Street children at risk

A boy sells kramas along Sisowath Quay in Phnom Penh last night. Photograph: Derek Stout/Phnom Penh Post

Thursday, 14 June 2012
Khoun Leakhana and Xiaoqing Pi
The Phnom Penh Post

Street children in Cambodia were in danger of sexual abuse, human trafficking and traffic accidents when they peddled or begged, and their own families were often the perpetrators, NGOs yesterday told a conference aimed at focusing media and public attention to the issue.

“We are extremely sympathetic with the children who are forced to sell things on the streets by their parents,” Licadho’s Om Somath said.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 children work on the streets of Phnom Penh, according to a survey by local NGO Friends in 2001.

March calls for end to child labour

Monday, 11 June 2012
Mom Kunthear
The Phnom Penh Post

More than 1,000 people marched in Sihanoukville yesterday to raise awareness of the exploitation of child labour, said rights workers.

Kong Socheat, child rights advocacy co-ordinator for Licadho, said the province had been chosen for its high rate of child labour, especially in the fishing sector. The march, which involved the local authorities, families and NGOs, was timed to Tuesday’s World Day Against Child Labour.

“We all, the government and the organisations, have to work together to ... protect the child from working, and especially their parents have to pay attention to sending their children to school over asking them to work,” said Kong Socheat.

The labour law is lacking in child protections, he added.

The slaves who serve us

A young school girl walks past a wall in Battambang, Cambodia. Schools across the country, with the help of NGOs including World Vision, have put education on trafficking and child labour as part of the curriculum. (THANE BURNETT/QMI Agency)

Human trafficking of the young on the Cambodia-Thai border

June 9, 2012
By Thane Burnett, QMI Agency

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia - There is a certain cost to business.

There are hidden bills to pay for the vast supply lines that build the factories and produce the goods that move beyond the reach of the local workers. Those are shipped around the world so we might walk into a store, pick that needful thing up in our hands while casually wondering 'Is it worth it?'

In this case, the expenditure was Chorvorn's arm.

Torn off, right up to her small shoulder.

More than a week ago now, the 14-year-old girl, working in a Cambodian brick factory caught her arm in the wheel on a machine that pounds clay into building blocks.

This, after workers -- many of them as young or younger than Chorvorn -- spent days stomping the mud with bare feet. Bricks are the foundation of development, and go into building the factories that lead to mountains of T-shirts and pants sold in trendy stores in Canada, and the shrimp in our frozen foods.

But there are very fragile points along the supply chain.

Child labor in Pailin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFusXPuYxKU

មែខ្ញុំចង់ទៅរៀន... Mom, I want to go to school...

Photo originally posted by Bun Seng Kongs on Facebook

Fireworks spark beach alarm

A child sells fireworks on a beach in Sihanoukville last weekend. (Photo by: Vincent Macisaac)

A tourist buys fireworks from a group of children on Ochheuteal beach over the weekend. (Photo by: Vincent Macisaac)

Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Vincent MacIsaac and Sen David
The Phnom Penh Post

“By the time their 18 some can’t even get a job in a restaurant because they don’t know how to read and write,” Eno explains, adding that this puts them at a higher risk of becoming sex workers.

Sihanoukville town

As the sun sets over Ochheuteal beach, scores of children begin weaving their way through the cheap tables and cushioned chairs scattered in the sand in front of restaurants offering US$3 a plate barbecues and 50-cent beer to tourists.

But instead of selling sunglasses and bracelets the children offer to set off fireworks’ displays in the thin strip of white sand between the edge of the tables and the incoming tide, for tourists to watch or photograph while they drink and dine.

It’s a dangerous job, especially for a child, and the provincial government says it has been banned. “Children are not allowed to sell fireworks on beaches like Ochheuteal,” deputy governor Sboung Sarath said yesterday.

