Child labor is betrayal of trust: Unicef chief
By T. Sima Gunawan
OSLO (JP): The executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), Carol Bellamy, stated that child labor reflects upon the world's failure to make good on their obligations to children.
"Children have an expectation that adults will protect them -- and child labor is a betrayal of that trust," Bellamy said in a hard-hitting address at the International Conference on Child Labor here yesterday.
"It is the failures by the government, the community and the families," she said, adding that it was especially "scandalous" when the betrayal was accepted as "a fact of life".
She criticized those who said child labor was an acceptable norm. This attitude, she said, has grown out of what some have called "the culture of exploitation of vulnerability" -- the conviction that children could be dominated and abused because of their dependence on adults.
Child labor deprived children of their fundamental rights, including their right to a childhood, she said.
To end child labor, children and their families must have direct urgent support, such as access to a compulsory primary education for children, compensation for loss of income from child labor and economic incentives to help them escape from indebtedness, including access to credit, according to Bellamy.
Previous speakers in the conference have said that one of the obstacles to the fight against child labor was the rich countries' reluctance to allocate more funds, despite earlier pledges.
Meanwhile, Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik announced yesterday his government would provide up to 200 million Norwegian kroner (about US$30 million) for the campaign against child labor over the next three years.
He made the statement at the opening of the political session of the conference which brought together 40 nations to discuss an end to the exploitation of child workers.
His government also intended to increase the percentage of GNP set aside annually for development assistance to 1 percent, he added.
"It will give us new possibilities to engage even more actively in combating child labor," he said.
The Norwegian GNP in 1995 was 926 billion kroner ($132 billion).
The four-day Oslo Conference is scheduled to end tomorrow with the adoption of the Agenda for Action, which is intended to serve as a blueprint for anti-child labor policies on regional and national levels. The Agenda calls for developed countries to fulfill a previously pledged UN target of 0.7 percent of GNP for overall official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries.
Indonesian delegate Suyono Yahya, who is Secretary to the Coordinating Ministry for People's Welfare, complained Monday that most developed nations gave only 0.3 percent of their GNP.
Bondevik also reminded delegates of the importance of the 20/20 initiative, which was a mutual commitment between interested developed and developing countries to allocate, on average, 20 percent of ODA and national budgets, respectively, to basic social programs.
The Norwegian prime minister started his speech yesterday by saying: "Work is a necessity and a blessing. But it can also be a scourge and source of endless suffering. That is what child labor is all about."
He continued: " ... What we are discussing is the labor that turns children into instruments and robots..."
Globally there are about 250 million children who often work in hazardous and exploitative conditions with more than 60 percent in Asia.
Bondevik underlined the importance of ending the exploitation of children, but also conceded that the campaign was not an easy task and that by all accounts child labor was not about to disappear.
"We need to sensitize public opinion and mobilize the political will to go to the roots of the problem and, above all, to do something about it."
Norway was one of the poor countries in Europe a hundred years ago, when child labor was commonplace in the informal sector. Today, child labor in Norway is a thing of the past, according to Bondevik.
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