World Day Against Child Labor Highlights The Need To Do More For Africa's Children (SLIDESHOW)

By Dorothy Jobolingo

Friday 12th June: A deepening economic crisis and the loss of millions of jobs dominate headlines in Western Europe and the United States. But African nations are witnessing a different kind of labor crisis -- the use of young children and teenagers as cheap workers in exploitative jobs and industries. In many cases they have no choice, as their impoverished families need the help of their children to make ends meet.

Take Uganda. By the government's own figures, child labor is a major problem. Some 1.76 million of Ugandan 5 to 17 year-olds -- 17 percent -- are involved in some kind of work.

Figures recently published by aid agencies the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the AVSI Foundation show that, in the north and northeast of Uganda, the situation is even worse with 41% of children involved in some form of labor and 15% involved in very harsh, dangerous work - things like stone quarrying, brick-making, prostitution and the brewing of illegal alcohol.

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Friday 12th June is World Day Against Child Labor. While media headlines in the United States are dominated by job losses, African countries are seeing a different kind of labor crisis - young children and teenagers being forced into harsh, dangerous jobs. Take Peter Keem, 7, pictured here in northeastern Uganda. Peter has spent up to eight hours a day crushing stones to be used in construction. “It’s hard work”, he admits, “but I have to do it. My father is dead and my mother is very poor. I want to make money for school books and food.”

Another 26% are at risk of becoming involved. This could mean that a child has an elder sibling already working as a child laborer, or that a child's family was so mired in poverty that it was likely that he or she would be forced to seek work.

The IRC and AVSI looked at two regions of Uganda: the north, where years of fighting between the rebel Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes; and the northeast, specifically Karamoja, which has suffered from years of underinvestment, unemployment and more recently a prolonged drought.

In both regions, parents cited a lack of money as the main reason for sending their children out to work rather than keeping them in school. Parents also questioned the value of sending their children to run down and ill-equipped schools when they could be earning a living instead. In northern Uganda, for example, the educational infrastructure has been decimated by years of protracted fighting and neglect. Many teachers have been displaced and forced to move elsewhere.

Similarly, the northeast, while not subject to the same kind of widespread fighting as seen in the north, suffers from violent clashes between rival pastoralist clans. It's also a remote, drought-prone, impoverished region-- hardly a favorite on the list of places newly qualified teachers choose to be based.

So what can be done to stop the scourge of child labor? How can poor parents in countries like Uganda be persuaded to allow their children to attend school instead of spending their days breaking stones? There must be a two a two-pronged approach: one that provides parents with opportunities to earn a regular, sustainable income; and one that also improves the quality of schools and education.

The Ugandan government and international donors must put more funding behind projects like one recently launched by the IRC and AVSI in Uganda. The LEAP project - Livelihoods, Education and Protection to End Child Labor - helps poor parents to maximize income via savings and loans associations. It also repairs school buildings, trains teachers, provides educational materials, pays school fees and works with the Ugandan authorities to promote enforcement of laws that that prohibit child labor.

Thank to this effort, more than 11,000 children who might otherwise have wound up as child laborers are attending school instead. One of them is 16-year-old Rita Lotip from Moroto Town. For four years, she worked as a domestic servant, fetching water, cooking meals and cleaning clothes. She says she wanted to go to school but, as the oldest child in her family, it was her 'duty' to help provide for her siblings. Now, thanks to the LEAP program, Rita is back in school and eager to learn.

Rita has high hopes for the future. She says she wants to be a teacher, to tell other kids that 'education means wealth'. More funding must be made available to tackle the root causes of school absenteeism so that more children like Rita get such a chance.

Dorothy Jobolingo is a child labor expert with the International Rescue Committee in Uganda.

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Comments

[Harmony1812]

Just so sad. These poor children have little hope of accomplishing anything but survival.

[harriettubman]

What can be done for Africa is to have the World Family Planning group visit and begin educating them. Just like the Catholic church needs to do, Muslims need to teach their females about family planning. There's no higher being who wants children bred like rabbits and to come into this world with no food, clothes, shelter or love!!!! Love means to provide for your children. These children are not being provided for with the most basic things. It really upsets me not saddens me.

[Givethemhellharry]

Uganda has the highest birth rate in the world. Its population will double in 15 years. I know of many men who have fathered 20-40 children. There is no way that these men can provide for these children. It is a real reason why this garden of eden is being destroyed. And yet the President extols people to have more children. Why? Simply because much ot aid the government gets is tied to population.

Uganda and indeed the rest of Africa must put in strict controls on the number of children if it is ever going to have its people prosper. Until they do, more Aid money is just going to be throwing good after bad.

Secondly, education isn't the solution. There are huge numbers of high school and university graduates running around the country that can't find jobs. As one person said " Uganda has plenty of good employees, what it needs is good employers." Until the government stops wasting money on buying Presidential planes at $50 million a pop, maintaining an army that is there only to perpetrate those in power and letting Aid money being siphoned off in corruption, and starts using money building infrastructure that will create jobs at all levels, this country cannot prosper.

Africa and Uganda has great potential. But that potential will never be realized until a new breed of leaders like Paul Kagame of Rwanda come to power. There is a man that has done amazing things since the genocide.

[wdw505]

so stop the aid then.......

[lianmolive]

I agree with most of your comments. But education is part of the solution... it's not just to find a job (if there are no jobs there are no jobs), there are other areas, such as sex education and safety.

Aid money at this point is hindering progress and aiding corruption.

[harriettubman]

I disagree. Family planning and going to high school or college are not the same things. The religions these people believe in are the ones that will have to enforce this. They believe every thing. I had a mother tell me that the more children *Al*lah gave her the more blessed she is. Yet all I saw were mothers so fatigued they couldn't keep their eyes open during a class. However, the mothers who lived in refugee camps for years, of the same religion, were better educated about family planning and wanted to plan their families instead of spitting out baby after baby after baby.

I tell the mothers I teach in this country, the more mouths you bring into the world the longer you will remain in poverty. That is a fact! Look at the inner cities.

[Klimb]

A country like Uganda should not have food problems b/c they get approx. 2200mm of rainfall per annum. The problem is the dictatorship govt...if govt officials can steal medications for AIDS, Malaria and run a nation with dilapidated hospitals, totally collapsed infrastructure and failed education system how can you feed a country? Uganda govt has been praised by many for best economy and trusted govt but truth is world has been duped b/c President Museveni came into power using child soldiers and after 23 years of rule, I do not believe that his ideology of using child labour has changed but rather will never change. The govt propagandists in these countries will continue asking for money from the World bank, global fund and other international orgs but will end up in their own pockets (govt officials). Such photographs as above are very sad!! But also, sometimes these photos are used to garner and manipulate minds of donors. All will ask for monetary donations and yet, the poor children will never get food, education, medical care or hope for a future.

[Givethemhellharry]

Amen! Amen! and Amen again!

[wdw505]

child labor beat starvation