However, the ban is not being enforced and children have been getting burned, according to owners of beachside restaurants. Staff at NGOs working with children who sell trinkets on the beach say they have either heard reports of children suffering burns from fireworks or warn that accidents are bound to happen.

Media Advisory - "WHERE THERE ARE UNIONS, THERE IS NO CHILD LABOUR"

Speak Truth to Power (Courage without Borders) Series in KI-Media - Kailash Satyarthi (India) "Child Labor"

Speak Truth to Power (Courage without Borders) Series in KI-Media - Kailash Satyarthi (India) "Child Labor"
http://www.scribd.com/full/54863005?access_key=key-28xwlxkb68kz460zi6q6

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.

Financial Crisis Forces More Teenage Girls into Labour

By Marwaan Macan-Markar*

BANGKOK, Dec 23 (IPS/TerraViva) - Until the global financial crisis hit, a journey out of poverty for women in rural Cambodia was assured by the vibrant garment sector that had taken root in the country’s capital. Tens of thousands of women in their twenties poured into Phnom Penh to secure jobs in the hundreds of export-oriented factories.

At the height of the garment industry in April 2008, the 300 factories in and around the capital had a 340,000 workforce, 85 percent of whom were female migrant workers from provinces such as Kampong Speu, Prey Veng, Takeo, Kampong Cham and Kandal.

Then the global financial crunch struck, beginning in the United States last year and spreading to this corner of South-east Asia. Suddenly the U.S. market, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of Cambodia’s garment exports, began to dry up.

The consequence, say experts studying the impact of the crisis on a mainstay of the Cambodian economy, is an increasing number of teenage girls from the provinces heading to Phnom Penh to seek jobs to make up for the loss of income that has hit their families.

Cambodian law permits such work, since child labour covers those who are 14 years and below.

"More family members, particularly younger women, are being sent to work from the rural areas to the city," says Sukti Dasgupta, senior specialist on employment and labour market policies at the East Asia office of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). "These women are in the 15 to 17 age group."

"They are from poorer backgrounds and less educated and have been sent to the city to make up for the loss in family income due to the financial crisis," she said in an interview in her Bangkok office. "They are going into vulnerable jobs and are more susceptible to exploitation."

While the ILO and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Cambodia have still to arrive at a number indicating the extent of this internal migration trend, anecdotal evidence has helped shape a picture about these new entrants into this poverty-stricken country’s workforce.

"There are a lot of young girls you see in the informal sector, as domestic workers in Phnom Penh households," says Haidy Ear-dupuy, advocacy and communications director at the Cambodia office of World Vision, a Christian relief and development organisation. "Many households look for these girls that are coming in larger numbers."

These young entrants into the labour force are also an increasing presence in the shops and open stalls in the city’s markets, Ear-dupuy said in a telephone interview from Phnom Penh. "They do light work, helping with sales." Yet those like Ear-dupuy and others working for NGOs are concerned that with the plum jobs in the garment sector not available, these teenage workers could be drawn into the city’s entertainment sector, exposing them to abuse.

There are cases of young girls who first come to the city as domestic workers and subsequently move on to work as waitresses or in karaoke bars in hopes of earning more, say researchers monitoring this emerging trend.

In July, a report by a United Nations agency revealed that the crisis had forced more girls and women into the sex trade.

"There are indications of an increase in women and girls entering the entertainment sector during the timeframe of the financial crisis," says the study by the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking. "These workers come from numerous provinces in Cambodia, most heavily from Kampong Cham, Kandal and Prey Veng."

The two-month study done through April and May surveyed 357 women and girls between the ages 15 and 49. It said the women were labouring as "brothel workers, street workers, karaoke workers and massage parlour workers," it adds.

The study confirmed that the tough times faced by families in the wake of the economic crisis was a factor behind this trend. "For entertainment workers of all types, by far the most common reason reported for entering the sex trade was ‘difficult family circumstances,’ followed by ‘easily earn a lot of money in good working condition’," it noted.

