Organised by: Number of participants would be 20 drawn from the following countries Pakistan
Arunodhaya center for street and working children, Chennai, India and National Domestic Workers Movement-India in partnership with Anti-Slavery International with the support from Oak foundation and Comic relief.
Background
Child domestic workers are children (under 18 years) who work in other people’s households, doing chores typically regarded as part of the daily work of women: child care, cleaning, laundry, cooking, fetching water and fuel, food shopping, running errands, and sometimes helping out with petty trade or businesses. Where boys are employed, they more commonly work outside the house.
In most cases pay is meager, and sometimes there is none or it is withheld. Other common features include long hours, psychological isolation, and lack of free time for education, leisure, or friendship. Many child domestics are found in highly exploitative, slave-like conditions. Mostly female, these children are highly isolated, due to their invisibility behind closed doors and scatteredness, and existing regulatory mechanisms fail to protect them. Many remain losing out on educational opportunities.
There are also increasing reports of informal and semi-formal ‘placement agencies’ running businesses targeting these young girls. Recruiters – in reality, many are traffickers – go to rural areas and collect girls from poor families, and then find them jobs in towns. Thus the trade in domestic workers is becoming more organized, commercialized and takes its young workforce ever further from home.
Child domestic work is a child labor issue, a children’s rights issue, and gender issue. It is a child labor issue as it involves economic exploitation and hazardous working conditions. Many also become victims of trafficking and bondage. It is a childs rights issue because their rights as children such as education are also sacrificed because the nature and condition of the work itself is unfavorable for child development. It is a also gender issue as it relates to sexual abuse, risk of rape and abduction and family perceptions about making girl children’s education less of a priority. Many suffer sexual abuse and exploitation, thus requiring a comprehensive set of direct services including rehabilitation and reintegration, which are beyond counseling and medical support. Cultural traditions and religious beliefs also influences the practice of domestic work in different countries.
In South Asia, many challenges still remain to be effectively addressed, such as:
(a) lack of real data and understanding among civil society and government on the issue of child domestics;
(b) lack of services to reach out to live in child domestic workers
(c) lack of awareness among child domestic workers of their rights and available services;
(d) lack of direct interventions to protect and heal abused child domestics;
(e) lack of flexibility in educational provision to enable access by CDWs; and
(f) lack of effective legal protection and prevention mechanisms to discourage the practice.
To respond to these challenges, Anti-Slavery International and project partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean[1] are implementing a three-year project to identify what interventions are most useful to child domestic workers and which offer them the best protection from abuse and exploitation.[2] It is intended that by identifying what interventions work and don’t work, and why – we can: (1) improve the quality and scope of services currently provided to child domestic workers and to their employers, parents and other stakeholders; (2) help NGOs and others who want to intervene to consider the most appropriate and effective support they can give to child domestic workers; (3) encourage organisations to develop local service projects.
In order to fulfill these objectives Anti-Slavery International and its partners have designed a series of activities to promote and provide the tools for good practice in interventions in this sector. This involves: (1) mapping existing interventions from around the world; (2) gathering and disseminating the views and experiences of child domestic workers; (3) sharing of information and experience amongst practitioners for the benefit of others providing services or intending to intervene in this sector – through an international practitioners meeting and subsequent handbook on good practice; (4) developing region-specific training materials to build local practitioner capacity; and (5) through field exchange programmes to encourage local organisations to take action.
As follow up to the International Practitioners Meeting organised 22-24 November 2004 in Bangkok (Thailand), South Asian Field Exchange programme is being organized. Exchange programs are effective methods of learning from people’s experiences. They bridge the gap between the reality from which lessons are learned and the decisions that implementers chose to follow. The shared reflections among organizations will be utilized to fine tune efforts across each region. The exchange process then becomes relevant when practitioners with direct experience of working with child domestic workers come together, share experiences and to define good practices in this sector.
