Reaching the unreached: the lost children

Action, not words

Many gains have been made in the decade since the World Summit for Children and the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. To bring this progress to its full fruition, the world must now force itself to confront and change the miserable fates of those children who have gained the least, or nothing at all. A crucial step is to make the time-bound eradication of the worst forms of child labour and exploitation a cause for all of us, not in words, but in action; not in speeches, but in policies and resources. It is a global cause we all share across regions, cultures, spiritual traditions and development levels. A cause to which we all want to contribute in practical terms.

During the past eight years, some 90 countries have made progress on this important front, uniting behind the International Labour Organization's (ILO) International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) to form a strong alliance that has turned this issue into a global cause. From just one donor country and six participating States in 1992, IPEC now has nearly 25 donors and more than 65 participating countries. In those countries, projects are helping prevent children from becoming involved in child labour, remove them from such situations through rehabilitation and education and provide improved livelihoods for their families through decent work.

In addition, the unanimous adoption in June 1999 of a new Convention (No. 182) on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour by the International Labour Conference of the ILO offers enormous leverage in ending the worst forms of child labour. These include such practices as child slavery, the forced recruitment of child soldiers, forced labour, trafficking, debt bondage, serfdom, prostitution, pornography and various forms of hazardous and exploitative work.

Convention 182 requires ratifying nations to take immediate action to protect children from abusive labour and to provide those removed from these horrors with rehabilitation and education.

A dozen countries have already ratified this new human rights instrument and many more report that they will do so in the next few months. Within IPEC, we are intent on winning rapid ratification on a country-by-country basis through a wide range of activities - from private lobbying to public rallies, from on-line information to wall posters. But we are committed to going beyond universal ratification to ensure that the principles of this Convention are integrated within national legal structures and implemented in ways that give realistic hope of rapidly eradicating these worst forms of child labour.

Education, the key

"Education," said the late Julius Nyerere, a former schoolteacher and much loved first President of the United Republic of Tanzania, "is not a way of escaping the country's poverty. It is a way of fighting it."

We know that more than 110 million children of school age in the developing world are not in school and that most of them are labouring. We also know that every year that a child attends school dramatically reduces the chance that he or she will end up in economic servitude.

Education is every child's right; nothing can compare or compete with it, and when it is of good quality and relevant to children's lives, it truly can fight poverty. Education empowers by opening new possibilities and opportunities for children to participate and contribute, to the fullest of their abilities, unhampered by their class or gender. The Convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour fully recognizes the power of education, noting that the long-term solution to child exploitation "lies in sustained economic growth leading to social progress, in particular poverty alleviation and universal education."

The link between education and poverty alleviation is especially important because the economic abyss between the rich and the poor has widened over the past decade. Now, despite unprecedented global economic expansion, more and more people are being isolated in ever deeper poverty. The assets of the world's three richest billionaires, for example, are more than the combined gross national product of all of the 48 least-developed countries and their 600 million people. In contrast, the poorest one fifth of the world's population shares only one per cent of the world's GNP.

In the fight against child labour and the exploitation of children, education must go hand in hand with global measures to buffer poor nations through steps such as fairer trade, more aid, deeper debt relief, better investment policies and more stable commodity prices.

Global moral imperative

A strategic combination of such measures would give all of us a rare chance to end the vicious cycle of poverty and reclaim lost lives.

We know where to find the lost children. They are in the tents and barracks of Africa. In the brothels of Asia, the slums of Europe and North America, the sweatshops of Latin America. Seeing their faces, even if only for a fleeting moment, how can we allow ourselves to forget them?

Will we simply write off their lives and futures? Or will we go the final mile to protect the rights of these youngest and most vulnerable members of the human family?

We can set a new standard for humanity by consigning the enslavement of children in these worst forms of child labour and exploitation to the scrap heap of history. Let us extend the gains now enjoyed by so many other children to this last, most isolated group. Let us be the ones who stand firm until all children lost in such dangerous obscurity emerge into a brighter future.