Child Labour and Precarious Living

1. Child Labour and Precarious Living Dr Gareth A Jones LSE

2. Overview • The Good News: for most young people life chances and qualities have improved over past 50 years – healthier, better educated, material goods (though not ‘happier’), • The Bad News: for young people at bottom, conditions have not changed or got worse, including health indicators, life expectancy, violence... • Nine SSA countries increased U5MR 1990-2000; 88 countries predict fail universal primary education 2015, gender inequality persistent...700 million children live less $1 per day, more than in 1990. • Though baseline data are poor especially in terms of work (informality, domestic etc), violence (including abuse), income (and time) – and respect, ‘self’ esteem, suicidal ideation...

3. A Right Problem • Approaches to young people at work (and many other pursuits) has varied from criminalisation, welfare interventionism and rights approaches. • A Rights agenda has been vital to recasting ‘how’ young people are to be involved in development. • But, although poverty conceptualised as denial of (human) rights – and choices, entitlements – freedom from poverty is not itself a right. • For 1990s it was enough to argue that improving rights was axiomatic to poverty alleviation – neither academics nor agencies explained how ‘rights in principle’ would address structural poverty or affect constraints related to ethnicity, custom, religion, gender. • Nagging doubt that governments found easier to ‘sign up to rights’ than devote budgets to material programmes. • All rights frameworks, laws are clumsy and advocacy is dull.

4. Child Labour • Shifting down the agenda (1990 Action Plan) but re-emerged recent years (2002 UNGASS Outcome Document). • Predictor of poverty through lifecourse, target to ‘get kids’ into the MDG/PRSP debate. • International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and ILO 182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour in 1999. • But does child labour indicate an absence of rights (to education, welfare), or is the denial of labour an abuse? • The CRC does not prohibit or confirm a right to work, while ILO 182 (and claims around) indicate that elimination of worst forms of work complements CRC.

5. Working Children • 351 million economically active children: • 8.4 million in worst forms of labour (drug economies, prostitution), • 171 million work in ‘hazardous conditions’, • Hazardous = heavy machinery, night work, exposure to noise. • But hazardous becomes ‘worst’ when ILO claims that 180 million children “are now suspected to be toiling in the ‘worst forms’ of child labour – those activities that the global community has unanimously agreed are inexcusable under any circumstances and must be eliminated without delay..persistence on such a scale of this violation of children’s basic rights casts a shadow over us all” • Lazy or semantics, or ILO repositioning, or agenda creep...?

9. Is hazard a technical or an ethical judgement? • Careful not to condemn work without knowing what it is doing, or that consequence of non-work is worse, • Careful not to condemn work without considering its positives – aside income, can offer access to networks and institutions (though many forms of work do not, conversely many ‘hazardous’ forms do), • Careful we have alternatives to work – education might not be that alternative, in that it does not lead to work in developing world (eg. Ghana).

10. Street Youth • Approximately 18% world population, 1.2 billion people are ‘young people’ (15-24), and numbers peak 2035. • Street youth – multiple failures in family, community, government..experiences of vulnerability, exclusion...though plenty international regimes address ‘youth’. • Range of reasons to be on streets – once there, offers range survival mechanisms though activities not perceived as work, • Work as means to opportunity – additional jobs, free goods/food, medicine. • Mother s work with young children to keep close, watch out for partners (drugs, violence, sun burn, ..ensure they work).

14. Some Conclusions • Children & Youth at work on the streets ‘framed’ by debates and responses to ‘informality’ – relative to the eye of the beholder, attitude of the state and the law. • Recognising ‘street youth’ as having multiple networks within context of social exclusion may bring valuable insights – consider what young people have, gender and ‘carer’ relations. • Recapture some ‘social justice’ – rights without welfare is not a first-best option, it is a normative one. • Encourage small measures – through CSOs – to improve the ‘places’ of young people (including for work) – good design, participatory practices, media representation.