The trying times rural families face as women have lost their jobs or their overtime rates slashed in factories are with reason. Most female employees in a factory earn a monthly wage of 73 U.S. dollars, which includes the minimum wage, overtime payments and cost-of-living allowances, says Catherine Vaillancourt-Laflamme of Better Factories Cambodia, an ILO-run programme. "They remit nearly half of that, about 30 U.S. dollars, to their families in the provinces."

"This is an important source of income for the families of the women working in the garment sector," adds Vaillancourt-Laflamme in a telephone interview from her Phnom Penh office. "Some women have decided to remain employed even at the expense of their overtime payments being cut."

According to current estimates about 50,000 employees have lost their jobs in the export sector since April last year. The number of factories functioning is down to 261 from a high of 300 last year.

The Cambodian factories, which supply major international brands such as Adidas, Nike and GAP, brought in 2.78 billion dollars in 2008, accounting for over 90 percent of the country’s total exports.

The garment sector has proved a major boon to a country of 14 million people where nearly 35 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

(*This feature was produced by IPS Asia-Pacific under a series on the impact of the global economic crisis on children and young people, in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific.)

Recession threatens families [-There's a recession in Cambodia after all?]

Fourteen-year-old bookseller Vichet waits for customers along the riverside on Tuesday. (Photo by: Sovan Philong)

Wednesday, 26 August 2009
The Phnom Penh Post Staff

Layoffs among parents augur a rise in child labour: experts.

A STEEP decline in Cambodia's garment exports for the month of July has forced officials to reassess the strength of the global economic downturn and its impact on the country, as child welfare experts warn that the Kingdom's most vulnerable citizens - its children - may have the most to lose.

Official figures released Tuesday showed a 26.4 percent plunge in garment exports for July compared with a year ago and a 17.5 percent slide from June, - the latest in a series of grim economic indicators that prompted an admission by the head of the Cambodian Economic Association that the worst of the crisis could still be ahead.

Standing in the path of that slide, says Bill Salter, head of the International Labour Organisation's subregional office in East Asia, are Cambodia's children.

"The trend threatens to push 200,000 people back into poverty and erect new financial obstacles in front of children trying to access education," Salter said Tuesday during the launch of a national workshop studying the impact of the global economic crisis on child labour.

An estimated 40 percent of children aged between 7 and 17 years are currently engaged in some form of child labour, the group ChildFund Australia said in June.

Child labour rising

ILO officials said earlier this year that the number of children working in hard-labour conditions in Cambodia had grown from an estimated 250,000 in 2002 to about 300,000 this year.

The government has acknowledged the risks facing children, especially as families dependent on the garment sector - the Kingdom's largest industrial employer - suffer job losses or salary cuts that could prompt them to pull children out of school and into the workforce.

Cambodia's garment sector, which accounts for about 90 percent of the Kingdom's total exports, has borne the brunt of an economic downturn that can be linked directly to the rising numbers of children being forced into work, the ILO's Salter said, as cash-strapped families increasingly view education as a financial burden.

Veng Heang, director of the Department of Child Labour within the Ministry of Labour, said the link between the global crisis and child labour was no surprise.

"We knew that the economic crisis would impact children," he said Tuesday, adding that a rise in instances of child begging, scavenging and domestic labour would not be unexpected.

Warnings over deteriorating child welfare came amid protests by thousands in the garment sector over slashed pay.

More than 70,000 garment workers have been laid off since the crisis began, industry analysts say, with another 100,000 under threat in the next two years.

Nearly 3,000 employees at the Sky High Garment Factory in Daun Penh district went on strike on Monday to protest drops in their salaries, inadequate working conditions and unexpected work stoppages.

Some Children Labor, Far From Home

By Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
21 November 2008

Pale-faced and thin, Chhim Mao sits outside a three-story building in Phnom Penh, guarding cars. Born in Takeo province, the 16-year-old boy has been living for four years with the building owner, a man he’d never known before.

