3071-The political economy of new slavery

Rachel Nizan 151
themselves, their families and their employers to local, regional and
national organizations, as well as NGOs. This is important as it
creates a sense of ownership of the implementation process among
the Honduran people, although, arguably, it is imposed from the
outside and in a top-down manner. Despite broad support for the
Convention’s ratification – largely due to worldwide awarenessraising
campaigns of NGOs, IPEC and UNICEF 43 – the ratification and
implementation processes have been carried out ‘by a small number of
politically powerful individuals’ (Groves, 2003, p. 8). Creating a sense
of ownership is important, as it will also determine the level of the
project’s success.
Policy evaluation
It is as yet early days to evaluate most of the policies undertaken under
the framework of the PAN. Nevertheless, some observations can be
made. No figures on child labour more recent than 1999 are currently
available for Honduras, which makes it hard to determine if the policies
so far have been successful in reducing child labour. An assessment
of the effect of the policies for child labour reduction will probably
yield the best results after the termination of the PAN’s initial five-year
project period in 2006. Despite fears that the new government would
not commit to the PAN, 44 it was fully adopted and in July 2002 the
Commission was sworn in (personal communication).
Some of the research undertaken has been translated into intervention
projects. IPEC Honduras is currently working on projects in the
coffee and melon sectors, for which agreements were signed in July
2002. The project on diving in the Mosquitia was supposed to go ahead
at the beginning of October 2002. Intervention projects are planned for
domestic work, sexual exploitation and scavenging.
Awareness-raising and advocacy work, as well as institutional strengthening
are extremely important. The Save the Children UK / Ministry of
Labour project has shown that these are areas where, with fairly limited
financial resources and plenty of human input, a lot can be achieved.
Nonetheless, cuts in ministerial budgets of 17 per cent undertaken by
the new government, present some practical limitations, such as the
‘government[’s] capacity to implement the PAN and wider poverty reduction
initiatives’. The change in government also entailed ‘replacing
old staff with new political appointments’ which resulted in a loss of
‘institutional learning’ (Groves, 2003, p. 10). This emphasizes the need
for institution building and learning as an ongoing priority.