The Hague Global Child Labour Conference 2010 - Food ...

The Hague Global Child Labour Conference 2010Thematic SessionsPolicy IntegrationChild labour policy should include a range of social policy initiatives, argued the sessionChair Mr. Nitte Manjappa Adyanthaya. A lack of access to quality education andemployment opportunities are some of the causes of child labour, and persistent childlabour impedes the Education For All initiative, the success of the Poverty ReductionStrategy Papers, and the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. Therefore,child labour needs to be seen in a developmental and life cycle approach that includesyouth employment and decent work for adults. This calls for a greater degree of policyintegration, not just at the international level, but at the national, provincial and villagelevel. Ministries and other actors need to work together, “otherwise the left hand doesn’tknow what the right hand is doing.” An example of this is synchronizing the age ofadmission to employment with the end of compulsory schooling.Minister Gamini Lokuge from the SriLankan Ministry of Labour Relations andProductivity Promotion further stressedthe need to mainstream the issue ofchild labour: “We need to underline thefact that the problem of child labourcannot be effectively addressed inisolation from the broader context ofthe development process…Mainstreaming child labour by means ofmaking child labour an integral part ofthe design, implementation, monitoringand evaluation of any planned action, including legislation, policies, programmes in allpolitical, economic and social spheres at all levels with a goal to eliminate child labour, isconsidered imperative.” In addition to poverty, “lack of educational opportunities,substandard educational facilities, and entrenched social and cultural practices are equallyimportant contributory factors” to child labour. The education system also needs toinclude life-skills training and vocational and technical education that correspond to theneeds of the labour market.The importance of the link between social protection and the elimination of child labourwas stressed by Minister A.K. Khander of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Planning. Socialprotection has been prominent on Bangladesh’s agenda and covers the following areas: asocial-safety net, food security, micro-credit, rural employment, disaster management,basic health care and access to public schools. Bangladesh has been working to scale upthese programmes, as “minimum universal social protection for the hard core poor ofBangladesh is an imperative to eliminate child labour given the pervasive and persistentnature of poverty in the country.” The Minister expressed the hope that this conferencewill help integrate, coordinate, and intensify efforts to eliminate the worst forms of childlabour by 2016 in accordance with the Global Action Plan, and that rich countries makeavailable extra resources to achieve this goal.Professor Jaap Doek pointed out that “there is no magic bullet for policy integration; thereis a lot of hard work to get it integrated” and drew attention to several key elements. Thereneeds to be a comprehensive plan. Working children should not be isolated from otherchildren or from any other plan. Input is needed from almost all ministries, as well as fromNGOs and children. The plan needs to include children’s rights in its guiding principles. It9