Drought-hit states are seeing a spurt in child labour

The theme of this year’s World Day Against Child Labour on June 12 is the impact of conflicts on child labour . More than 164 million children were affected by drought last year. The most vulnerable – girl children – have been pushed into child marriage, child labour, abduction and child trafficking.

The colours of child labour have many touching hues. Shivani (name changed) from Lalitpur district in Uttar Pradesh has a story of anguish to share. When Shivani’s father died due to an illness, two years ago, she was 13. He had left behind a debt of Rs 1 lakh. Shivani, along with her four sisters and mother, are now paying back the debt as well as earning their livelihood. “The family has mortgaged a part of their land and her mother has sold off her jewellery. Shivani was forced to drop out from school and now works in the farm. Shivani is among millions of children who have lost their childhood dreams due to drought and are working to support their families.

The theme of this year’s World Day Against Child Labour on June 12 is the impact of conflicts and disasters on child labour . According to a recent estimate, more than 164 million children were affected by drought last year. The most vulnerable among them – girl children – have been pushed into child marriage, child labour, abduction and child trafficking. The Marathwada region alone has seen about 3,500 children being sucked into child labour and trafficking.

Drought and the ongoing water crisis have left children defenceless. According to UNICEF’s report ‘When coping crumbles: Drought in India 2015-16 ,’ young children and elderly were left behind in drought-affected villages, while adults migrated to the states of Maharashtra and Odisha. Deprived families often saw children as productive assets and earning members. Cases of trafficking (Odisha) and child marriages (Maharashtra and Telangana) have seen a rise in the drought-prone states.

Through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which has been agreed and signed by India, the government has committed that by 2030, all girls and boys will complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes. The government also guarantees that it will take immediate and effective measures to eliminate child labour by 2025. Records of child labour, drought and exclusions have every potential to overpower these commitments.

The amendment to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act passed in July 2016 by Parliament does not clearly define family enterprises and leaves room for interpretations, which are exploited by those engaging children to work. According to Census 2011, there are more than 4.3 million cases of child labour in the country. However, these could be underestimates.

Governments need to take immediate measures to set up institutional mechanisms and strengthen village social and health infrastructure to protect children affected by droughts and civil unrest. In fact, efforts should be taken, even before any disaster strikes in the form of vulnerability assessment and disaster mitigation, with adequate attention to child labour; or else, many more children like Shivani may lose-out on their precious childhood.

Joseph Wesley is a child protection specialist with World Vision India.

Source: Hindustan Times, 11-06-2017

India to Ratify 2 ILO Conventions on Child Labour

The conventions set minimum age for work and specify action to end worst forms of child labour

The labour ministry is likely to soon ratify two key international conventions on child labour, marking an important step towards total eradication of child labour from the country. The move follows amendment to the Child Labour Act, which now completely prohibits children below 14 years of age from any kind of work.A senior labour ministry official told ET that the ministry will shortly take up the pending child labour related conventions to the International Labour Organization (ILO) for ratification after getting it approved at the upcoming 48th Indian Labour Conference.
“The ratification of conventions 138 and 182 will make it legally binding to comply with the provisions of the conventions,“ the official said, requesting not to be identified.
According to the 2001 census, there were 12.6 million child workers between the ages of five and 14 in India. In 2011, this number fell to 4.35 million. The National Sample Survey Office's survey of 2009-10 put the number at 4.98 million.
The Union cabinet has already approved ratification of the two conventions to address concerns related to child labour. While Convention No. 138 sets minimum age for admission to employment, the Worst Form of Child Labour Convention (No. 182) concerns prohibition and stipulates immediate action for elimination of the worst form of child labour.
So far, Convention 138 has been ratified by 169 countries and Convention 182 has been ratified by 180 countries. Hence, by ratifying these two core conventions, India will join majority of the countries that have adopted the legislation to prohibit and place severe restrictions on the employment and work of children.
India has so far ratified 45 conventions of the ILO, of which 42 are in force. Out of these four are fundamental or core conventions. Complete elimination of all forms of child labour is also crucial for the attainment of United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
The government has taken up a multi-pronged strategy, including both stringent legislative and project-based approach, to address the concerns related to child labour.
The amendment to the Child Labour Act proposes complete prohibition of employment of children up to the age of 14 years while banning employment of children between 15-18 years in hazardous works, in sync with the Right to Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
Besides, the amended law provides for a fine of `60,000 to an employer who hires children below the age of 14 years or an imprisonment of up to two years. Even the parents are liable to be fined `5,000 and imprisonment of six months to one year if they force children below 14 years into labour for the second time after they are rescued.

Source: Economic Times, 5-06-20167

India fails to give kids a safe childhood, ranks a poor 116

Scores Worst In Protecting The Girl Child

India has fared poorly ranking 116 in the global index of places where childhood is most and least threatened, lagging behind many of its neighbouring countries like Myanmar (112), Bhutan (93), Sri Lanka (61) and Maldives (48).The index is part of a new report `Stolen Childhoods', from Save the Children, which assesses children missing out on childhood. The index scores reflect the average level of performance across a set of eight indicators related to child health, education, labour, marriage, childbirth and violence.
India scored 754 points. According to the report, one in every 21 children being born in India are dying before reaching their fifth birthday , whereas 47 million youth of upper secondary age are not in school. While India has the highest number of stunted children in the world, it also accounts for the largest number of child labourers under age 14 among all nations.
Data show India's worst performance was in indicators which reflect safeguarding the girl child. For instance, 10.3 crore girls in India were married before they had turned 18 and 50% of all adolescent births occur in just seven countries which includes India. The stunting rate among Indian girls is also very high with one-third of girls aged 15-19 being stunted even as in most countries stunting rates are higher for boys than for girls.
Stunted growth is caused by chronic malnutrition in the first 1,000 days of a child's life (from the start of pregnancy to age 2). Chronic malnutrition at this stage of life is largely irreversible, and stunted children face a lifetime of lost opportunities in education and work. Such children are also more likely to succumb to illness and disease. Nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 years of age are attributable to under-nutrition. Data show 38.7% Indian children aged 0-59 months are severely malnourished.