“My grandmother brought me here to help with her housecleaning,” Chhim Mao says. “I help her clean the rooms, and I guard the parked vehicles, as she is getting old and has a lot of work to do.”

In fact, Chhim Mao’s grandmother no longer stays here. She has moved to another house, leaving all her tasks to Chhim Mao. The young boy waters the flowers and the plants. He cleans the stairs. He opens the gate for residents and workers. Often, he dares not sleep until late at night, waiting for the building owner to return.

“I wait for him until one o’clock, when he comes home,” the boy says. “If he has not come, I have to wait for him.”

Chhim Mao is one of more than 20,000 children who leave their hometowns to work in other people's houses in major urban centers like Phnom Penh, Battambang, Kampong Cham and Siem Reap, according to research compiled by World Vision Cambodia and Licadho.

“Some of them are also at high risk of being sexually harassed or even abused by male employers or house owners because of a lack of protection,” says Lor Monirith, World Vision’s manager for the a project to combat child labor.

Children working in private homes like this, often with long hours, lose an opportunity for education, he says.

According to a study by the International Labor Organization, child servants like these work between 12 hours to 18 hours a day, often with little or no pay. They wash dishes and clothes, iron, polish shoes, cook, look after children, care for the infirm. They are the first to rise, the last to sleep and serve at the bidding of their employer. Some are beaten, some scolded, and some are asked to take the wife’s place in the bed of the boss.

Poverty drives the children to the work, Lor Monith says.

“Some parents send their children to work here in the city to earn some money to support the family or pay back debts,” he says.

According to the International Labor Organization’s Convention on the Prevention and Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor, the government, as a signatory, must eliminate severe child labor, such as slavery, forced labor or any work affecting a child’s health, safety or morality.

Labor Ministry officials were unavailable or declined to comment.

Licadho spokesman Vann Sophat says his organization has received six cases of domestic child labor abuse this year, but not a single case has been heard by the courts.

“One of the cases was rape, but the perpetrator is walking free,” he says.

A specific law on child domestic workers is needed to protect these child servants, he says. But more than that, parents must understand that it is not a child’s duty to support the family.

“What a child needs to do,” he says, “is go to school and gain knowledge to become a well-educated citizen for the country in the future.”

Children exploited as building in Cambodia booms

Al Jazeera

Cambodia is one of southeast Asia's poorest countries, and that poverty has forced many parents to take their children out of school and send them to work.

But the country is experiencing something of a construction boom.

And that means many children are ending up on building sites or in factories, where the work is dirty and dangerous.

Fauziah Ibrahim reports from Battambang province, where hundreds of children are now risking their health and their lives, working in brick kilns.

93 percent of children have access to education: UNESCO [-Rong Chhun contests this number]

Friday, 13 June 2008
Eath Daravuth
The Mekong Times

Ninety-three percent of Cambodian children have access to education, according to a new report from UNESCO.

“The figure shows that Cambodia ranks 21st among 129 countries [where children] receive education,” said Chey Chab, undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Education, during a press conference held June 12 to mark the World Day Against Child Labor.

While he called on Cambodian teachers and parents to encourage their children to go to school, Chey Chab did not provide any supporting figures.

The claims go against a statement released to mark the occasion by Cambodian Independent Teacher’s Association (CITA) President Rong Chhun.

“[The number of] children who work and who do not receive education is nearly 2 million” he said. “This is caused by their families’ poor living conditions, and when the prices of goods on markers soar, many children are removed from schools by their parents to exploit their labor,” Rong Chhun claimed.

Rong Chhun pointed out that the more disturbing examples of child labor are found in brick kilns, rubber plantations, salt fields, fishing lots and restaurants. He said the ongoing problem of child labor is a result of the Cambodian government’s failure to implement poverty and corruption reduction strategies and to respect the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The CITA president is called on the government to regularly implement provisions stipulated in the UN convention so that children will hopefully receive an education. “Forcing children to do hard work can affect the national economy,” he said.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) said that approximately 75 million children are working in the world without access to education. “We … have to give them an education. They do not have the obligation to work to feed their families, but they have to receive high-quality education,” said ILO Director Juan Somavia.

