On August 8, the Government adopted a National Plan of Action against the Worst Forms of Child Labour. The decision followed probes that found many children were employed in violation of the law. MOLLY MCANAILLY BURKE and IVAN VATAHOV examined trends in Bulgaria and the rest of the world.
The National Plan aims to return children from the workplace to school.
One of its key objects is to reduce the number of children who do not attend school at all or irregularly.
Achieving this will require improved co-ordination between national and local government.
According to the plan, parents and children will receive training focussed on understanding and comprehension of education as a strategic resource.
Conditions will be provided for children who have long been absent from school to finish primary education (8th grade). Pupils from low-income families, who are the highest risk group, will be provided with meals at school. Risk group children will get occupational guidance and vocational training.
The document maps out measures to prevent children from working in conditions hazardous to their health. The social profile of working children and the consequences of child labour will be monitored and analysed. Controls will be tightened over business activities employing children. Ministries and agencies will join forces against hidden child employment.
The plan also targets elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including prostitution, drug trafficking, and begging. To this end, Government institutions will work with NGOs active in these fields. The children and their families will be educated through programmes highlighting the effects of hard manual work.
Health care, psychological support and resettlement are envisaged for children subjected to the worst forms of labour. Young people aged 16 and older, who need subsistence, will be helped to find suitable work.
The legislative measures listed in the plan include revisions of the Penal Code to define and prohibit the worst and most dangerous forms of child labour. Free pre-employment medical examinations will be available to children under 18.
Of a total of 1,294,000 children in Bulgaria, about 83,000 or 6.4 per cent work in the private sector, a national survey found. They are concentrated mostly in trade and services, agriculture and transport. According to statistics, these children work voluntarily. The largest number of children aged under 18 are hired in the apparel industry and mass catering, to judge from the number of work permissions granted by the Labour Inspectorates.
In most cases, teenagers are employed seasonally and perform low-skilled work. The children usually work at the same enterprises as their parents.
Four hundred and eighteen thousand, or 32.3 per cent of Bulgarian children, work at their family farms, and 611,000 or 41.8 per cent, are engaged in housework. One hundred and eighty-one thousand, or 14 per cent of the children, do not work at all. Children’s working hours vary: an average 9 weekly for 41.6 per cent, between 9 and 24 hours for 28.7 per cent, and between 24 and 41 hours for 26.4 per cent.
A total of 2,821 permissions for work of children aged under 18 were issued in 2001. As a result of checks, 129 contracts of employment with non-adults, working without permission from the Labour Inspectors, were nullified. Most children working without a contract are hired in the grey economy. They are paid as little as 10 to 30 leva ($5-15) monthly in 43.3 per cent of the cases and over 30 leva in 56.7 per cent of the cases.
The Plan of Action against the Worst Forms of Child Labour was drafted in conformity with the International Labour Organisation Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (ILO Convention No. 182), which has been ratified by Bulgaria. Its preparation involved experts of the ministries of labour and social policy, education and science, and health and the national representative organisations of workers and employers.
The document was drafted on the basis of figures provided by the Central Board for Control of Juvenile Anti-Social Behaviour, the police counselling centres, and a national survey on the problems of child labour in the conditions of transformation in Bulgaria. The survey was conducted by researchers from the Institute of Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, with financial support from the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), and with the assistance of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
ILO estimated recently that 250 million children aged 5-14 are victims of child labour around the world, half of them working full time. The greatest number of working children aged between five and 17 live in Asia and Africa.
Of these, tens of millions are caught in the worst forms. The ILO said it was particularly alarmed by 180 million children trapped in the “worst forms” of child labour, defined as slavery, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict and the use of children in drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
An ILO report, quoted by the BBC World Service, said about 2.5 million, or 1 per cent of the world’s child labourers, were in the industrialised countries, while another 2.4 million were found in transition economies, such as Bulgaria.
The report, released in Geneva, said poverty was a major factor, but argued that political instability, discrimination, migration, criminal exploitation, traditional cultural practices, a lack of decent work for adults, inadequate social protection, a lack of schools and the desire for consumer goods could also play a part.