Source: Times of India, 1-06-2017

Child Rights and You - CRY receives support from Sourav Ganguly for the Girl Child

Kolkata: Stepping out of the popping crease with the right foot forward and effortlessly steering the red cherry beyond the boundary – that’s what the legendary leftie was always known for, in his illustrious career with the willow. His engagements changed as he moved on from cricket to cricket administration, but his personal priorities clearly haven’t. An idealist as ever, the flamboyant southpaw goes out in the middle once again, to step out with his ‘Right’ foot forward to bat for a cause – this time, rights of the girl child.

 

‘The Prince of Kolkata’, as christened by Sir Geoff Boycott, and yet better known as the very own ‘Dada’ to the cricket-loving Indians, Sourav Ganguly takes up the cause of girl-child education, as he supports ‘Right To School’, a campaign initiated by a leading child rights organization CRY – Child Rights and You.

 

Through this campaign CRY aims to create a world where the girl child is celebrated for what she is – where she has access to equal opportunities to study, to grow and to prosper as her male counterpart. The pan-India campaign would aim to help 1,21,000 girl children across CRY-supported projects getting back to school. “Among the numerous hurdles girls face on their road to education, the most difficult is the mindset that a girl child is not a 'worthy-enough' investment. When people like Sourav make an effort to try and change this thought process, it makes a huge difference. Proper education can bring about a cycle of positive change. It helps ultimately to create a whole pool of more aware, educated and empowered girls and women capable of influencing the community they live in for the better. This first step of attitude change is critical to achieve this outcome,” said Vatsala Mamgain, Director, Resource Mobilisation, CRY – Child Rights and You.

Pledging his support to the campaign, Sourav said, “For me a girl, in whichever form she is, whether it’s a mother or a child or a friend’s daughter, is one of the most beautiful things in the modern world. I am a proud father of a very pretty and clever young girl in Sana, so I understand what it is to have a girl as a child. But, it is also true that majority of our girl children stay in villages, they stay in areas on the outskirts of the city and they don’t get the best facilities in school and I have seen it with my own eyes. So it’s our duty, whether it’s a school or public life, to provide facilities to the girl child so that they don’t drop out of school and fade away from education. And I do hope, we’ll treat them in a much better way because they are very important.”

 

He also urged his followers to help bring the girl child back to school.

That in many parts of India, the birth of a girl child is not welcomed is a known fact. It is a known fact too, that discrimination starts from even before the girl child is born and sometimes she killed as a foetus, and if she manages to see the light of day, she is killed as an infant makes up the highly skewed child sex ratio where for every 1000 boys in India, there are only 908 girls. In such a scenario, it is but obvious that for myriad reasons, many girls across the country are forced to drop out of school.

Source: Indiaeducationadiary, 23-02-2017

Guestview Dark days for children 

The year 2016 will probably be remembered for military and political events, but it should also go down in history as one of the worst years for children since World War II.
Images of dead, injured, and distraught young children filled the media on an almost daily basis: a small boy sitting stunned and bleeding after his home was bombed; small bodies being lifted out of rubble; and small graves on the Mediterranean shoreline that mark the deaths of unknown children.
These images are powerful and uncomfortable. And yet they cannot capture the magnitude of children’s suffering. More than 240 million children are living in conflict zones—from the killing fields of Syria, Yemen, Iraq and northern Nigeria, to less well-documented but horrorstricken areas of Somalia, South Sudan and Afghanistan. And of the 50 million children who live outside their own countries or have been internally displaced, more than half have been forcibly uprooted, and are facing new threats to their lives and well-being.
Millions of children are undernourished and out of school; millions have witnessed unspeakable brutality; and millions are threatened with exploitation, abuse, and worse. This is not rhetoric; it is reality.
The UN—with support from countries such as Sweden, and by working through a coordinated humanitarian-response system that includes Unicef—is alleviating suffering whenever and wherever it can. But the quantity and complexity of cascading crises are testing that system as never before. New challenges, such as extremism, are increasing the risks to children, and making it more difficult and dangerous to reach them. Meanwhile, armed groups are increasingly targeting schools, hospitals and homes, and compounding innocent people’s suffering.
Political solutions to these conflicts are the surest way to stop the suffering and bring an end to such savage violations of human rights. But, barring that ideal outcome, we need to strengthen the current humanitarian system’s capacity to reach the children at greatest risk.
More than 70 years ago, world leaders addressed the unprecedented humaniand tarian crisis following World War II by creating new institutions to bring immediate assistance to those in need. These new global entities laid the foundation for a future based on cooperation, dialogue and results, rather than conflict, disaster and ruin.

That was a turning point in world history; we have now arrived at another one. We need to summon the same spirit of solidarity and creativity today that inspired previous generations, not by founding new institutions, but by finding new ways of responding to the hard realities of our own time.
For starters, we urgently need to harness innovation to expand our capacity to reach children who are cut off from assistance in besieged areas or communities controlled by extremists. We should be exploring every option, such as using drones to airdrop food and medical supplies, and developing mobile apps to monitor needs and track supplies on the ground, and to keep aid workers safer. While there will never be a substitute for safe, unimpeded humanitarian access, we need to explore every avenue to reach children in danger.
More broadly, we must do a better job of coordinating among governments and organizations to provide short-term and long-term relief more efficiently, and to make every dollar count. With chronic crises proliferating, we should be maximizing synergies between humanitarian development initiatives, because the two go hand in hand. How we respond in emergencies lays a foundation for future growth and stability, and how we invest in development can help build resilience against future emergencies.
Lastly, we need to change how governments calibrate the critical aid that they provide to meet fluctuating needs. In recent years, as appeals for aid have escalated, countries undergoing domestic austerity have increasingly had to justify their foreign-aid outlays. Many donors have earmarked their aid funds for specific purposes. To be sure, such funds will always be an indispensable tool in both humanitarian and development efforts; but in today’s unpredictable environment, more flexible, long-term funding is critical.
“Core” funding, as it is known, enables the UN and non-governmental organizations both to react more quickly in emergencies and to plan more strategically. Such funding allows us to provide lifesaving help when people need it most, rather than having to wait for countries to respond to specific humanitarian appeals. This is especially important for addressing the “forgotten” crises that the media may have missed.
Sweden has long been a proponent of such flexible support for UN organizations, because it improves results. For this reason, Sweden’s government recently decided to double its 2016 contribution to Unicef’s core funds. Now that the world is working together on a new global development agenda, we hope this practice will spread and inspire other governments to move more towards high-quality funding for humanitarian relief and sustainable development.
We must protect the rights, lives and futures of the world’s most vulnerable children. To the extent that we do that, we will help to determine our common future as well.
Anthony Lake is executive director of Unicef, and Isabella Lövin is minister for international development cooperation and deputy prime minister of Sweden. Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com

