILD LABOUR---ILO Convention No. 182

The term ‘child labour’ is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.

It refers to work that:

1. is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and

2.interferes with their schooling by:

a. depriving them of the opportunity to attend school;

b.obliging them to leave school prematurely; or

c. requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

 The worst forms of child labour as defined by Article 3 of ILO Convention No. 182:

(a) all forms of slaveryor practices similar slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children,debt bondage and serfdom and forced or       compulsory labour, including forced compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;

(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography

or for pornographic performances;

(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for

illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;

(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

Labour that jeopardises the physical, mental or moral well-being of a child,either because of its nature or because of the conditions in which it is carried out, is known as ‘hazardous work’.

United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 26)

“Everyone has the right to education. Education shall

be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental

stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory..”

United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the

Child (Article 28) :

“1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to

education, and with a view to achieving this right

progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity,

they shall, in particular:

(a) Make primary education compulsory and

available free to all;

(b) Encourage the development of different forms of

secondary education, including general and

vocational education, make them available and

accessible to every child, and take appropriate

measures such as the introduction of free education

and offering nancial assistance in case of need;

(c) Make higher education accessible to all on the

basis of capacity by every appropriate means;

(d) Make educational and vocational information and

guidance available and accessible to all children;

(e) Take measures to encourage regular attendance

at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.”

A recently completed study from 50

countries established that every extra year of

schooling provided to the whole population can

increase average annual GDP growth by 0.37%.

In low-income countries, an additional year of

education adds about 10% to a person's income on average.

SLAVERY DOES EXIST End Child Slavery Week (ECSW)---20th November to 26th November

• END CHILD SLAVERY WEEK (ECSW )2014

The first ECSW world run from Thursday, November 20th to Wednesday, November 26th

• ECSW 2014 DEMAND

Abolition of child slavery to be incorporated into the post-2015 Global Development Agenda.

WHY

• an estimated 21 million slaves
• 5.5 million children are enslaved 
• 26% of slaves today are children under 18 years
• In 1850, a slave in the US cost $40,000. Today it costs $90 
• Slave labour generates $150 billion a year

Forced to work for upto 18 hours a day, these children are sold at prices less than even that of cattle.

The End Child Slavery Week (ECSW) is determined to change this by bringing together global citizens, trade unions, teachers unions, child rights organisations and each one of us to stand up against child slavery. 

March

 New Delhi, India

 22 Novemeber, Saturday

SOURCE -----http://www.endchildslaveryweek.org/

We all have dreams

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some

extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their

bonds: your mind transcends limitations, your

consciousness expands in every direction and you find

yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant

forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover

yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed

yourself to be 

(Patanjali)

Celebrate Diwali by lighting lamps, not by blasting childhood.

Anti Fire Crackers Campaign

India produces roughly Rs. 250 crores worth of firecrackers annually.

The effulgent, colourful and deafening crackers come out of the tiny hands of over one and half lakh children compelled to toil day and night in suffocating worksheds, anticipating death or mutilation due to the explosive nature of the material they handle.

The matches & fireworks industries of Sivakasi, Virudh Nagar, Sattur districts of Tamil Nadu state are holding more than a lakh of children, crushing the very enjoyable span of their childhood.

 Besides, Agra, Jhansi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Etawah, Varansi districts of Uttar Pradesh; Jaipur, Bikaner, Udaipur of Rajasthan; Bhopal,, Indore, Raipur of Madhya Pradesh; Rohtak, Bhiwani of Haryana, Howrah, 24 Pargans of West Bengal also account for child employment in thousands in this extremely hazardous industry. 

A large number of accidents occurring in units located in remote areas go unreported.

The raw material for firecrackers are highly explosive in nature. A speck of slackness could mean instant death or crippling. Besides, due to constant exposure to chemicals like sulphur, potash, phosphorous, chlorate etc., the children contract deadly infections of lung, skin, kidney and eyes.

