Children’s work in the livestock sector: Herding and beyond

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© FAO / Giulio Napolitano
According to a report on child labour in Mongolia,
undertaken by the Understanding Children’s Work
Programme (2009) and based on the 2006–07
Mongolia Labour Force Survey, 10% of children
aged 7–14 work (90% of them in agriculture) and
2% of all boys and 1.3% of all girls work and are also
out of school. The majority of children are in school
(over 80% for both girls and boys) while 9.4% of all
boys and 7.2% of all girls combine schooling with
work. Within the 15–17 years category, 10.9% of
all boys and 5.2% of all girls are in employment
and out of school. An ILO-IPEC baseline survey on
domestic workers in Mongolia (2007, cited in UCW,
2009) covered 270 children (64% boys, 36% girls)
herding livestock for other families. The children,
mostly between the ages of 15 and 17, not only
herded but were also involved in other everyday
activities in their employers’ households. There was
a high drop-out rate among these children, because
they worked, on average, 9 hours a day and 80% of
the boys and girls did this 7 days a week.
Mongolia is a country of pastoral animal husbandry.
A large part of herding households (44.6%) are
‘poor’ and have small herds of up to 100 animals
(ILO-MOFALI, 2009). Climatic conditions in the
country are extreme: cold snowy winters, dust
storms in different periods of the year and droughts
in the summer. In the ILO-MOFALI assessment
of occupational and employment conditions of
children working in the livestock sector of Mongolia
(ILO-MOFALI, 2009), the data show that 60%
of the 263 surveyed children working in animal
husbandry began helping between the ages of 7
A child herding cattle for grazing
and 9, and some at 4 years. They began herding
on their own generally at the age of 11. Of these
herding children, 77% were boys and 23% girls.
Some 2.3% of the herders had never been to
school, while 42.9% of the respondents indicated
that they had dropped out of school. Most of the
surveyed children worked 9–12 hours a day (a
slight majority of the respondents were aged 15–18
years). Such long working hours make it difficult to
attend school.
The analysis also showed that 30.4% of children
working in animal husbandry worked for and lived
with other herding households. They were usually
paid in kind, but 6.2% were not paid at all. Contracts
were negotiated verbally between parents and
employers in 57% of cases, between children and
employers in 22% of cases and not at all in 21% of
cases. The report urges for serious attention from
local authorities to the group of vulnerable children
working for other households.
According to the assessment of the conditions
of children working in Mongolia´s livestock sector
(ILO-MOFALI, 2009), children working in animal
husbandry are subjected to pressure and violence.
Activities cited by the children as most difficult
were herding animals during snow and dust storms,
removing compressed animal dung, goat combing,
taking care of newborn animals, horseriding in
winter, managing horses and losing part of the
herd. Some children were afraid of wolf attacks
on the herd. In some cases, the children had to
compensate the employer for loss of part of the
herd.
In the far and mid-western districts of Nepal,
an ILO-IPEC rapid assessment in 2001 surveyed a
sample of 650 from an estimated total of almost
20 000 Kamaiya households (Sharma et al., 2001).
These households live and work under the Kamaiya
system, an agriculturally based bonded labour
system in Nepal. Of the 5–18-year-old children
identified in the 650 households (the total number
of children was 1 885), 557 were working for an
employer and 622 were attending school. A total
of 240 child labourers (two-thirds below the age of
14 years) working for an employer were identified
and surveyed. Two-fifths of these child labourers
lived with their employers and the majority started
working for their employer before the age of 10 years.
Four-fifths of the children had never attended
school, with especially low attendance rates for
girls. Only 5 percent of the sampled child labourers
were still attending school.