 

Source: Mint epaper, 1-02-2017

 

It would be disastrous for India to sign the Hague convention on child abduction

 

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is an international treaty that establishes procedures that provide for the prompt return of children wrongfully retained or removed from their habitual residence. Although the minister for women and children, Maneka Gandhi, took a decision not to have India sign the treaty for good reasons, there is now some reported rethinking.
It would be disastrous for many reasons for India to sing the Convention. The Convention deals with what has come to be known as “international child abduction”. The Law Commission of India has recently addressed the issue, and the first and most important point made by the Commission is that the word “abduction” when used by a parent is misplaced as no parent can ‘abduct’ her own child. The Commission recommends the passing of a domestic law and the signing of the Convention. The recommendation is surprising since the report itself notes that it is mainly women who are compelled to return to a foreign country to fight lonely battles for custody with no support.
Although the discussion whether or not to sign the Convention is taking place in gender-neutral terms, the fact is that as the Commission itself notes, 68% of the taking parents were mothers; 85% of these respondent mothers were primary caregivers of their children and 54% had gone home to a country in which they held citizenship.
So the first point to note is that this is a gendered issue, which concerns women who live in what has come to be known as NRI marriages. Often a male Indian migrant who is a green card holder comes to India to marry an Indian woman, not a green card holder, who he takes back on a dependent visa. They settle for example in the US and have children.
Trouble erupts between them, the matter is taken to a US court and decisions in relation to child custody are made there, or perhaps ex-party decisions when she has had to leave the country with her children. It is here the Hague Convention will enter the picture and require that if there was a court order in a foreign jurisdiction, and woman has returned to her country of origin with the child, her husband can apply to an executive authority for the return of the child based only on an order of a freight court which could be an ex-parti order or if the husband is “entitled “ to custody under a foreign law.
The mother, will be a “child abductor” and an application can be made to the authority in India for the return of the child to the place of: “habitual residence”, that is the US or any other reciprocal country who has signed the convention.
I have seen cases without number where women fleeing a violent marriage have returned to India with the children, with no desire to return or any chance of going back for want of a green card.
To compel such a child to return to the foreign country, who would obviously go with her mother, would be compounding the original problem.
It is argued that the mother can go to the foreign court and convince that court that she should be allowed to take the child back. To deny a woman to apply in a foreign court for a variation of a custody order in favour of the husband means returning to a foreign land with no support structure in place, with no independent right to reside in that country and would virtually mean a separation between mother and child.
Often such litigation is carried only by husbands with a view to compel a woman to give up her claims to alimony and any separation settlement. It is a known fact that when faced with such a choice, custody of children or alimony, women choose to exit a bad marriage with custody of the children with no alimony.
It is in this context that the issue whether or not to sign the Hague Convention must be seen.
The solution lies in a reverse law on protection of children found in the jurisdiction of the Indian courts. Our courts exercise parens patriae jurisdiction over children, in other words they are the ultimate guardians of children in their jurisdiction.
When faced with a claim from a father who says that the child has been removed from his custody in the face of a court order granting him custody, the court must decide whether it is in the best interest of the child to be sent back to a foreign land.
Indian law does not automatically recognise foreign judgments. Now by signing the Hague Convention, we will be compelled to recognise a foreign judgment regardless of the justness of the decision on custody under Indian law or whether was delivered ex-parte.
We have moved from the father being the sole guardian of the child to joint guardianship, we must now recognise that there is a rational way of resolving the problems of children when a cross-country marriage breaks. It is not my suggestion that the father must have no contact with the children; there are ways in which the non-custodial parent can develop a genuine caring relationship with the child, through access orders, and through sharing vacations, provided there is trust between the separated or divorces spouses.
It is here that the law must focus its attention rather than on its authoritarian and coercive role in punishing mothers who flee bad marriages.

Indira Jaising is a senior advocate, Supreme Court
The views expressed are personal 

Source: Hindustan Times, 30-01-2017

Safe childhoods for a safe India 

Though belated, the decision to ratify two key ILO conventions on child labour makes clear India’s intent of zero tolerance for the exploitation of children

After a long wait of almost two decades, the Government of India finally decided last week to ratify the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labour and Convention 138 on Minimum Age of Employment.
I would like to congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the firm decision which will soon catapult India from the status of a ‘developing’ nation to a ‘developed’ one. Most of all, I would like to congratulate the children of our country. This decision will have a path-breaking impact on the lives of those who are forced to remain on the margins of society and subject to exploitative conditions. About 4.3 million children wake up to a day of labour and not school. Another 9.8 million are officially out-of-school.
Child labour perpetuates illiteracy and poverty. It is the root cause of organised crimes such as human trafficking, terror and drug mafia. However, today, I feel optimistic and am experiencing a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction similar to what I experienced in 1997.

