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Resources for Cultivating Peace
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Excerpt From Anti-Slavery |
| Excerpt From Anti-Slavery "Child Domestic Workers: Finding a Voice" http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/resources/AdvocacyHandbookEng.pdf Domestic service is probably the single largest employer of young girls worldwide - and the most hidden. From country to country, 20-60% of all working children are girls in domestic service. Girls living in rural, agricultural families sometimes work in the fields, but more often, they are sent to work as domestic servants in someone else's home. Their working day can begin before sunrise and continue deep into the night. Due to the 24 hour-a-day nature of their job, child servants spend the majority of their time inside their employer's house. Cooking, boiling water, handling cleaning chemicals, using sharp kitchen utensils, caring for young children and lifting heavy items are all common tasks for most child servants. The physical stress on these children is immense, making them very accident-prone even while carrying out even the simplest tasks. Employers and their family members often physically abuse child servants. These injuries affect the child's working performance, making it harder for them to move and to concentrate. Child servants can live in such uninterrupted cycles of violence for years. |
| Read About the Global March Against Child Labour http://www.globalmarch.org/convention-campaign/index.php3 The establishment of ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour is a benchmark for the international efforts to end child labour, specially the worst forms of child labour. The Global March Against Child Labour has played a major role in bringing the issue of child labour to the public and campaigning to ensure its effective creation, ratification, and implementation. The Global March's Convention Campaign dates back to the start of a historic six-month journey, a process that transformed country after country into strong supporters of immediate action against child exploitation. NGOs, trade unions, religious groups, children's committees, governments, business communities and other concerned groups have all joined hands in over 130 nations to declare strong commitment to the goals of establishing an effective international instrument to end child labour. |
| Excerpt From Free the Children "Child Soldiers: In Depth" http://www.freethechildren.org/peace/childrenandwar/soldierindepth.html The international community widely defines a child solider as "any person under the age of 18 who actively participates, through violent or non-violent means, in a political, ideological, or military armed conflict." Even in times of peace, children who are recruited into a country's armed forces or into a non-government military organization are considered child soldiers. Over 50 countries currently recruit child soldiers into the armed forces.
The majority of child soldiers come from at least one of the following backgrounds:
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| Excerpt From Fields of Hope "A Day in the Life of An Agricultural Child Worker" http://www.fieldsofhope.org/ A Day In the Life Of: Fishing Children have been found working on fishing boats and on offshore fishing platforms, primarily in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, India, Thailand, Pakistan, and Indonesia. They clean, bone, and skin fish and shell shrimp, crab, and mussels. Cuts from the sharp knives they use, combined with the sun and salt water, frequently cause skin disease on their hands. Children are kept as virtual prisoners for months at a time on the fishing platforms. On deep sea fishing boats, children 12-14 dive deep into the ocean to close the mouth of fishing nets. They have no diving equipment or goggles and the water pressure frequently ruptures their eardrums. Also, children work around the clock helping their families living as subsistence fishermen. Other children work in fish processing plants where dangerous machines operate around the clock. Some of them are recruited by unscrupulous agents to migrate from their hometown to a fishing town to work non-stop for little pay in fish processing plants. A Day In the Life Of: Sugar Cutting sugar cane is extremely dangerous work done in hot, humid climates. Children as young as 12 wield sharp knives and machetes on sugar cane plantations in Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, and the Cote d'Ivoire. Knife wounds to arms, legs, and hands are routine and many lead to irreparable injuries and deformities. Most children do not have appropriate clothing to protect them from the machinery or the hot weather. In addition to accidents, children also suffer from respiratory, skin, and digestive problems due to long hours of exposure to the sun, pesticides, and fertilizer. Younger children weed the fields, stack the cut cane, and drive carts. Sometimes children work in the cane processing factories, feeding cane into machines that squeeze the sugar from the stalks. Temperatures inside the factories can reach 140 degrees. There are reports of children working in the sugar industry of many countries, including Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Chile, Cote