Child labour remains rife but outright ban could be damaging

Children working in fisheries, forestry and agriculture account for 70% of the total global child labour workforce. (Photo: Kystmagasinet/FIS)

(Photo: Kystmagasinet/FIS)

(Photo: Kystmagasinet/FIS)

(Photo: Kystmagasinet/FIS)

Monday, October 18, 2010
FIS.com

The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have recently begun focusing on the use of child labour in aquaculture, fish processing factories as well as aboard fishing vessels.

“Worldwide, 132 million girls and boys aged between 5 and 14 years old work in agriculture. This figure includes children working in fisheries and aquaculture,” said Rolf Willmann of the FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture Department.

However, when asked about fisheries in particular, he responded by saying that: "Because child labour in fisheries is so widely dispersed in small-scale and family enterprises – or is actively hidden by employers – it is difficult to obtain hard data on the true extent of the problem. This makes it difficult for many policy-makers to tackle it.”

Despite this, Southeast Asia was recently pointed out as one of the worst areas with regards to underage employment during a recent conference held by the ILO, as figures suggest that children under the age of 14 account for over a quarter of the total workforce. The region was also highlighted as having some of the worst working conditions for minors world-wide.

In Kerala (south-western India) for example, authorities in the area have only recently begun banning employers from allowing children to use a fishing technique similar to the Muro Ami method, a renoundly dangerous form of catching fish that has resulted in many deaths caused by drowning, and which has been illegal in most countries for over half a century.

Reporters from Kystmagasinet, which recently visited Poipet (Cambodia), witnessed some of the conditions that children in the town must work in. They noted how temperatures - even in the shade - were approaching forty degrees. They also spotted a boy dragging a cart filled with fish, destined to be taken across the border to Thailand. Every day it is estimated that eight to ten thousand children cross the border doing a similar line of work, which is to transport goods back and forth to distant markets.

No one is entirely sure how much fish is transported across the Cambodian/ Thai border, yet most estimates claim it to be around 30,000 tonnes, the majority of which is unregistered. This boy specifically, was transporting roughly 40 to 50 pounds of live snakehead fish, which sells for a relatively high price in Thailand.

It just so happened that he was passing under an ILO sign at the time, which was demonstrating the issues of child labour. However, like many of the children in the area, he is unable to read, rendering the sign ineffective. It is said that 53 per cent of children between thirteen to fourteen years of age have never attended school.

According to Kystmagasinet, other sites in the village included hoards of young children squatting on small stools for hours, whilst scraping off fish flesh with a spoon to produce fillets, with the only sound able to hear being flies swirling around. The end result of the product would eventually find its way to the soup bowls of people in the region, a traditional dish that costs no more than KHR 3 (USD 0.0001) per serving.

Compared to others in the area, some may say they are fortunate to sit in the shade and scrape flesh off small fillets, many would say lucky. As across the border in Thailand, tens of thousands of children are smuggled into the Thai sex industry each year.

Due to issues like these, the ILO has warned against quick solutions to the problem. As they can often force children into a worse life in the sex industry on both sides of the border.

Similarly, in a paper by Basu and Van, it is argued that the primary cause of child labour is parental poverty. That being so, they caution against the use of a legislative ban against child labour, and argue that it should only be used when there is reason to believe that a ban on child labour will cause adult wages to rise and so compensate adequately the households of the poor children.

This demonstrates how there is a different side to the child labour problem, as many minors work due to their parents not being able to earn enough money to sustain their entire family. Resulting in a child labour ban also having catastrophic effects, as starvation and late retirements would start to become a factor.

Although, despite this, most do agree that child labour in the fishing industry is a serious issue, but some feel that specifics are lacking. As statistics relating to child labour are often insufficient and combine fisheries, forestry, agriculture and livestock-raising together. Together, these four sectors are estimated to have the largest percentage of child workers - 70 per cent of the world total.