An African epiphany

I was about 50 kilometres away from Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria. The place I had travelled to was a high-risk zone, particularly for foreigners and those travelling alone. I was both, but I made the journey because it was important to identify individuals and organisations to join me for a physical march that would put forth a demand for an international law to ban the worst forms of child labour.
By the time I reached the place, it was already dark and the local NGO had closed for the day. Since I was travelling with my passport and some money, I had to find shelter for the night, especially with men of dubious character stalking the area. Not left with a better alternative, I hid in a thick shade of bushes. When dawn arrived with the sound of the azan (the Muslim call for prayer), I found a way to interact with those returning from prayer. Through signs and actions, I brought them closer to the cause I worked for. A young man who understood a little English helped convey the message. After which, he very kindly dropped me back to the city.
A few months later, closer to the date of the march, I received a letter from the local NGO pledging support. They asked, “What did you do? What did you tell them?”
I learnt that after my interaction all children of the ghetto were put in school and pulled out of labour by those I conversed with. I had found the crux of the march. It was the language of compassion and humanity that would help accelerate the global movement against childhood exploitation.
The march began in January 1998. We traversed 80,000 kilometres across 103 countries and became a strong group of 7.2 million marchers. The Global March Against Child Labour, as it came to be called, culminated finally in Geneva on June 1, 1998 where the ILO conference was in session. We put forward our demand for an international convention to ban the worst forms of child labour. The voice of the marchers was heard and reflected in the draft of the ILO Convention 182.
In June 1999, delegates of the ILO unanimously adopted the convention. It was the first time that a convention or treaty had been adopted with the full support of all members. Over the years, I have spearheaded its ratification by member nations. With 180 countries having already done so, it has become the fastest-ratified convention in the history of ILO. This clearly shows that support for the movement against child labour is gaining momentum worldwide.

Clearing the hurdles

The main bottleneck in the way of India ratifying Conventions 182 and 138 was addressing forced or compulsory recruitment of children and appropriately raising the age of employment in hazardous occupations from 14 to 18 years. Consequent to the passing of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2016 by the Indian Parliament prohibiting the employment of children up to 14 years of age, and children up to 18 years of age in hazardous occupations, it was imperative that we ratified Conventions 182 and 138. Moreover, our failure to ratify the two conventions, which are two of the eight core labour conventions, despite being a founder-member of the ILO, reflected poorly on us as a nation.
My sense of achievement is heightened with India finally ready to join the fight it started. Our decision to ratify the convention makes our intent clear. We will not tolerate the exploitation of children any longer. As a matter of urgency, the government will take immediate and effective measures to prohibit and eliminate the worst forms of child labour: child slavery (including the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage, and forced recruitment for armed conflict), child prostitution and their use in pornography, use of children for illicit activities child prostitution and their use in pornography, use of children for illicit activities such as drug trafficking, and exposure to any hazardous work which is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.
An ideal law guides the way and doesn’t dictate. Under the provisions of the ILO Conventions 182 and 138, India will not adhere to a fixed deadline by which the worst forms of child labour must be eliminated. It will ultimately depend on the level of moral courage, public concern, social empathy, political will and the implementation of resources invested in the development and protection of children.

We cannot alter the circumstances overnight. To achieve great reforms, one must continue to move in a singular direction with sincerity. Our government has shown steadfastness and strong resolve to uphold the rights of our children, and so must we.

Investment in children is an investment in the future. Safe childhoods for a safe India.


Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi is the founder of Global March against Child Labour and Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation.

Source: The Hindu, 20-01-2017

 

Child marriage is a form of human trafficking

The world is fairly governed by reason and so are our institutions and laws. But, how can we permit the rape of a 16-year-old girl by a 40-year old man under the cover of marriage? Recently, the Supreme Court, in response to a PIL filed by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), asked the government to protect children from sexual offences in marriage by addressing existing conflicts in the law.

In India, where even today, 47% of children are married before the age of 18 years, this is a big step forward. Child marriage is an understood phenomenon but the effects of it on young girls and their lives are relatively unknown to the public and policy makers. In a meeting with Bal Sarpanchs (elected child leaders) of several Bal-mitra grams (child-friendly villages) of Rajasthan, I came across more girls than boys, which is a sign of good things to come. However, almost all had come to this position because of their refusal to get married before 18.

Kavita, married at 5, fought mindsets and beliefs as she grew up and today at 16, she is in school. She has ensured all children in her village, regardless of caste and gender, are in school. Asked why she had decided to fight child marriage, she said: “My mind and body were not ready for it.” India has the fifth highest prevalence of child marriages in the world, with one in every three child brides being Indian. Moreover, 58% Indian women are married before they are 18, out of which 27% were married before they are 15.

Child marriage perpetuates the exploitation of health, rights and body of adolescent girls. This treatment of young girls is viewed as separate from human trafficking but in reality, it is a form of trafficking. I say this because child brides have no say in the arrangement and become the property of the man they are married to, who more often than not, makes a trade out of the circumstance and innocence of the young girl.

We also have the highest number of adolescent girls, worldwide, who give birth before they turn 18. Pregnancy remains a major contributor to maternal and child mortality, and to the cycle of ill-health and poverty. Whereas, the benefits of timely or in this case, delayed marriage and pregnancy are many, and come through lower health care cost of the family and more productivity in work.

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (Posco), 2012, is a special Act formulated to provide for protection of all children, who by definition, is anyone under 18 years, from the offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment, etc., and to enforce the rights of children to safety, security and protection from sexual abuse and exploitation. Section 5 of the Act provides that whoever in a shared household with the child commits penetrative sexual assault is said to have committed aggravated penetrative sexual assault or rape. However, Exception 2 under section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) states that sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years, is not rape.

A conjoint reading of the above provisions makes it apparent that where a child is below 15, even if she is a wife and is subjected to sexual intercourse by her husband, the provisions of Posco will apply, and the same will constitute aggravated penetrative sexual assault or rape and accordingly the Exception 2 to Section 375 cannot be of any recourse to the husband.

The anomaly arises when the child is under 18 but over 15. A child’s status as a child till she is 18, otherwise guaranteed by the State, is denied to her once she is forcefully or otherwise wed.

Moreover, provisions of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, show that a child who has been forced into marriage and in all probability would be subjected to intercourse, only has the option of rescuing herself from the illegal relationship if she applies to the district court through her guardian or next friend, along with a Child Marriage Prohibition Officer.

