“She
is barefoot, covered in dirt and sweat. She can be seen pulling weeds from rows
of sugarcane; a work reserved for adults, not children. She can only wear a cap
to protect her from the scorching sunlight, rain or storm and goes back home after
a working day of as long as 7 hours. She says she does it to help her parents.
She also helps with the household chores, has never seen a classroom and never
played with other children in the playground. This is not just one girl, but
one of millions who are part of an informal, and sometimes illegal economic
system of child labor.”
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Picture credits: The Borgen Project
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Gender is a
central factor around which work and production are organised and divided- in
not just domestic spheres, but also in the global and local supply chains of
industries, services and agriculture and the various related processes.
Millions of girls who work on sugarcane, cocoa, tea or palm oil farms also have
additional burden of looking after domestic chores and arevulnerable to
violence at work and at home. Gendered roles and norms also prevent girls from
getting education, more so when they work- often being unpaid or underpaid as
compared to boys, thus making themthe largest invisible workforce such as in
the case of agriculture.
The
agricultural workforce remains one of the largest workforce sectors in the
world and is being increasingly feminised with self-employed women farmers,
waged agriculture women workers and sadly, with the participation of littlegirl
child labourers as well. Today, 64 million girls in this world work as child
labourers, 71% of them are in the agriculture sector, which is also considered
one of the most hazardous sectors to work in (ILO, 2017). Yet, evidence of
specific research focused on girls in child labour in the agricultural sector does
not do justice to these numbers as it remains scant, under-reported and
homogenous, making a challenge to provide equal rights and opportunities to
both girls and boys.
In the year
2006, ILO confirmed the number of child labourers in the agricultural sector as
nearly ten times higher than the number of child labourers in other sectors
(e.g. in manufacturing, mining, etc.) (ILO, 2006). In 2017, the reality has not
changed much, with agriculture still constituting 70.9% of child labour in
comparison with the service sector (17.2%) and industries (11.9%). Even though
the discourse on ‘child labour in
agriculture’ has gained momentum globally and regionally by significant
stakeholders in the past few years, millions of girls in this sector are still
trapped in this worst form of child labour and challenge to protect them from
the harzards still lingers, as girlshave been historically more vulnerable to
being abused, trafficked and devoid of education.
Apart from the
fact that working in the agricultural sector is one of the most hazardous
places for children, in particular for girls, another crucial concern is that
the complex supply chain of the sector has worsened the situation of child and
forced labour. Large agricultural buyers and processing firms often source from
small producers further up the supply chain and do not have adequate
transparency about their workforce which could be young working girls, forced
children, trafficked women or helpless refugees.
The
agricultural produce and its supply needs intensive labour requirements as a
part of the demands in the global supply chains, which means more cheap labour,
hazardous and unregulated work conditions and more child labour. In a 2016
study by Amnesty International ‘Palm Oil: Global Brands Profiting from Child
and Forced Labour’ it has been reflected that the most
popular food and household companies are selling food, cosmetics and other
everyday staples containing palm oil tainted by shocking human rights abuses in
Indonesia, with girls as young as eight working in hazardous conditions, hard
physical work, sometimes dropping out of school to help their parents on the
plantation. Palm oil plantation includes sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings,
harvesting, and transporting fruit bunches. Young girls primarily collect loose
fruit, help carry and load bunches of oil palm fruit, and weed the oil palm
fields. Girls and women are also responsible for gathering and moving the fruit
bunches which puts a lot of physical burden on them and negatively impacts their
health in the longer run.
Conditions are
worse for regions like Sub-Saharan Africa where most child labour is found in
the informal subsistence sector, and in exported goods catering to both
domestic and global supply chains. Much of the cocoa produced in the fields
here ends up in coffee shops, kitchen tables and store shelves across the
world. Many other agricultural products such as sugar, tea, palm oil etc. are
produced by millions of boys and girls and consumed by people alienated from
their situation and the product they are buying. Another example is the tea plantation
industry where there has been a history of employing young girls and boys since
tea estates were planted in countries like Sri Lanka and India back in the
1930s. Many tea estates in India, Assam,
have also been vulnerable to trafficking of young girls and missing children.
There
is nothing sustainable about sectors like agriculture if commodities are
produced using child labour and forced labour. The abuses often discovered
within sectors that employ children the most are not isolated incidents but are
systemic and a predictable result of the way the businesses approach
sustainability and maintain transparency about who works for them. It is high
time that the players in the global as well as domestic supply chains invest in
girls and young women for a formidable ripple effect to achieve SDG goals, in
particular goal 4, 5, and 8.7 and create a better world by 2030. The 64 million
girls in child labour have limitless individual potential, however they are
disappearing from public awareness and the international development agenda.
Between inequities in primary and secondary education to protection issues,
millions of girls are uniquely impacted when they should instead benefit from
targeted investments and programmes that address their distinct needs.
Even though the progress in
eliminating child labour is slow, Global March believes that there is still
hope as long as governments, businesses, CSOs and individuals, all make
accelerated efforts to bring justice to the millions of boys and girls trapped
in child labour, and create a fertile ground for them to access quality,
inclusive and equitable education, with special provisions made for girls. The SDGs stress on the role of all
stakeholders. Thus if SDG 8.7 is to be achieved, we must make efforts now.
On the International Day of
the Girl Child, Global March is committed to placing children and girls at the
center of our work and positively contribute in eliminating all forms of
violence against children. In this endeavour, we are empowering both girls and
boys and multi-stakeholders to do their bit.
Join us to bring smiles on
the lost childhoods of girl child labourers and bring them closer to realizing their
rights, today, tomorrow and in the future.