It said a lack of law enforcement, and the desire by some employers for a cheap and flexible workforce worsened the situation.
Most of the world’s child labourers remain hidden from view, whether working the street selling knick-knacks or collecting recyclable rubbish, tilling the fields or working as virtual slaves in domestic employment far from the reach of official labour inspectors and media scrutiny. This is typical also for Bulgaria, where people and media learn of such cases only after occasional checks are made by the authorities.
Industrial or agricultural labour also poses enormous physical risks to children from dangerous chemicals and faulty machinery. In some areas, children make up a third of the workforce and are involved in more than 40 per cent of work-related accidents. New York-based Human Rights Watch said that 170 million children around the world work in agriculture, making up 70 percent of all child labourers. Such children spent long hours in scorching heat, were exposed to toxic pesticides, and had high rates of injury.
Most children doing street work were struggling for their own or their families’ survival. They shined shoes, washed and guarded cars, carried luggage, hawked flowers and trinkets or collected recyclable junk and then returned to homes in shanty towns and squatter settlements each night.
A great deal of international attention had been given to the sexual exploitation of children in recent years and tough legislation enacted to deter or punish predators, the report said. This did not mean the problem had been solved. Far from it, the sexual abuse of children is rapidly becoming a mass global industry, co-ordinated by the internet.
Each year about 6,000 children aged between 12 and 16 are victims of child trafficking, many from Albania, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, who are sold into forced labour, including sexual exploitation, in Western Europe. According to NGOs Terre des Hommes and Save the Children, in March and April this year alone as many as 700 young women under the age of consent were working as child prostitutes in Italy. Many were moved on to other European countries including Britain, France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
The trafficking of minors from Europe’s ex-communist countries to become under-age prostitutes in Western Europe is increasing at an alarming rate and this appears unlikely to change so long as the global child sex industry continues to be spectacularly lucrative. It is estimated that some 120,000 women and children are trafficked every year into Western Europe, including women and children from Africa, South America and Asia.
Sexual exploitation of boys has been visibly on the increase in recent years, too. The demand for boys comes from local homosexuals, tourists, child pornographers and sometimes even women.
The National Plan aims to return children from the workplace to school.
One of its key objects is to reduce the number of children who do not attend school at all or irregularly.
Achieving this will require improved co-ordination between national and local government.
According to the plan, parents and children will receive training focussed on understanding and comprehension of education as a strategic resource.
Conditions will be provided for children who have long been absent from school to finish primary education (8th grade). Pupils from low-income families, who are the highest risk group, will be provided with meals at school. Risk group children will get occupational guidance and vocational training.
The document maps out measures to prevent children from working in conditions hazardous to their health. The social profile of working children and the consequences of child labour will be monitored and analysed. Controls will be tightened over business activities employing children. Ministries and agencies will join forces against hidden child employment.
The plan also targets elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including prostitution, drug trafficking, and begging. To this end, Government institutions will work with NGOs active in these fields. The children and their families will be educated through programmes highlighting the effects of hard manual work.
Health care, psychological support and resettlement are envisaged for children subjected to the worst forms of labour. Young people aged 16 and older, who need subsistence, will be helped to find suitable work.
The legislative measures listed in the plan include revisions of the Penal Code to define and prohibit the worst and most dangerous forms of child labour. Free pre-employment medical examinations will be available to children under 18.
Of a total of 1,294,000 children in Bulgaria, about 83,000 or 6.4 per cent work in the private sector, a national survey found. They are concentrated mostly in trade and services, agriculture and transport. According to statistics, these children work voluntarily. The largest number of children aged under 18 are hired in the apparel industry and mass catering, to judge from the number of work permissions granted by the Labour Inspectorates.
In most cases, teenagers are employed seasonally and perform low-skilled work. The children usually work at the same enterprises as their parents.
Four hundred and eighteen thousand, or 32.3 per cent of Bulgarian children, work at their family farms, and 611,000 or 41.8 per cent, are engaged in housework. One hundred and eighty-one thousand, or 14 per cent of the children, do not work at all. Children’s working hours vary: an average 9 weekly for 41.6 per cent, between 9 and 24 hours for 28.7 per cent, and between 24 and 41 hours for 26.4 per cent.