How can the law expect a young child to find a guardian, usually the one who is responsible for getting her married in the first place, or another individual as a next friend to pull her out of this arrangement?

She has no other recourse against the offences committed against her despite her being a child. However, with the compulsory application of Posco, the child will have a recourse in law, in as much as sexual intercourse committed against her would qualify as “rape”.

For years, we have fought for legal deterrents which will be applicable to all children without any exception. The decision of the apex court to direct the government to clear this conflict between the IPC and the Posco Act within four months will form the basis of the fight against the sexual exploitation of girls in the name of child marriage.

The singular aim of the law is to protect the weak and vulnerable, and ensure speedy and effective delivery of justice. The time has come for the government and society at large to unite and ensure the end of child marriage and fulfil the promise of quality education to all children.

Kailash Satyarthi is Nobel Peace Laureate and founder, Bachpan Bachao Andolan

Source: Hindustan Times, 9-01-2017

Child abuse is rampant in India. A helpline alone will not keep them safe

In two weeks’ time, India will celebrate Children’s Day. As it happens every year, there will be loads of programmes to increase awareness among people towards child rights, care and education. But maybe this year we should not celebrate but stop and take stock of the state of children in India. Children under 18 account for 43% of India’s population (447 million) but the sad part is that nearly 40% (178 million) are marginalised thanks to poverty, abuse, exploitation, disease, illiteracy, malnourishment, disability, impairment, conflicts, calamities and neglect. Despite being a trillion-dollar economy (and myriad challenges), we are stingy when it comes to spending on children: The government spends under 5% of its Union budget for children, which includes education, health, and development. Child protection --- a critical need --- receives just under 1% of the Budget.

The lack of child protection is not the only challenge that children face. In an interview to a national daily, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) chairperson Stuti Kacker said there seems to be a conspiracy of silence around child sexual abuse in the country. This is borne by the fact that in two months, the commission’s online complaint system, known as the Posco e-box, has received 68 complaints, of which 11 cases are being investigated. The 2015 National Crime Record Bureau data shows that 19,767 cases of child sexual assault were registered, a jump of 5.3% from the 18,763 cases registered in 2014. Of these, in nearly 95% of the cases the person responsible for such acts was known to the victim.

The online complaint system that NCPCR has instituted is a step forward but the crux of the matter is in making sure that these complaints are acted on. In most cases, the families themselves are not supportive to the child on account of misplaced notions of family honour or that they have not taught the child to understand and then express any violations. While this is the duty of parents, it is also imperative that schools also keep counsellors to address such issues. This fight to protect our children has to be on several fronts from home to school to public places.

Source: Hindustan Times, 31-10-2016

30% of Very Poor Children Live in India: Unicef

United Nations: Press Trust of India





India is home to over 30% of almost 385 million children living in extreme poverty, the highest in south Asia, according to a new report by World Bank Group and Unicef, `Ending Extreme Poverty: A Focus on Children.' It said children are more than twice as likely as adults to live in extreme poverty . In 2013, 19.5% of children in developing nations were living in households that survived on an average of USD 1.90 a day or less per person, compared to just 9.2% of adults. Globally , almost 385 million children are living in extreme poverty .The report said sub-Saharan Africa has both the highest rates of children living in extreme poverty at just under 50%, and the largest share of the world's extremely poor children, at just over 50%.
“South Asia has the second highest share at nearly 36% with over 30% of extremely poor children in India alone,“ it said, adding that four out of five children in extreme poverty live in rural areas.
The report said children are disproportionately affected as they make up around a third of the population studied but half of the extreme poor. The youngest are the most at risk with more than one-fifth of children under the age of five in the developing world living in extremely poor households.
“Effects of poverty are most damaging to children. They are the worst off and the youngest children are the worst off of all,“ said Anthony Lake, executive director, Unicef. PTI

Source: Economic Times, 5-10-2016

Rights for abducted children

India’s accession to the Hague Convention would resolve the issue of inter-country parental child removal.

Toay, many Indians live abroad, foreign nationals come to stay in India, and Indians who had earlier moved abroad are now moving back to India. Problems arise when children are caught in this migration, when one parent goes to another country, taking the child along, but without the permission of the other parent. What happens to the child who has been abducted? What are his or her rights?

There are several legal issues confronting the issue of transnational inter-spousal child removal. It is unfortunate that when a child is abducted by his or her own parent to India, while custody issues are pending determination in the courts of his or her habitual permanent residence abroad, there is little that local law enforcement agencies can do to remedy the situation. This is because there are no codified family laws or specific child custody laws under which these children can be returned to their homes in a foreign jurisdiction. An aggrieved parent with a foreign court order requiring return of the child finds no slot in the Indian legal system, wherein a wholesome statutory remedy can be invoked for effective relief. Regardless, the Indian legal system provides succour by invoking the habeas corpus writ. Bitter disputed custody battles requiring conventional evidence to be established fall under the outdated Guardians and Wards Act, 1890. Parents then have to seek resolution of rights of access, custody, guardianship and visitation as a last resort of the proof of their superior parental rights.

Converse reality

This dilemma has now worsened with the converse also taking place, which means that children from India are also being abducted abroad and cannot be traced there or legally directed to be returned. When families get split across countries, conflicting child custody litigations are initiated under the separate legal systems of different nations. Ninety-four states are party to the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which desires “to protect children internationally from the harmful effects of their wrongful removal or retention and to establish procedures to ensure their prompt return to the State of their habitual residence, as well as to secure protection for rights of access”. India is not one of them. The question of India’s accession to the Convention first came about in 2007, but reached no logical end. Meanwhile, in India, the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill, 2007, to secure the prompt return of wrongly removed or returned children, lapsed before reaching Parliament.

Proposed Bill

On June 22, 2016, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) uploaded on its website a proposal to enact a draft of the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill, 2016. This was considered as it was imperative to have an enabling legislation in India before accession to the Hague Convention. The proposed Bill, to be renamed as the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill, 2016, was placed on the Ministry’s website for comments till July 13. Hopefully now, a final version may find Parliament’s approval to become a codified law.