Matches & fireworks industry being highly hazardous, the law provides for imprisonment from 3 months to years and a fine upto Rs. 20,000. But, thanks to the various law-enforcing agencies, this legal instrument has remained a paper tiger till date. Leave alone the imprisonment, till date the maximum penalty imposed for violation of this law is a paltry Rs. 200/-.

The revelations of both governmental and non-governmental studies on this subject agree that these units keep flouting the norms and provisions of Explosive Act, Factory Act and Labour Laws. Yet there is a mushrooming of such units all over the country are run without registration of license.

How can we tackle the menace?

--“Charity begins at home”. Let us not buy crackers and educate our children about the darker side of this illuminating object. In its place, provide your children with colourful candles, attractive toys etc. The children might be obstinate in the beginning. But certainly they will watch the point with our perseverance and commitment.

-----Spread the message among your friends, relatives and well-wishers. Try to arrange an informal family get-together of theses persons, well ahead of Diwali and explain the plight of the children engaged in the industry. Try to convince them and the children on the wasteful extravaganza, the environmental pollution, risk of accidents and dangers to lives and property involved in lighting fireworks.

-----If you happen to be a teacher, or doctor, or people’s representative, social worker, or a village head your responsibility naturally assumes greater dimension. Try to educate the children, parents and others taking few hours off your schedule. You are doing a world of good to those lakhs of children fro whom Diwali or Dussehra does not convey anything special than a killing routine at work.

-----Social workers can organize wall-writing, distribution of handbills, personal contact of head-masters/head-mistresses etc. The children will easily get influenced through their teacher. If possible the teachers can arrange a rally in their area to highlight the issue.

----During the festivities of Diwali, Dussehra and other religious functions, cultural programmes like street drama, audio-visual programmes etc. cam be organized.

-----Contact press/media and get them involved in highlighting the issue. Press statements be issued covering the entire gamut of the campaign. Launch a signature campaign in support of boycott of fireworks involving prominent personalities of the area.

-----If you are running a school or a center a take out procession of children and others to spread the message in the school and the neighborhood.

-----Just a couple of days before Diwali, organise a public gathering of like-minded persons to demonstrate symbolic boycott of crackers by immersing them in water.

Celebrate Diwali by lighting lamps, not by blasting childhood.

SOURCE--http://bba.org.in/

“Child Labour is injurious to the health of the Economy”

“Child Labour is injurious to the health of the Economy”

• Children are employed not just because of
•  parental poverty
• , illiteracy, ignorance
• , failure of development and
•  education programmes, 
• but quite essentially due to the fact that employers benefit immensely from child labour as children come across as the cheapest option sometimes even for free.

.

• All work that is done by child labourers and the income  generated goes unaccounted in a country's economy.

• -----Studies reveal that  6 crore children assumingly work for approximately 200 days in a year on an average cost of Rs. 15 per child per day. This amounts to Rs. 18,000 crores in one year. Now, these 6 crore child labourers when substituted with 6 crores adult labourers would earn Rs. 1, 38,000 crores at minimal rate of an average floor wage of Rs. 115 per day per labourer for 200 days. This difference in the total earnings between the two scenarios works out to Rs. 1, 20,000 crores- which is solely a pool of black money.
• This is a straight profit of Rs. 1,20,000 crore, which is a significant loss to the economy. The employer(s) should have legally and ideally paid this sum to the worker(s) but the employer(s) instead choose to employ docile, underpaid and overworked child labourers.
• Part of this black money generated by employing child labour is used in bribing the law enforcement agencies and politicians. This is chronic corruption. This in turn leads to lax implementation of laws, i.e. poor or no inspection of the work premises, letting the employers Scott free with little or no penalties at all, etc. This subsequently propels child labour creating an unscrupulous vicious circle between child labour, black money and corruption.
•  In response to a question in the Parliament, the Government admitted that only 9% of employers of child labourers have so far been convicted since 2007. This conviction is in the form of a fine only. In spite of one year to three years imprisonment provisions in the laws related to Child Labour and Bonded Labour, unsurprisingly not even a single errant employer has been jailed so far.