A total of 2,821 permissions for work of children aged under 18 were issued in 2001. As a result of checks, 129 contracts of employment with non-adults, working without permission from the Labour Inspectors, were nullified. Most children working without a contract are hired in the grey economy. They are paid as little as 10 to 30 leva ($5-15) monthly in 43.3 per cent of the cases and over 30 leva in 56.7 per cent of the cases.
The Plan of Action against the Worst Forms of Child Labour was drafted in conformity with the International Labour Organisation Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (ILO Convention No. 182), which has been ratified by Bulgaria. Its preparation involved experts of the ministries of labour and social policy, education and science, and health and the national representative organisations of workers and employers.
The document was drafted on the basis of figures provided by the Central Board for Control of Juvenile Anti-Social Behaviour, the police counselling centres, and a national survey on the problems of child labour in the conditions of transformation in Bulgaria. The survey was conducted by researchers from the Institute of Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, with financial support from the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), and with the assistance of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
ILO estimated recently that 250 million children aged 5-14 are victims of child labour around the world, half of them working full time. The greatest number of working children aged between five and 17 live in Asia and Africa.
Of these, tens of millions are caught in the worst forms. The ILO said it was particularly alarmed by 180 million children trapped in the “worst forms” of child labour, defined as slavery, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict and the use of children in drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
An ILO report, quoted by the BBC World Service, said about 2.5 million, or 1 per cent of the world’s child labourers, were in the industrialised countries, while another 2.4 million were found in transition economies, such as Bulgaria.
The report, released in Geneva, said poverty was a major factor, but argued that political instability, discrimination, migration, criminal exploitation, traditional cultural practices, a lack of decent work for adults, inadequate social protection, a lack of schools and the desire for consumer goods could also play a part.
It said a lack of law enforcement, and the desire by some employers for a cheap and flexible workforce worsened the situation.
Most of the world’s child labourers remain hidden from view, whether working the street selling knick-knacks or collecting recyclable rubbish, tilling the fields or working as virtual slaves in domestic employment far from the reach of official labour inspectors and media scrutiny. This is typical also for Bulgaria, where people and media learn of such cases only after occasional checks are made by the authorities.
Industrial or agricultural labour also poses enormous physical risks to children from dangerous chemicals and faulty machinery. In some areas, children make up a third of the workforce and are involved in more than 40 per cent of work-related accidents. New York-based Human Rights Watch said that 170 million children around the world work in agriculture, making up 70 percent of all child labourers. Such children spent long hours in scorching heat, were exposed to toxic pesticides, and had high rates of injury.
Most children doing street work were struggling for their own or their families’ survival. They shined shoes, washed and guarded cars, carried luggage, hawked flowers and trinkets or collected recyclable junk and then returned to homes in shanty towns and squatter settlements each night.
A great deal of international attention had been given to the sexual exploitation of children in recent years and tough legislation enacted to deter or punish predators, the report said. This did not mean the problem had been solved. Far from it, the sexual abuse of children is rapidly becoming a mass global industry, co-ordinated by the internet.
Each year about 6,000 children aged between 12 and 16 are victims of child trafficking, many from Albania, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, who are sold into forced labour, including sexual exploitation, in Western Europe. According to NGOs Terre des Hommes and Save the Children, in March and April this year alone as many as 700 young women under the age of consent were working as child prostitutes in Italy. Many were moved on to other European countries including Britain, France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
The trafficking of minors from Europe’s ex-communist countries to become under-age prostitutes in Western Europe is increasing at an alarming rate and this appears unlikely to change so long as the global child sex industry continues to be spectacularly lucrative. It is estimated that some 120,000 women and children are trafficked every year into Western Europe, including women and children from Africa, South America and Asia.
Sexual exploitation of boys has been visibly on the increase in recent years, too. The demand for boys comes from local homosexuals, tourists, child pornographers and sometimes even women.