According to the organization, every year 60 countries across the world organize a march to mark World Day Against Child Labor. This year approximately 300 children took part in a march carrying signs in Phnom Penh with such slogans such as “No child labor, no poverty” and “Parents send children to study not to work.”

Another ordinary day in Stung Meanchey

A child carries a bag of rubbish he has retrieved for recycling from a dump in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. (Photo: BBC)

Child Workers in Brick Factories: Causes and Consequences - A Research Study by Licadho

Click here to read this PDF report (right-click to download the report)

Source: Licadho

As part of the campaign against the worst forms of child labor for the wellbeing of Cambodian children, LICADHO and World Vision Cambodia have commissioned the research team, led by Dr. Poch Bunnak, to conduct a study on children working in brick factories. The study was conducted in July 2007 to identify the causes and consequences of child labor in brick factories in Battambang and Sang Ke districts, the surrounding areas of Battambang provincial city.

Data were collected using interviewer-completed questionnaires from three main sources (132 child workers, 43 parents, and 15 brick factory owners or managers) from 26 brick factories. It is estimated that between 400 and 500 children work daily in these brick factories during the high labour-demand season.

Released in May 2008

Children working in Cambodia brickyards talk about their working condition

Children working in brickyards (Photo: Licadho)

07 May 2008
By Ka-Set
Unofficial translation from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the original article in French

Work accomplished by numerous children in Cambodia brickyards bring serious concerns to two NGOs which conducted an investigation among 132 young workers in July 2007, in the province of Battambang, In a public report distributed on Wednesday 07 May, Licadho and World Vision provide a picture of these children, the majority of whom work full time for a daily earning of 5,000 riels ($1.25), whereas the younger ones – between 8 and 10-year-old – earn only 1,000 riels ($0.25) per day, because they work less and do not show up regularly at the brickyards. The first protest made by the young workers surveyed, is the long hours of work in a difficult, dangerous and unhealthy working environment. More than half of the children surveyed called the working condition “bad.” Eyes irritation, backache, chest pain, headache are among the major health problems these children claim they suffer from. Nevertheless, for those who have not completely abandoned school yet, the majority of them do not want to continue their schooling, but they indicated that they wish to find a job “elsewhere.”

Child Labor In Cambodia

Editorials (Reflecting the Views of the US Government)
VOA
25 April 2008

According to the latest estimates, fifty-two percent of children aged seven to fourteen-years, or more than one-million-four hundred thousand Cambodian children work. On average, they spend more than twenty hours a week working, mostly in agriculture.

“Excessive and inappropriate work not only stunts the normal development of individual children, it has significant consequences for society as a whole,” said U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Joseph Mussomeli. “Children who have to work to support their families rather than attend school," he said, "don’t acquire the knowledge and skills they need to obtain quality employment in the future, contributing to a cycle of poverty in their own families, and holding back economic growth in the entire country,” he said.

Ambassador Mussomeli spoke at ceremonies inaugurating the launch of a new U.S.-funded effort to help Cambodia battle child labor, the Children’s Empowerment through Education Services project. Since 2001, the U.S. government has been working together with the Cambodian government to combat child labor through education. In that year, the U.S. Department of Labor funded the International Labor Organization’s International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor to provide education and other services to children engaged in exploitive labor, or at-risk of doing so.

Since then, the U.S. has continued to support other committed organizations, such as World Education and Winrock International, with a total investment of nearly thirteen million dollars to stop child labor. More than thirty-five thousand Cambodian children have been saved from dangerous and exploitive labor.

