"Life is Shirt but Time is more than" Please try to make established your own professional Assignment On – Child Labour in Bangladesh : An empirical & legal analysis Introduction: Child Domestic service is a widespread practice in Bangladesh. The majority of child domestics tend to be 12 and 17 years old. But children as young as 5 or 6 years old can also be found working. A survey of child domestic workers found that 38 percent were 11 to 13 years old and nearly 24 percent were 5 to 10 years old. Child domestics works long hours, getting up well before their employers and going to bed long after them. on 50 percent domestic workers work 12- 14 hours a day. Irrespective of their gender, Child domestic carry out all sorts of household work. Boys often perform tasks like going to the grocery, cleaning the drain, talking the garbage to roadside bins, washing the car and sell nuts etc. On the other hand, girls have to iron the cloths, attend phone calls and serves the guests. The child domestic workers are often the least paid in the society, their remuneration ranging from 80 taka to 400 taka per month. In most of the cases, they hand over all their earnings to their parents, leaving nothing for themselves. What is Child Labor and Child Labour in Bangladesh Child labour is work that exceeds a minimum number of hours, depending on the age of a child and on the type of work. Such work is considered harmful to the child and should therefore be eliminated. • Ages 5-11: At least one hour of economic work or 28 hours of domestic work per week. • Ages 12-14: At least 14 hours of economic work or 28 hours of domestic work per week. • Ages 15-17: At least 43 hours of economic or domestic work per week. Causes of child labour in Bangladesh: Supply factors: Poverty is the single most important factor responsible for the prevalence of child labour in the country. About 55 million people live below the poverty line in Bangladesh. Poor households badly need the money that their children earn. They commonly contribute around 20-25 percent of family income. Since poor households spend the bulk of their income on food, the earnings of working children are critical to their survival Parent’s perceptions greatly influence their children's participation in the labour force. The education system of the country in general does not provide poor, disadvantaged children with any immediate prospects of better jobs or higher levels of income. The curriculum, followed in schools, is hardly perceived to be capable of meeting the practical needs of poor families. Naturally, poor parents fail to appreciate the long-term value of education, and instead opt for the short-term economic gains of child labour. In many cases, the male children of the household are expected to help the father in the field and the female children the mother with the household work. Moreover, parents consider their children's employment in certain occupations like in the engineering workshop as a rare opportunity to learn employable skills. To them, it is an alternative education with much more practical value than the traditional primary education. Even though the government launched the Compulsory Primary Education Program all over the country since January 1993, education remains very expensive for a poor family, which is expected to bear the costs of uniform and transportation. In some areas of the country the expenditure on primary level students represents one-third of the entire income of a typical poor family, though most families have more than one child of the school-going age. Many children are, therefore, forced to work to pay for their own education. Emergencies often contribute to an increase in the supply of child labour. Bangladesh happens to be a land of chronic natural calamities. Floods, cyclones and riverbank erosion render many people homeless and helpless every year. Low-income families have little margin to cope with any such disaster. They also find it very difficult to deal with the distress resulting from abandonment or divorce, or the injury and illness of an adult member of the household. As a result, trapped early in the world of work, children of such families become the worst victims of any kind of disaster, natural or man-made Demand factors: The lower cost of employing child workers and the irreplaceable skills provided by them are often cited to explain the demand for child labour. Although there is validity in the first argument, the second does not hold water. In all the industries that rely heavily on child labour, most of the tasks performed by children are also performed by adults working side by side with them. Clearly, children do not have irreplaceable skills. The other factors, responsible for the demand for child labour, seem to be non-economic. Employers are tempted to hire child labour because children are much less aware of their rights and most unlikely to get organized in trade unions. They are also more trustworthy, more willing to take orders and do monotonous work, and less likely to be absent from work. Children's lower absentee rate is immensely valuable to employers in the informal sector where workers are employed on a daily basis and the employers must ensure the presence of a full contingent of workers each day Trafficking in Bangladesh: Trafficking in woman and children within the territory of Bangladesh also a common phenomenon. Uneducated and vulnerable woman and children deprived of financial, legal, social support and opportunities easily become victims of internal and cross border trafficking. Most of the children and girls are sold in the brothels engaged in prostitution or in cage brothels in the receiving countries like India, Pakistan and Middle-Eastern country. The victims are in the being high risk HIV positives. There are two types trafficking in Bangladesh. One is internal and other is cross border trafficking. In the case of internal trafficking girls and children’s are often take away from their homes through abduction, on false promise of better life in good employment. on the other hand cross border level, they are smuggled by the gang of traffickers to place them further destinations such as India, Pakistan and other Middle Easters countries where their ultimate fate is a life of sexual exploitation, abuse and other forms of bounded labor. Tiny boys who are trafficked to the Middle East become camel jockeys, which is very risky and hazardous