The proposed Bill considers the removal to or the retention of a child in India to be wrongful if it is in breach of rights of custody attributed to a person, an institution, or any other body, either jointly or alone, at a place where the child was habitually resident immediately before the removal or retention. It further stipulates that the removal to or the retention in India of a child is to be considered wrongful where at the time of removal or retention those rights were actually exercised, either jointly or alone, by a person, an institution or any other body, or would have been so exercised, but for the removal or retention.

The draft Bill was prepared following a reference made by the Punjab and Haryana High Court to the Law Commission of India to consider whether recommendations should be made for enacting a suitable law and for signing the Hague Convention. The High Court had made this reference when a minor child remained untraceable after she was removed from the de jure custody of the court and taken abroad by misusing an interim order of 2006. The court had observed in its order that for want of the Indian government acceding to the Hague Convention or enacting a domestic law, children would continue to be spirited away from and to India, with courts and authorities “standing by in despair”.

It is important in this context to look at the watershed verdict of the Supreme Court in Surya Vadanan v. State of Tamil Nadu (2015). The court ruled that: one, the principle of Comity of Courts and nations must be respected and the best interest of the child should apply; two, the principle of “first strike”, namely, whichever court is seized of the matter first, ought to have prerogative of jurisdiction in adjudicating the welfare of the child; three, the rule of Comity of Courts should not be jettisoned except for compelling special reasons to be recorded in writing by a domestic court; four, interlocutory orders of foreign courts of competent jurisdiction regarding child custody must be respected by domestic courts; five, an elaborate or summary enquiry by local courts when there is a pre-existing order of a competent foreign court must be based on reasons and not ordered as routine when a local court is seized of a child custody litigation; six, the nature and effect of a foreign court order, reasons for repatriation, moral, physical, social, cultural or psychological harm to the child, harm to the parent in the foreign country, and alacrity in moving a concerned foreign court must be considered before ordering return of a child to a foreign court.

The above decision set at rest a string of precedents laid down by courts from time to time to evolve a consistent approach in multi-jurisdictional child custody disputes. However, law still needs to be codified. India’s accession to the Hague Convention would resolve the issue since it is based on the principle of reverting the situation to status quo ante. It is also based on the principle that the removed child ought to be promptly returned to his or her country of habitual residence to enable a court of that country to examine the merits of the custody dispute and thereupon award care and control in the child’s best interest. This is because the courts of the country where the child had permanent or habitual residence are considered to best determine the child’s interest.

Anil Malhotra, a practising lawyer, assisted the Punjab and Haryana High Court as Amicus Curiae. Email: anilmalhotra1960@gmail.com

Keywords: Hague Convention, Punjab and Haryana High Court, transnational inter-spousal child, Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill 2016, Ministry of Women and Child Development

Source: The Hindu, 5-09-2016

A law that allows child labour

The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 suffers from several flaws.

At first glance, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016, passed last month in Parliament, seems progressive. It prohibits “the engagement of children in all occupations and of adolescents in hazardous occupations and processes” wherein adolescents refers to those under 18 years; children to those under 14. The Act also imposes a fine on anyone who employs or permits adolescents to work. However, on careful reading, the new Act suffers from many problems. One, it has slashed the list of hazardous occupations for children from 83 to include just mining, explosives, and occupations mentioned in the Factory Act. This means that work in chemical mixing units, cotton farms, battery recycling units, and brick kilns, among others, have been dropped. Further, even the the ones listed as hazardous can be removed, according to Section 4 — not by Parliament but by government authorities at their own discretion.

Two, section 3 in Clause 5 allows child labour in “family or family enterprises” or allows the child to be “an artist in an audio-visual entertainment industry”. Since most of India’s child labour is caste-based work, with poor families trapped in intergenerational debt bondage, this refers to most of the country’s child labourers. The clause is also dangerous as it does not define the hours of work; it simply states that children may work after school hours or during vacations. Think of the plight of a 12-year-old coming home from school and then helping her mother sow umpteen collars on shirts to meet the production deadline of a contractor. When will she do her homework? How will she have the stamina to get up the next morning for school?

READ | ‘Amendment to Child Labour Act leaves issues unaddressed’

Previous laws

India has passed a number of laws on child labour since Independence. Article 24 of the Constitution prohibits employment of children below the age of 14 in factories, mines, and other hazardous employment. Article 21A and Article 45 promise to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14. In 2009, India passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE). But the amendments in the new law make it practically impossible to implement the RTE. Its clauses put such a burden on poor low-caste families that instead of promoting education, the Act actually increases the potential for dropouts. And parents, scared of the huge fines that they may have to pay for employing their children, are likely to lie about school attendance and may unwillingly comply with contractors in employing them.

A number of laws have also addressed what to include and omit in the list of hazardous occupations. In 1986, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act had prohibited the employment of children below the age of 14 in hazardous occupations identified in a list by the law. After much discussion and expansion, the list included 83 occupations. The National Policy on Child Labour of 1987, implemented in 1988, adopted a gradual approach that combined the strict enforcement of laws on child labour with development programmes to address the root causes of child labour like caste and poverty. It focussed on the rehabilitation of children working in hazardous occupations. The Central government provided a Rs.6 billion fund for implementing the policy. Unfortunately, this budget has been cut massively in education (28 per cent) and for women and children (50 per cent) in the last two years alone, leading to the the closure of 42,000 schools. The Education for All initiative and the Mahila Samakhya programmes have also been downsized, leading to reports of increased trafficking of tribal and minority girls from Odisha and Jharkhand. Taxes charged for the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaigns have reportedly been misused. The only funds for the rehabilitation of children are through monies and assets seized from convicted employers.

Reversing gains

Not only do the new amendments reverse the gains of the 1986 Act, but actually contradict the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) of Children Act of 2000 that makes it punishable for anyone to procure or employ a child in a hazardous occupation. They also contravene the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Minimum Age Convention and UNICEF’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which India is a signatory. According to UNICEF, a child is involved in child labour if he or she is between 5 and 11 years, does at least one hour of economic activity, or at least 28 hours of domestic work in a week. And in case of children aged between 12 and 14, 14 hours of economic activity or at least 42 hours of economic activity and domestic work per week is considered child labour.