The four-million dollar U.S.-funded Children’s Empowerment project will withdraw and prevent more than eight-thousand children in four Cambodian provinces from exploitive labor in agriculture. It will also support schooling for the children and provide income generating activities for their parents.

“The Cambodian government has taken many positive steps to reduce child labor since our partnership began, and we applaud these efforts,” said Ambassador Mussomeli. “We all understand," he said, "the importance of taking care of young people and investing in their development."

MarketWatch: Cambodia uses 38% of child labor in the garment sector

MARSHALL LOEB'S DAILY MONEY TIP
Steer clear of goods that spell child labor

Feb. 11, 2008
By Marshall Loeb
MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- For years American consumers have faced the challenge of recognizing and avoiding goods manufactured by child laborers, estimated to number 218 million by the U.N.'s International Labor Organization. But having penetrated key industries such as apparel and agriculture, the offending merchandise is not always easy to reject.

Forbes' magazine writer Megha Bahree suggests several steps you can take to minimize the chances that the things you buy have passed through the hands of a child laborer.

Know the company and learn about its labor policies. Every time you buy an imported homemade carpet, an embroidered pair of jeans or a soccer ball chances are you're acquiring something fashioned by a child. Such goods are available in places like GapKids, Macy's, ABC Carpet & Home, Lowe's and Home Depot. These retailers say they are aware of child-labor problems, but a supply chain has many links and even a well-intentioned importer can't police them all.

• Check the label. This may seem obvious, but if you are serious about fighting child labor, check the item's registered identification number (RN) on the label against the Federal Trade Commission's database (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/rn/index.shtml). Among the noteworthy offenders are Mali, Cambodia and Guatemala, with 63%, 38% and 23%, respectively, of children working.
• Keep an eye out for certifications. While no universal certification exists for child-labor-free products, there are groups that monitor specific industries. The Rugmark Foundation (www.rugmark.org) certifies rug manufacturers that adhere to strict labor standards. TransFair USA (www.transfairusa.org) monitors commodities like coffee and tea and makes sure farmers are paid a far price for fair-trade-certified goods. Additionally, when you see the emblem of the AFL-CIO (www.aflcio.org) on a product or store, you can rest assured the employees who make the product are fairly treated members of a union.
• Avoid counterfeits. Counterfeit items such as watches, purses and clothing don't just shortchange the companies that produce the real thing. Their proceeds often support criminal activity, and there's a fair chance the goods were made in a sweatshop.

Marshall Loeb, former editor of Fortune, Money, and the Columbia Journalism Review, writes for MarketWatch.

Poipet street kids: far worse off than expected [-This happens in various degree all over Hun Sen's Cambodia, not just Poipet alone]

By Tracey Shelton
Phnom Penh Post, Issue 17 / 01, January 11 - 23, 2008

Poipet - A new survey on street kids living in this bustling, border town shocked social workers who say they didn't expect to see so many children living in deplorable conditions and so few attending school.

Yann Grandin, an advisor with the NGO Goutte d'Eau (GE) which conducted the survey of 210 children living on both the Thai and Cambodian side of the border, said the information gathered was in line with information they had about children he had worked with, but previously the results were considered to be the worst case scenario. It was the high percentages of child victims that came as a surprise, said Grandin, who has worked in Poipet for three years.

"I had not expected that almost the entire target group would have to face such hazardous living conditions," he said.

Thirty percent of the children interviewed said they regularly slept on the streets. The most common reasons they gave were fear of returning home, lack of earnings to turn over to their parents, domestic violence or simply that they preferred to stay on the street with siblings or friends.

The dusty town of Poipet, home to an estimated 70,000 people, has seen incredible growth since the opening of its first casino in 1999. Back then the population was just 5,000.

Thousands of Thais cross the border daily to gamble and the industry is thriving with nine casinos. Imports, both legal and illegal, are carted across the border by hundreds of cart pullers in an unending stream. Popular markets on both sides of the border attract shoppers from around the region.