job. The net workers of traffickers in Bangladesh are well organized with different settings of people like local political leaders, smugglers, anti-social activists and some low enforcement personnel also Organizations working with child workers: The plight of child workers in Bangladesh attracted the attention of quite a few philanthropists from both home and abroad. They initiated programs in the non-government sector to promote welfare of the working children. The most notable of Bangladesh in 1972,was particularly moved by the miseries of child workers in Dhaka, subsequently he founded an international NGO, underprivileged children’s educational Programs(UCEP),as a beacon hope for working children. UCEP, from a modest beginning as a provider of general education on a limited scale in Dhaka has by emerged as the leading national NGO promoting the cause of child workers in Bangladesh. UCEP pursues,” an integrated strategy of human resources development, incorporating general education, followed by skill training and employment placement services” .UCEP currently operates 3 general schools,3 technical schools,5 para-trade training centers and has total enrollment of around 22,000.each school operates three shifts, each of two and half hour’s duration to allow the working children to pursue education while working. Poor Child Workers: Child service is a widespread practice in Bangladesh. They are so poor. Although children are employed as domestic throughout the country, They have overwhelmingly high concentration in the cities. Employers in the urban areas usually recruit children from their village home through family, friends or contacts. Most of the domestic child workers comes from vulnerable families, many of them being orphans children. A good number of them are from having the single-parent families. Child domestic work very long hours, getting up well before their employers and going to bed long after them. On an average 5 percent children workers work 13-14 hours in a day. The domestic child workers works in oil, soap, towel, comb, cloths company. Boys often perform tasks like going to grocery, cleaning the drain, taking the garbage to roadside bins washing the cars. • Extreme forms of poverty play a crucial role. Child labour is part of a vicious cycle, with poverty as a main cause as well as a main consequence. This implies that child labour cannot be addressed in isolation. Among factors contributing to child labour are rapid population growth, adult unemployment, bad working conditions, lack of minimum wages, exploitation of workers, low standard of living, low quality of education, lack of legal provisions and enforcement, low capacity of institutions, gender discrimination and traditional arguments in favour of child labour. One or more of the above contribute to the large numbers of children working under exploitative or hazardous conditions. • There is a direct link between child labour and education. Nearly 50 per cent of primary school students drop out before they complete grade 5, and then gravitate towards work, adding to the number of child labourers. The high drop-out rates are correlated with the low quality of public primary education, low adult literacy, low awareness of the importance of education, teacher-student ratio (sometimes this goes up to 1 per 100), non-availability of didactic and learning materials, and the cost of education. Basic primary education is free as far as direct costs and school books are concerned. But many indirect costs are involved as well, such as transport, uniforms, pens, pencils, and notebooks. • Bangladesh has only limited provision for pre-vocational/vocational skills training and there are related constraints such as the quality of the skills training, market and employment linkages and certification. While this could be an attractive option to working/disadvantaged children and their families, neither the Government of Bangladesh nor many of the non-governmental organizations have the institutional capacity and technical expertise required to deliver skills training facilities effectively; • Finally, the level of awareness on the issue of child labour and laws prohibiting it is still low. Society in general has a rather indifferent attitude towards the problem. In many cases, it is not realised that the children who are employed in, for example, domestic service, often have no access to education or medical care. An empirical & legal Analysis: • Child labour is a complex global issue. Despite restrictions, it exists in almost every country. The prevalence of child labour has become a serious problem in the world. However, not all work involving children is a concern. ‘Developmentally appropriate economic activity can be beneficial to the full development of a child, but at its extreme, work can place a child’s life and well being at risk. Work that is exploitative, dangerous and detrimental to the physical, social, moral or spiritual development of children, or inhibits a child’s ability to receive a quality, relevant education, is considered hazardous labour and poses a major human rights and socioeconomic challenge.’ (Children at Work, Care, 2007). • There is no precise information on the child labour situation of the world. According to an estimate of International Labour Organisation (2006), excluding domestic labour, there are 218 million children engaged in child labour. The report also stated that around 126 million children aged 5-17 are engaged in hazardous labour. Bangladesh, like all other developing countries, is also facing an intense child labour problem. On the occasion of World Day against Child Labour on June 12, it is pertinent to raise again the demand for formulating pathways for the eradication of child labour from Bangladesh. • Bangladesh is a signatory to a number of international covenants against child labour, including ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (No 182); ILO Forced Labour Convention (No 29); ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (No 105), UN Convention on the Rights of Child etc. However, child labour is rampant in the country. National Child Labour Survey (BBS, 2002/2003) estimated that there are 4.9 million children working in Bangladesh – 14.2 per cent of the total 35.06 million children of 5-14 years. Furthermore, according to UNHCR (2010), of the children who are engaged in the worst forms of labour, 46 per cent works