Child labor and economic crisis

By Nafsiah Mboi

This is the first of two articles on the likely increase in child labor amid the growing economic crisis.

JAKARTA (JP): The government's decision to postpone enforcement of the controversial labor law No. 25/1997 is good news because both the process of its deliberation and its substance, which included provisions related to exploitative and hazardous child labor, were badly flawed.

The government, in announcing its decision on Aug. 28, said the law needed revision.

During this time of crisis, Indonesia needs to put its children as a top priority for attention, particularly regarding their basic rights. It is important because the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Development Program, based on their joint study Employment Challenges of the Indonesian Economic Crisis, said on Sept. 1 that "without any improvement in household income, further price increases in 1999 will push some 140 million people, or 66 percent of the population, below the poverty line".

We have often called on our children to act or refrain from acting because they are the future of the nation. In this case, all parties -- the government and the civil society, international organizations and the private sector -- should keep in mind the special needs of children in poverty as they are, indeed, the future of the nation.

About a year ago, a team studying Indonesia's experience with hazardous or harmful child labor found out that even in the situation of a steadily improving economic situation, with rising social indicators from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, the national acknowledgement of, and response, to the evils of exploitative child labor was grossly inadequate and generally remarkably ineffective.

One of the issues discovered by the team was negligence toward child labor. Many often argued, "but work is good for children. Exploitative work will pass when the economy is better. Until then, we will have to accept children working even in situations which we know may damage their physical, social, intellectual or moral development. That is the price of being a poor country".

In fact, children's involvement in work is not simply an issue of poverty. In the last 20 years, Indonesians were proud of the reduction in the proportion of the country's population living below the poverty line -- from 40.1 percent (54.2 million people) in 1976 to 11.3 percent (22.6 million) in 1996.

But, during the same period, the participation of children aged between 10 and 14 years in the workforce dropped only marginally -- from 13.90 percent (2.1 million) to 8.51 percent (1.92 million) (Mboi and Irwanto, 1998). In fact, the absolute number of girls in the workforce increased.

The ILO-UNDP report suggested that Indonesia's poverty line was set too high, thus contributing to a false sense of prosperity. The point was to sound the call for Indonesians to do better now, to make clear that even when conditions were good they did not do well by their working children.

In all the public discussions on the economic recession, political transition and hardships caused by the weather, very few discuss children at work.

A couple of recent studies on Indonesian children in extreme poverty and those involved in the sex industry make it clear the country already has many children in desperate need of help.

This is not to argue unconditionally against children working. Children learning to perform useful and productive tasks for themselves and for others can be an important part of education toward maturity, independence and responsibility. Our concern is exploitation -- performance of tasks by children which unjustly benefit others and damage or destroy their legitimate rights to grow and develop to their full potential.

The authorities should not allow children to carry more than their share of national economic and social burdens, nor tolerate them working at their own risks and in violation of their rights.

There is increasingly common use of the term "social safety net", as if Indonesia was trying to overcome its social problems. But it is not.

Social policies and programs have a crucial contribution for the development and welfare of the nation. Needed are policy framework and programs reflecting national social values and priorities, establishing or promoting the establishment of social infrastructure, social networks and support systems to assure citizens' access to a minimum level of social services and a quality of life in keeping with basic concepts of human dignity and self-respect of the individuals and the families.

In addition, the country needs a "social safety net" to provide special protection and support to people who "fall through the cracks" of the existing policy, those who are inadequately served by social programs. The safety net is as important as the overarching policy and programs. It is complementary and attempts to make up for the shortcomings of existing approaches to public policy in the social field.

Social programs and safety nets are discussed in connection with harmful, hazardous child labor because the absence of well conceived and appropriate social programs will propel more children into the workplace, with little or no bargaining power and ripe for exploitation. Furthermore, the absence of adequate social programs will tend to overburden the safety net, forcing more children and families to devise survival strategies accepting inappropriate, perhaps even life-threatening work for the children.

Seen in this light, social programs and policy become essential tools in any comprehensive approach to protection of children against exploitative, hazardous and harmful child labor.

Protection of working children is stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was ratified by Indonesia in 1990 and includes the following provisions.

State parties, according to article 32 of the CRC, recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

This statement provides a clear, straightforward, child- centered definition of the kind of work against which children need protection. It does not fall into the trap of trying to define settings which are "good" and others which are "bad". Rather, it identifies two broad, work-related areas where children are entitled to protection in the situation of economic exploitation and in the work which threatens or interferes with their right to development. The ILO-UNDP report estimates 95.8 million Indonesians will live below the poverty line by the end of 1998; the number may increase to as many as 140 million (66 percent of the population) by the end of 1999.

In 1993, the Central Bureau of Statistics projected a child population (aged 10-14) at 22.36 million in 1999. If poverty is assumed to be evenly distributed across that group, at least 14 million children aged 10-14 will live in poverty in 1999, of whom about 50 percent, or seven million, will be at work. Many of them will surely end up in work which is hazardous, harmful and exploitative.

It is clear by any calculation that vast numbers of children and young workers will be entering the workforce in the next few years if Indonesia does not act promptly and decisively.

The writer is a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.