EDITORIAL – Battling child labor

The Philippines marked World Day Against Child Labor yesterday with the country facing the same dilemma as the rest of the developing world: poverty is forcing millions of families to make children work for a living. Often child laborers are deprived of education, even in countries such as the Philippines where there is free mandatory education from elementary to high school.

Groups promoting child welfare estimate that there are up to four million child laborers in the Philippines, with about 2.8 million of them working in hazardous environments. Worldwide about 246 million children aged 5 to 17 are laborers, with approximately 171 million engaged in hazardous work including mining and quarrying, deep-sea fishing, manufacture of pyrotechnics and prostitution. Advocates of child welfare also consider it hazardous for children to engage in commercial agriculture where pesticides are used. Working as domestic helpers can also make children vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.

The toughest job for child welfare advocates is to persuade parents that it is a violation of human rights to force children to work. In the countryside, children learn at a tender age to help their parents in farm work. Children accompany older relatives to mining and quarrying sites. As children grow older and see few livelihood opportunities for their families in rural areas, they themselves volunteer to leave home to work as maids or helpers in Metro Manila and other urban centers. In Bulacan, the country’s pyrotechnics manufacturing capital, teenage boys often need little prodding from their parents to work in backyard manufacturing operations despite known risks to their health and safety.

Welfare personnel have been dismayed to learn that parents themselves sometimes sell their children for sex and pornography. This problem is not unique to this country and is even worse in many areas of the developing world where the promotion of children’s rights is an alien concept. In cultures where women and children are regarded as commodities, child sex trafficking guarantees a big, fast buck for evil parents. These are realities that advocates of children’s welfare must confront as they fight child labor.