[child-rights] Universal Children's Day - Stop violence against children in the workplace!

***Learn more about Universal Children's Day, 20 November 2006:
http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/child-rights-day.php


NEW YORK (ILO Online), 17 November 2006 -- Among the settings where
children are exposed to violence, the workplace should receive high
priority. Targeted interventions to contact, rescue and rehabilitate
children at risk of violence should be undertaken urgently in many
countries, with the help of employers' organizations, trade unions and
government agencies, including labour inspectorates.

The most common forms of violence against child labourers are of physical,
psychological or sexual nature. According to the new UN report, the
violence working children experience is often systematic and part of a
collective workplace culture of physical brutality, shouting, bad
language, and casual violence including sexual harassment, and in extreme
cases, even rape or murder.

The most frequent harm to working children's well-being from the violence
they experience, however, appears to be low self-esteem resulting from
verbal abuse, humiliation and bullying. Such forms of psychological
violence include shouting, scolding, insults, threats, obscene language,
bullying, mobbing, isolation, marginalization, and repeated discriminatory
treatment.

Though there is little hard data on the precise numbers of working
children who suffer violence, especially for child workers in the
informal economy where the majority are to be found, the evidence
amounts to a shameful, hidden side to children in the workplace. 

"Violence towards working children has only remained 'invisible' because
the direct question is rarely put: data are systematically collected on
violence against female and other workers, but child workers are ignored",
explains Frans Roselaers, Director of the ILO's Department of Partnerships
and Development Cooperation and member of the editorial board of the
report.

Many forces compel children into at-risk work to support their own or
their families' daily existence. "It is difficult to establish
categorically where work beneficial for future working life stops, and
exploitation and abuse begin. In many societies, parents place greater
value on children being employed in economic activities than going to
school -- particularly where the quality and relevance of the available
schooling is low. Children in such societies and situations are induced to
work by the family or the employer and tend to do as they are told",
explains Roselaers.

The taking-in of children from other households to perform domestic work
is a good example. In many societies, it has long been seen as a form of
surrogacy, adoption or assisting a child from a less fortunate family.
Today, such practices have become commercialized. In 2004, the ILO
estimated that there were around 250,000 in Haiti, 200,000 in Kenya and
100,000 in Sri Lanka, for example.

Although a small proportion are boys, domestic work is normally consigned
to female workers and is the largest employment category of girls under 16
years in the world. According to the report, it has increasingly become a
form of unregulated employment and exploitation, even of servitude.

"The situation of child domestic workers is usually thought by their
parents to be safe since the girls live in better accommodation than at
home, may be expected to eat better, and are under the care of the woman
of the house ... however, employment in private premises puts a young girl
at considerable risk. She is at the mercy of the employer and other
household members", explains Roselaers.

Consultations with child domestic workers reveal high levels of violence.
In the Philippines and Peru, almost all child workers report that they
have suffered maltreatment. In Fiji, eight out of 10 domestic workers
reported that their employers sexually abuse them. Research in El Salvador
found that two-thirds of girls in domestic service reported being beaten,
insulted, denied food, fined for damages, or forced to remain out of
doors.

An even more blatant example of violence against children is the sexual
exploitation of children under 18, in child and adolescent pornography or
sex shops. Although figures about children entering prostitution are only
broad estimates, around one million children are thought to enter sexual
exploitation every year. In South and East Asia, around one-third of those
in sexual exploitation work are thought to be under 18.

The violence intrinsic to sexual exploitation is often compounded by
exposure to additional physical or psychological violence.
“According to an ILO/International Programme on the Elimination of
Children Labour study in Viet Nam, 12 per cent of children in prostitution
said they were subject to torture, beaten by customers or employers; also
that they underwent repeated abortions, even having an abortion in the
morning and receiving a customer in the afternoon. In Mongolia, 33 per
cent of girls in prostitution indicated that they had been raped”,
says Roselaers.

The world's 5.7 million children in forced and bonded labour, including a
significant proportion of victims of trafficking, are also at constant
risk of violence. Though bonded labour survives elsewhere, much of the
problem is concentrated in South Asia. Another risk group are children
involved in trading drugs: they are often on the end of violent behaviour
and exposed to risks of substance abuse and harm.

Children in unsafe working environments are also at risk. In 2004, more
than 60 per cent of the world's 218 million working children were deemed
to be in "hazardous" work. This includes glass factories, mining, and
plantation agriculture where health and safety regulations are often lax
or non-existent, the report says.

"Violence committed against a single child is one instance of violence too
many. If we acknowledge this, we can accelerate the present rate of
reduction in child labour that has been achieved over the last four years,
eliminating the worst forms of child labour by 2016 ... and stop violence
against children altogether!", concludes Roselaers.