Global Compact International Yearbook 2009

Otto Group
Our Commitment Against
Child Labour in India
Around the globe, some 300 million children aged between five and fourteen work.
In India, 59 million children do not have the chance to go to school. Instead, most
of them have to herd goats, crush rocks, collect rubbish, sew sequins onto textile
articles, clean the houses of rich families, or do other menial jobs to survive.
By Andreas Streubig
What has caused this shocking number
of child workers in India? Child labour
is mostly the result of the severe poverty
of families, where every cent counts
– no matter who earns it. But by working,
these children forfeit their chance
to break out of the poverty trap later.
Moreover, there simply are not enough
schools, teachers, and books for them,
especially in structurally poorer regions.
Many children in school do not receive
enough support at home – particularly
if they are the first in the family to go
to school at all.
Trading companies in the West that
import goods from India and want to
avoid unethical social behaviour in their
production processes are also having to
confront the issue of child labour. One of
these is the Otto Group, a globally active
trade and services group based in Hamburg,
Germany. The Group developed
its Code of Conduct back in 1996, based
on International Labour Organization
conventions. In cooperation with the
Europe-based Business Social Compliance
Initiative (BSCI), the Otto Group is
working to guarantee the implementation
of its Code of Conduct, with the aid
of supplier audits and training within
a carefully designed social management
system. Preventing child labour is a key
focus of this effort; nevertheless, it is
impossible to be completely sure that
children are not still being exploited as
cheap labour, as this malaise is still too
deeply rooted in the Indian market.
This is why in March 2008 the Otto Group
launched a development policy project
in partnership with the human rights
organization terre des hommes to combat
child labour in India. It is initially set to
run for three years and will be managed
by terre des hommes, financially supported
by the Otto Group, and implemented
locally with project partners in the respective
Indian regions. “Our project is
aimed at tackling the problem of child
labour on the deeper-lying, structural
level,” explains Sibylle Duncker, Social
Compliance Team Lead at the Group’s
Hamburg head office. “We want to give
children and adolescents access to a
school education and so provide them
with the basis for a professional future
and genuine prospects in life.”
This innovative project has two regional
focal points in India: the capital, New
Delhi, and the poverty-stricken northern
state of Bihar, where most child workers
in the urban industrial centres of New
Delhi, Mumbai, and Calcutta come from.
Working closely with state schools and
local authorities, the project is designed
to tackle the problem of child labour
on a structural level in both project
regions, but with a different emphasis
in each. In rural Bihar prevention is the
main priority – to stop children moving
away and into the labour market
at all. In New Delhi the goal is to show
children and adolescents who are already
in the labour market that they have
clear alternatives – and to re-motivate
them to go to school or even to take a
skills-training course.
“To combat child labour we’ve developed
a whole range of interlinked measures,”
explains Barbara Küppers, who is responsible
for Child Labour / Social Standards
at terre des hommes. “In Bihar the first
step was to launch schooling campaigns,
to get as many kids as we could into
school.” In the West Champaran district,
staff from the Jesuit aid organisation Rural
Education and Development (READ),
who are also involved in the project’s
work, went from door to door to gradually
gain families’ trust through a per-
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Global Compact International Yearbook 2009