The devastating health consequences of the new Act may be the worst blow on India’s poor yet. There are 33 million child labourers in India, according to UNICEF. As per the 2011 census, 80 per cent of them are Dalits, 20 per cent are from the Backward Classes. This law will restrict these children to traditional caste-based occupations for generations.

If the amendments intended to preserve Indian art and craft by enabling parents with traditional skills to pass them on to their children, this should be done through reform and investment in education. Slashed budgets should be restored; mid-day meals should re-instituted; and secure housing should be provided through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan boarding schools to homeless children. Artisans should be hired as teachers to pass on traditional knowledge and skills to the next generation.

Ruchira Gupta is an anti-trafficking activist, founder of Apne Aap Women Worldwide and has worked in UNICEF in US, Iran, and Kosovo.

Keywords: Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016, Parliament, Article 24, child labour

Source: The Hindu, 10-08-2016

The new child labour law will pull children out of classrooms

When it comes to children, India continues to be an uncertain nation. It can’t decide whether its vast population of children is a responsibility, a resource or a liability. Our national confusion has found its latest expression in the new child labour law passed by both houses of Parliament in July. Between this law and the various noises currently being made in draft policy documents, there is a vast gap. Apparently, the ministry of human resource development (HRD) has chosen to ignore these gaps. Perhaps the task of drafting a new, coherent policy on education has proved much too exhausting under the circumstances.

Two years ago when the former minister for HRD, Smriti Irani, mooted the idea of a new national policy, it was welcomed. Details of the 1986 policy had faded, therefore no one thought of assessing its performance and status. Views were gathered from village and district levels, and a committee chaired by TSR Subramanian was set up to draft a document on the basis of this vast amount of data about what ordinary people want to see in a national policy. A few months ago, reports stated that the drafting committee had submitted its report, but the ministry declined to release it, saying it must first gather feedback from the states. Unhappy with this argument, Subramanian went ahead and released the report himself. As if these developments were not disconcerting enough, Irani , who had initiated the policy drafting process, had her portfolio changed in a Cabinet reshuffle, and a new minister — the fourth in seven years — took over HRD.

A new document has been uploaded on the ministry’s website. It has a strange title: Some Inputs for Draft National Educational Policy 2016. Normally, governments don’t provide inputs; they receive inputs from others. One wonders what message the ministry wants to convey by saying that it is providing ‘some inputs’. The phrase can be interpreted either as a sign of unusual modesty or something ominous —that only the ministry can provide inputs. Several of the ideas included in the “Inputs” document are drawn from the Subramanian committee report. The difference is that these ideas have now been put across more mildly. A common weakness in both documents is the absence of a string to tie the various ideas together into a coherent whole. There are sections where the second paragraph contradicts the first. One example is the section that first critiques the examination system and then recommends annual exams after Class V. This will violate the Right to Education (RTE) law promulgated six years ago.

The absence of a coherent vision has intensified with the passage of the child labour amendment Act. If the President gives his assent to this Act, the agenda of educational reforms will receive a body blow. The Act not only legitimises children’s involvement in lucrative activities, but also opens the door for all kinds of industries to hire adolescents. Even younger children, who are covered by the RTE can now join the income-generating activities of the family after school hours or during vacations. All these allowances have been made in the name of “practicality” or adjustment with the so-called Indian reality — a euphemism for poverty. The new child labour law will make RTE a pleasant memory and the dream of extending it to Class 10 a foolish dream. It will also take the last shred of substance out of the rhetoric of India’s demographic dividend. India’s vast population of adolescents and youth will now serve as an army of semi-educated workers available at low wages for low-tech industries.

With the passage of the new child labour Act, India has taken a giant leap backwards. The gains made over several decades of research and advocacy, judicial intervention and political mobilisation are being tossed away. The idea that children have rights took a vast global effort to get established as a UN Convention. The fact that India signed it was no routine matter. Our preparedness to shift millions of children from the labour market to schools was poor. It took two flagship national missions, sustained over two decades, to achieve a semblance of universal enrolment in the early primary classes. Universalising enrolment at the upper primary stage, i.e. Classes 6 to 8 posed a tougher challenge. And now, when this prolonged effort was approaching success, the revised child labour Act moots the facetious idea that schooling and earning can go together. Millions of little boys and girls can now join the two ends of a glass bangle over a burning candle when they return from school in the afternoon. I saw this activity in several homes in Firozabad a few years ago. It gave me an idea of what hell might be like. Bangle-joining is predominantly a family-run business. Along with beedi rolling, it has now been deleted from the list of hazardous occupations in the new child labour law.

As for girls’ education, the new Act implies a terrible setback. The permission it grants for letting children work in family enterprises after the school hours will soon pull the daughters of poor parents out of school. The exhaustion of work, compounded by chronic malnourishment, can be guaranteed to affect their performance at school. If the new educational policy brings the “pass-fail” system back to upper primary classes, we can easily imagine the consequences. Children, especially girls, belonging to labour families will “fail” and get disqualified for further education.

Krishna Kumar is professor of education at Delhi University and former director NCERT

Source: Hindustan Times, 4-08-2016

Child labour by other means

The amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986,passed by Parliament recently, demonstrate a lack of national commitment to abolishing all forms of child labour. Instead of attempting an overhaul of legislation that has proved ineffective in curbing the phenomenon, Parliament hasallowed children up to the age of 14 to be employed in ‘family enterprises’, and created a new category of ‘adolescents’ (the 14-18 age group) who can be employed in ‘non-hazardous’ occupations. In the name of acknowledging the socio-economic realities of India, the amendments tweak the law in such a way that children are in some form or other available for employment. The only concession to their educational rights is that they are permitted to work in family enterprises only outside school hours and during vacations. Curiously, the main amendment — to ban children up to the age of 14 in any occupation — is being touted as a progressive leap from the earlier ban limited to some occupations and processes. It should not be forgotten that with the passage of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, a statutory obligation to ensure that every child completes elementary education, is already in place. The exemption to family enterprises effectively retains conditions under which children are made to contribute economically while studying. Working outside of school hours and earning valuable income for the family will surely have a deleterious effect on the children’s health as well as their aptitude for learning.