The border crossing is also becoming more popular for tourists as roads to Siem Reap slowly improve. All this activity gives poor provincial families the impression that Poipet's bustling streets may offer them jobs.

But most of the population lives in poverty, and people often are caught up in the cycle of illegal immigration and deportation as they try for work in Thailand.

"This extremely unstable scenario makes the families concentrate all their efforts on daily survival, with no expectations or plans for the future," Grandin said. "Therefore, the children are part of the daily survival plan, having to work or beg to support the family and making it impossible to go to school."

Of those street kids who had homes, 89 percent lived in one-room plastic shacks. The sanitary conditions in the homes were inadequate, particularly in the rainy season.

The survey revealed that 75 percent of those interviewed had either dropped out or never attended school. Of those who had attended, fewer than 20 percent had progressed beyond grade 3.

Most of the children were under age 15. Half reported they worked all day everyday, most commonly scavenging and begging. Many worked as street sellers or cart pullers, transporting the flow of Thai imports across the border. Only a few children described theft or smuggling as their main form of income.

Daily wages ranged from 20 to 200 baht, or about 50 cents to $6.

Most of the girls earned a living by carrying umbrellas to shelter tourists from sun or rain while waiting at immigration. That job was of particular concern to social workers who say that kind of close contact with wealthy adults can lead to prostitution.

"Umbrella girls have admitted to our social workers that they sometimes have sexual relations for money," Grandin said.

"Two months ago we had two girls who disappeared for a few days from one of our two daycare centers. Parents believed that they were staying on the Thai side."

"Both of them came back after a few days, saying that they managed to escape from a brothel where they were forced to work as waitresses."

Grandin said he also received information that some umbrella girls were forced to work as prostitutes in the Thai market.

Only 20 percent of those interviewed were natives of Poipet. The rest were from a variety of poverty stricken families who moved there to find work.

Bangkok survey

Well beyond the border the story is similar for the estimated 1,000 Khmer children begging and selling in the streets of Bangkok.

A survey of these street workers conducted in Bangkok last year by Friends International challenged previous assumptions of child trafficking rings when 80 percent of those interviewed said they were bought to Thailand by a parent or relative.

In an interview at the GE center in Phnom Penh, 15-year-old Panha (not his real name) described his life as a beggar in Poipet before he was scooped up by GE, and brought to Phnom Penh to attend a special school for the handicapped.

He said he was very young when his parents took him to Thailand. Crippled by polio, he worked everyday begging and selling flowers in Bangkok until he was arrested by police and deported alone to Poipet about a year ago.

Social workers believe his mother was a child trafficker. He described many other Khmer children being brought to Thailand by his mother to sell and beg along with him. Each night they would turn over all their earnings to his mother.

Workers from the Poipet Transit Center, a government run assistance center for women and children deported across the Thai border, said that five to ten trucks arrive at Poipet border crossing every day carrying Khmer deportees, many of them children arrested for begging alone on the street.

Glue sniffing

The Poipet survey completed last month found 26 of the 210 children interviewed admitted to taking drugs. But those who conducted the survey said that may not be an accurate portrayal of the drug use problem.

Panha said he picked up glue sniffing while he existed on money from begging around the border casinos. He joined a drug rehabilitation program at GE which later brought him to Phnom Penh.

"Many children denied consuming drugs although they have been seen by GE social workers taking drugs many times before," said Beatrice Muller, a Swiss volunteer who coordinated the survey.

However when asked if they knew of any drugs used on the streets of Poipet, most of the children admitted they were familiar particularly with glue sniffing and the methamphetamine known locally as yama. More than half admitted their friends or relatives use drugs regularly.

Grandin said as a result of the survey GE will extend its drug awareness program in Poipet.

He said the biggest challenge in Poipet is dealing with such a significant number of poor and extremely unstable families in one place, which makes stabilizing the children's situation very difficult.

GE plans to repeat the survey each year to assist itself and other NGOs working in the area.