SOURCE ---http://www.kailashsatyarthi.net/

HAPPY CHILD ---HAPPY DIPAWALI

HAPPY CHILD ---HAPPY DIPAWALI

GLIMPSE ---CHILD LABOUR

PROBLEM OF CHILD LABOUR AND ACT

• According to the Census 2001 figures there are 1.26 crore working children in the age group of 5-14 as compared to the total child population of 25.2 crore. 
• There are approximately 12 lakhs children working in the hazardous occupations/processes which are covered under the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act i.e. 18 occupations and 65 processes. 
• As per survey conducted by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in 2004-05, the number of working children is estimated at 90.75 lakh. 
• As per Census 2011, the number of working children in the age group of 5-14 years is about  43.53 lakh

• Way back in 1979, Government formed the first committee called Gurupadswamy Committee to study the issue of child labour and to suggest measures to tackle it.

• Based on the recommendations of Gurupadaswamy Committee, the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act was enacted in 1986

• The Act prohibits employment of children in certain specified hazardous occupations and processes and regulates the working conditions in others.  

• In consonance with the act, a National Policy on Child Labour was formulated in 1987. The Policy seeks to adopt a gradual & sequential approach with a focus on rehabilitation of children working in hazardous occupations & processes in the first instance. The Action Plan outlined in the Policy for tackling this problem is as follows:

1. Legislative Action Plan for strict enforcement of Child Labour Act and other labour laws 

2.Focusing of General Developmental Programmes for Benefiting Child Labour

3. Starting of projects in areas of high concentration of child labour

SOURCE ---Labour.nic.in

State-wise human trafficking -----NCRB DATA

ILO DEF OF CHILD LABOUR-----

According to the International Labour Organization(ILO), "child labour is where children are deprived of their childhood  because they are forced to work long hours for little or no money, deprived of education and in conditions harmful to their mental and physical development.


Among the developing countries, India has the highest number of child labours under the age of 14 years which is approximately 12.6 millions. 


Children are engaged in every sector of economy like match stick making, fireworks, domestic labour, construction, carpet making industry, brick kilns, etc

one of the places where child labour is experienced the most is Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu.

Sivakasi is a small municipal town in Ramanathapuram district. In the immediate vicinity of the town are two other municipal areas, Thiruthangal and Sattur. It is famous for three types of industries – fireworks, match sticks and printing. 90% of India’s fireworks is produced here. 

END CHILD TRAFFICKING (endchildtrafficking.blogspot.in)----A DAUNTING TASK

• Inspired by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi,i wish to be part of his nobel and daring effort to eliminate child trafficking and their rehabilitation.
• TO END CHILD TRAFFICKING AND THEIR REHABILITATION IS A DAUNTING TASK WHICH IS ONLY POSSIBLE WITH LOCAL,NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL EFFORT.
• This problem of humanity is not seprate from humanity itself and so needs to be given maximum attentions.
• ISSUE of haves and havesnot(which itself has multidimentional aspect) is of prime concern to end child trafficking and their rehabilitation.
• One of the way to be part of this effort is to disseminate information regarding child trafficking and various means to overcome this menace .
• AND this blog is intended for disseminating information on child trafficking ,child labour etc

I dedicate this blog to KAILASH SATYARTHI ,NOBEL LAUREATE 2014

Kailash Satyarthi (born on January 11, 1954) is a human rights activist from India who has been at the forefront of the global movement to end child slavery and exploitative child labor since 1980 when he gave up a lucrative career as an Electrical Engineer for initiating crusade against Child Servitude. As a grassroots activist, he has led the rescue of over 78,500 child slaves and developed a successful model for their education and rehabilitation. As a worldwide campaigner, he has been the architect of the single largest civil society network for the most exploited children, the Global March Against Child Labor,which is a worldwide coalition of NGOs, Teachers' Union and Trade Unions.

As an analytical thinker, he made the issue of child labor a human rights issue, not a welfare matter or a charitable cause. He has established that child labor is responsible for the perpetuation of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population explosion and many other social evils. He has also played an important role in linking the fight against child labor with the efforts for achieving 'Education for All'.

SOURCE----http://www.kailashsatyarthi.net/biography