Regulation is going to be a big challenge, as it will be difficult to determine whether a particular family is running an enterprise, or whether some faceless owner has employed a single family to circumvent the law. The fallout will be a higher dropout rate. They may go to school for some years, concurrently work with their families, and graduate to being full-time adolescent workers, without completing elementary education. The NDA government, like its predecessor that proposed the amendments, seems to be satisfied with mere compliance with International Labour Organisation Conventions 138 and 182. The former mandates compulsory schooling till the age of 15, but permits countries with inadequate education facilities to reduce it to 14, while Convention 182 prohibits employment of children “in the worst forms of labour”. Bare compliance with international norms is not enough. Children from the poor and marginalised sections, especially Dalits, are still in danger of being deprived of both the joys of childhood and their constitutional right to education. It is yet another stark reminder that the country is far from achieving the complete elimination of child labour.

Keywords: Child Labour, Child Labour (Prohibition and Amendment) Bill, 2016, Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986

Source: The Hindu, 2-08-2016

A law against children

The amended act legalises the bulk of child labour while claiming to do the opposite.

Of the many injustices that have scarred India, the most unconscionable are those of unequal childhoods. The law in the country has permitted children to be confined to work instead of being in schools and at carefree play. India’s child labour law, until the recent amendments passed by Parliament, barred child work until 14 years only in officially designated hazardous employment. There was no bar on the employment of children between 14 and 18 years.

On the face of it, two major amendments to India’s child labour law seem welcome. These amendments prohibit all work, hazardous or otherwise, for children under 14, who now also enjoy the constitutional right to free and compulsory education. And for adolescents between 14 and 18 years, whose labour was entirely lawful until now, the law prohibits their employment in work scheduled as hazardous.

Yet on closer scrutiny, we discover the same pattern as many other pronouncements of this government vis a vis the poor: The reality of what is being offered is the reverse of what appears on paper. The ban on hazardous adolescent work is accompanied by changes in the schedule of hazardous work in the statute, bringing these down from 83 prohibited activities to only three. Apart from mining and explosives, the law only prohibits processes deemed hazardous under the Factories Act 1948. In other words, the amended law prohibits only that child work which is considered hazardous for adult workers, without recognising the specific vulnerabilities of children.

More damaging is the caveat in the amended law that permits even children under 14 years to now work in non-hazardous “family enterprises” after school hours and during vacations. The family is defined to include not just the child’s parents and siblings, but also siblings of the child’s parents. And a family enterprise includes any work, profession or business in which any family member works along with other persons.

In effect, this proviso accomplishes the very opposite of what it claims to do. Instead of ending child labour, it actually makes lawful once again a large part of child work that was earlier unlawful. It is estimated that around 80 per cent of child labour is in work with family members. This is in farms, forests, home-based work such as bidi rolling, carpet weaving, making of bangles and handicrafts, home-based assembly tasks, domestic work, eateries, roadside garages, and street vending. Child rights activists had fought long and hard to compel governments to include many of these occupations in the statutory list of hazardous occupations. But by the double whammy of legalising child participation in non-hazardous “family enterprise” work and drastically trimming the list of hazardous occupations, in effect the government has again legalised the bulk of child work.

Reopening the flood gates for child labour by these amendments is part of a larger package of weakening labour protections for enhancing labour market flexibility to facilitate higher corporate investments. The quarter century of economic reforms has witnessed the steady dismantling of factory floor manufacture by organised adult workers into a preference for unorganised migrant, adolescent and child workers and contractual and home-based production systems.

Home-based work absolves the owners and managers of global supply chains from any legal obligations of fair wages, healthy work conditions and social protection to the actual end-line workers who labour in isolated home-based units. Economist Archana Prasad points to the surge of home based work from 23.3 million (1999-2000) to 37.4 million workers in 2011-2012. Of this, 16 million were women home-based workers. Nearly 32 per cent of total women workers outside agriculture are home-based workers. Around 73 per cent of these women engage in home-based manufacture, in sectors such as apparel, tobacco products and textiles. Once work is undertaken within the four walls of a home, children routinely (but up to now unlawfully) assist their mothers for long hours to complete and maximise their “piece-work” orders. What these amendments accomplish is to render this child labour lawful.

The argument that has long held sway is that child labour, however unfortunate, is inevitable as long as households remained poor. Only after parents escape poverty will their children be able to enter school. What these claims ignore is that the reverse is far more true. That child labour is indeed a major cause of persisting poverty. That if a child is trapped in labour instead of being able to attend fully to her schooling, she will never be able to escape the poverty of her parents. The child of a sanitation worker, rag-picker, domestic worker or casual labourer is likely to be trapped in the professions of her parents unless she is able to access quality education. And also, for every child in work is an adult denied the same work, an adult who could have ensured that her children could be in school. We may argue that working with one’s hands is integral to a full education. But in that case, the opportunities and the obligation to work must surely lie with children of privilege as much as it does with children of disadvantage?

Children enrolled in schools but rising from disadvantage face many barriers. They may be poorly nourished; be first-generation learners; have no place for study in their homes; and be unable to afford tutors. It is they who would be further disadvantaged by this amendment.

Those who defend this amendment applaud the opportunity it would provide for children to learn the trades of their parents. This argument is a thinly disguised defence of caste, because it is only the caste system that envisages the “natural” transition of children into the professions of their parents. Why should the child of a potter learn to be a potter, and not a poet; the child of a sanitation worker not a doctor; and the child of a leather tanner not a philosopher? These amendments are one more spur to India’s ancient tradition of unequal childhoods.

Mander is a human rights worker and writer

Source: Indian Express, 29-07-2016