in the agriculture sector, 36 per cent are involved with different kinds of services, 16 per cent are occupied in manufacturing and the remaining two per cent are employed in other forms of work. • It is evident from the data available that most of the children are employed and exploited in the agriculture sector. Children working in agriculture sectors are exposed to dangerous machinery, equipments and tools, harmful pesticides, and the effects of carrying of heavy loads. As identified in ILO convention no 182, the maximum proportion of the child labourers are engaged in the worst forms of works in the rural areas. However, interventions generally have targeted the worst forms of exploitative labour in urban areas. Children working in rural areas and even in family farms, face hazardous conditions. Traditional viewpoint and social structure sometimes make it difficult for parents to understand that these children are being exploited. Though not all work that children perform is hazardous, it calls for closer scrutiny. • The Baseline Survey for Determining Hazardous Child Labour (BBS, 2006) lists the hazardous forms of works that children are engaged in, including welding, carpentry, rickshaw pulling, automobile repair, etc. Children also face dangers from drying fish and milling spice. In these sectors, children remain vulnerable to harmful chemicals, injuries and possible loss of body parts and they suffer from working in the hot sun for long hours. In Bangladesh, children below 14 years of age can also be found involved in the production of salt, soap, bricks, cigarettes, footwear, steel, furniture, glass, leather, poultry, ornaments, textiles, explosives and fireworks. The dangers children face from being engaged in the production of these goods may include working for long hours in cramped conditions and remaining exposed to hazardous chemicals and sharp objects. Many are also engaged in the processing of shrimp, which reportedly leads to different kinds of ailments, infections, and injuries such as arthritis, urinary tract infections, back injuries, muscle inflammation, fungal infections, and diarrhoea. A report of International Federation for Human Rights (2008) has indicated that large numbers of children in Bangladesh work in the ship-breaking industry, dismantling large water vessels into smaller pieces. Despite limited evidence, it is assumed that worst forms of child labour are also used in the production of jewellery, plastic, rubber, etc. • According to a survey of ILO (2006), there are more than 421,000 children, three-quarters of them girls, working as domestic servants in households in Bangladesh. Child domestic workers are often victims of abuse. Besides, the Baseline survey on Child Domestic Labour in Bangladesh (ILO, 2006) reports that more than half of the child domestic workers receive no wage at all, rather receive benefits such as food, clothing and accommodation, reinforcing their dependency on the employers. Children who are engaged in economic activities in the streets, in hotels and restaurants and in the transportation sector, are exposed to drugs, violence, criminal activities and physical and sexual abuse. Moreover, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (2008) estimated that as many as 20,000 children are exploited in the commercial sex industry. • Poverty is the most important factor behind child labour in our country, where about 55 million people live below the poverty line. Many of the children from poor families need to work to eat. Their parents don’t understand the necessity of education and do not think the curriculum helpful to directly get jobs. Recurrent natural calamities contribute to poverty and the increase of child labour. Employers want to hire children because they are unaware of their rights and more willing to obey. • To address these issues, the government of Bangladesh has already taken various steps. It established a policy framework for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour. The National Child Labour Eradication Policy 2010 is a guiding tool for the future laws and policies regarding child labour. It calls for the formation of National Child Labour Welfare Council to monitor the situation at the national level. However, emphasis should be given on ensuring access to education for all, enforcing laws and regulations rigorously and increasing awareness of parents and society about the long-term benefits of education and harmful effects of child labour. Strong social stance must be built up against exploitative employers. We must all work together and find out the most cost-effective way to combat exploitative child labour. It is now an urgent need to undertake a new child labour survey and develop a strong plan of action to end child labour in Bangladesh. The Stop Child Labour in Bangladesh: The Stop Child Labour in Bangladesh is planning to work with community groups, parents, teachers, employers and civil servants to get children out of work and into school. The SCLBD program is based on the principles: ‘every child out of school is a child laborer’ and ‘all children should attend formal, full-time education’. The problem of child labor will be tackled by the SCLBD in the following steps: The process starts with the creation of a norm that child labor is unacceptable and that children should go to regular daytime schools. Awareness is created on the risks of child labor and the assets of education. The whole community is involved in this process. By door-to-door visits or in a theatre people are encouraged to take the children out of work and send them to schools. - During information meetings it will be shown to the parents that there are other, better solutions than child labor for additional family income than child labor. Parents are supported in their search for these alternatives. - Children that have never been to school will be prepared by the SCLBD, in special transition schools, for the regular formal educational system where the children are mainstreamed into groups that match their age. - Children, parents, employers, teachers and civil servants will be motivated to improve the neglected public educational systems and to make them accessible for children that used to work. Finally, the SCLBD will provide extra teaching staff or it takes other measures in order to take care of the capacity and logistic problems resulting from an increased demand for education