d'Ivoire, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, and the United States. A Day In the Life Of: Fruits and Vegetables Children plant and pick fruits and vegetables in nearly every country around the world, including the United States. The work is physically demanding, requiring bending, kneeling, climbing ladders, and carrying heavy bags or buckets. In addition to these traditional chores, children also weed and cultivate the soil, fix irrigation canals, and apply dangerous pesticides. They often use dangerous tools and run unsafe farm machinery they don't know how to operate. Many activities, like carrying heavy and oversized loads, result in permanent disabilities and injuries. Fatigue is an ever-present problem because children usually work 8-12 hours, and children as young as six years-old work in the fields beside their parents during the harvest season. Because they are outside all day, these children are particularly susceptible to heat exhaustion, disease carrying insects, and unsanitary drinking water. |
| STORIES OF CHILD LABORERS From the GLOBAL MARCH AGAINST CHILDREN http://www.globalmarch.org/case-studies/index.php3 Summer Ram Carpet Weaver, India Summer Ram is from the village Naktvar in the Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh. His father is very old and his family is desperately poor. Summer was caught into the trap of a Dalal (recruiter) of a carpet loom owner at a very early age. The recruiter gave Summer’s father 500 rupees and promised to send him 2000 more if Summer would come to work at the factory. Summer’s father was tempted and sent him along with the dalal. Summer Ram worked for two painful months at the carpet loom. He was not given a single penny was beaten very badly by his employer. After two months, he ran away. Unfortunately, another loom owner caught Summer and again enslaved him. Summer had to work for 18-20 hours a day and was beaten with an iron rod if he made a mistake. He was given very little to eat. Suma Begum and Shepali Begum Garland Makers, Bangladesh Suma Begum (age 7) and Shepali Begum (age 6) collect flowers from tree to tree early in the morning, make garlands and sell them at busy city squares and crossroads. Suma came from Comilla with her parents when she was very small. Her mother, Hazera Begum, works in two houses, washing dishes and cleaning. She earns about $13 per month. When asked about her aspirations for the future, Suma says she would like to be an educated officer and work in an office. She goes to a nearby slum district school, in junior class, and wants to continue. In the early morning both Suma and Shepali go to collect the flowers and after making the garlands they are sold by 10 a.m. Suma then goes to school until 12 noon. In the afternoon she plays with her friends then again goes in search of flowers, makes the garlands and sells them until late evening. Shepalis's mother, Nurjahan, works like Suma's mother in other people's houses and her father, Zakir, is a rickshaw driver (three-wheeled bicycle). Shepali is too small to understand the value of education but she is interested in collecting flowers and selling garlands. Shepali has three brothers and one sister and is the eldest in the family. When asked what she would like to be in the future, she said that she wants to work in a garment factory because, she said, her mother wants her and her sister to work there. Sa-nga Stone Polisher, Thailand Sa-nga, aged 14 years, is now employed in Nong Toom, a village of precious stone polishing sub-contractors. She lives with her widowed mother and four brothers and sisters. Her mother and brothers rent a piece of land for farming by sharing the rice with the landlord when the crops are harvested. The main source of income for the family is from Sa-nga and her two sisters, who are all precious stone polishers. They earn a total of 3,800 baht per month, of which Sa-nga herself can earn 1,200 baht. The employment is on a piece-rate basis calculated at 2 baht per carat of the polished stone. Sa-nga can work on 100-200 stones per week and tries to do an extra 50 carats in order to earn more money. As a result she earns an extra 100 baht a week but she also gets back pains and headaches from sitting for long hours and staring at the stones under a dim light bulb. She gets up at 5:00am and goes to the workshop at 6:00am, then works until 8:00am and goes back home for breakfast. She returns to work again at 9.30am after a short rest. At lunch time, she goes home eats and takes a short nap before returning to work. Usually, Sa-nga works until 8:00pm, which is the way of life for almost all of the piece-rate precious stone polishers in Nong Toom village. Louis Desire Child Worker, Mauritius My name is Desire and I am 15 year old. I was born in Mauritius and I have 4 sisters and 6 brothers. I live with my parents right now. I began school when I was 5 years old and stopped school at 12 because I failed the examinations twice. So my mother thought it would be best that I stop studies and start working. I worked at the Central market for 2 months, but stopped working there because my boss beat me. Then I worked at the graveyards for 2 months but I found the working conditions too difficult for me. I had to work there for 10-12 hours a day. I was sick and tired all the time. |
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