Date of publication: June 24, 2008
Source: DPA
An item will not certainly appear on the global political agenda of the eight most powerful nations at their upcoming meeting in Japan is child labour. Attempts by the Netherlands, a country with a strong reputation of pro-child activism, to put the issue on the international agenda have failed.
On May 22, Dutch Development Cooperation Minister Bert Koenders told parliament the European Union had rejected his request for trade sanctions against governments that refuse to act against child labour.
Earlier, parliament had voted unanimously in favour of a motion initiated by the leftist Socialist Party and Greens urging the Dutch government to put child labour on the international agenda, starting in the European Union.
According to a 2007 report on child labour by the International Labour Organization (ILO), worldwide some 200 million children are employed as labourers.
Contrary to what most Westerners think, most children are not employed in Chinese factories working on sports shoes or clothing for markets in the United States or Europe.
The vast majority - 70 per cent or more than 132 million children between the ages of four and 14 - work in the agricultural sector - on farms and in plantations.
They often work from sunrise to sunset, planting and harvesting crops, spraying pesticides, and tending livestock.
These children play an important role in crop and livestock production and the supply of food and raw materials, such as fruits, vegetables, sugar, tea, coffee and cocoa, tobacco and cotton.
In 2005 and 2006, Dutch investigative journalist Teun van der Keuken visited cocoa plantations in Africa and South America. He found that in Ivory Coast, one of the world's biggest cocoa producers, adult and child slave labourers were being used.
He subsequently launched a successful campaign against what he called "slave cocoa," urging the Dutch buy only certain brands of cocoa and boycotting brands who made use of such labour.
Agriculture is one of the three most dangerous sectors in which to work at any age, along with construction and mining, the latter employing almost 1 million children.
Child trafficking is an important instrument in facilitating child labour. Although no precise figures exist, an estimated 1.2 million boys and girls are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict, or commercial sex work, according to the ILO.
Domestic service is another sector employing hundreds of thousands of children, with estimated 175,000 children under 18 employed in this sector in Central America alone. In Indonesia, the figure is 688,000.
In South Africa, 54,000 children work in people's homes and in Guatemala around 38,000 children between the ages of five and seven are employed in domestic service.
Meanwhile, the number of children involved in armed conflict is growing. Of the 300,000 children currently involved, 120,000 are in Africa, an equal number in Asia and the Pacific and 30,000 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
But despite Dutch efforts, no international action is expected against child labour. Koenders told parliament the "maximum" he can is likely to achieve is a request to European Commission for an investigation into measures to counter child labour.
"The proposals resulting from such a study will be very difficult to ignore," Koenders said, adding the EU might then be able to present these ideas to the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
A spokesman for European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the Commission might support such a study, but refrained from making any commitments.
The Dutch have initiated a number of international conventions on children and several leading international children's rights organizations originate in the Netherlands.
The concepts of legal aid clinics and hotline services for children, are typically Dutch.