Overall Objective of Exchange Programs
Field exchange programs are designed to generate a deeper understanding of the issues and strategies relating to sustaining interventions for child domestic workers. They provide enabling processes for visiting practitioners as well as the host organizations and its partners to reflect on their work as they immerse in different action the strategies. A crucial element of the exchange process will be to learn together with local child domestic workers within the host country, who should also positively benefit from different levels of process available during the visit.
Specific Objectives
1. To explore complex issues of child domestic work to better understand the context from which country strategies have developed.
2. To learn lessons, good practices and existing trends in developing interventions and implementation mechanisms for child domestics from the face-to-face interaction with program implementers, employers, children themselves and other influencers.
3. To gain insights from the direct participation of child domestic workers themselves, both organized and non-organized.
4. To exchange information on how codes of conduct, regulations, and legislations (both local and national) impact on the sustainability of interventions for child domestic workers.
5. To facilitate a reflection process about lessons learned in working with child domestics across the region in order to deepen the understanding and application of the principles outlined in the good practices handbook.
6. To build and sustain solidarity among participants and visited partners based on the development of common action plans as well as the work that can be done in their countries.
‘Interventions’ as used in this project refer to a system of activities, which form part of an integrated programme in which assessment, analysis, and action fit together, and practical programme ingredients and advocacy components complement one other. The choice of programme objectives, both overall goals and specific time-bound objectives, is critical to the selection of activities. As a good practice in the design process, child domestics themselves need to be consulted, and their own potential contribution as programme actors and monitors duly recognised. We also take into account age-appropriate intervention for the very young and adolescents, including the involvement and support to family unit in both prevention and rehabilitation. These interventions include, but are not limited to:
· Reaching to child domestics outside the household as well as within it, in the places they frequent and via community members and employers. Many child domestics make contact with centres themselves, where they are helpful and popular, passing information about them by word of mouth.
· Crisis interventions which are planned for as part of any programme of action concerning child domestic workers. Since the place of work is usually also the child’s residence, a child who runs away or is rescued from traffickers or an abusive household needs temporary shelter in a caring environment. Legal actions are also sometimes taken against abusers.
· Providing services and facilitating service access are often the vital means of attracting their participation in programmes, and are highly valued by them where they meet their own aspirations. Educational services, as long as they are conducted in a child-friendly way, are universally valued, as are recreation and sports activities, skills training, health care and personal and job-related counseling. Services to support the redress of rights violation should also be given attention as protection from abuse is a high priority for child domestics.
· Addressing the issue of trafficking of children for domestic work the practice of trafficking of children for purpose of domestic work from rural and tribal areas is on the increase. There is a need to address the issue at the source area and at the arrival place. Involvement of rural/tribal community leadership in protecting the children is an issue.
· Enabling child domestics to improve their situation is a main programmatic strategy. Its ingredients extend from self-empowerment for child domestics through encouraging their own activities and organisations and involving them in programmatic development; to creating a different social and policy environment around domestic employment by working with household employers, opinion-leaders, and law-makers. These aim to raise child domestics’ status via laws and codes of conduct.
· Prevention of entry of children, especially children under minimum working age, to domestic employment requires as a priority work in the sending communities to reduce the supply of candidates. This includes sensitisation of parents, teachers and community leaders, efforts to retain girls in school, and support for family income-generating where appropriate. Prevention also requires alliance-building with older domestic workers, and working to bring about change in the legal and attitudinal climate.
· Institutional and capacity building, which is done as an organic process, building up skills and activities as competence and scope widen. Partnerships with government bodies, other institutions, NGOs, and international donor and rights organisations all have a role to play. Programme development and institutional development should go hand in hand.
Nepal
Srilanka
Bangladesh
India
A representative of Anti-Slavery International and Child Workers in Asia will also be invited. Project evaluators and representatives from the funders may also participate.
Length of Programme
Eleven day including arrival and departure dates.
4th September 2006 Arrival
5th Septemeber 2006 Overall briefing about workshop
Overall briefing about host organization
6th to – 12th September Main Itenary
13th September Evaluation
14th September 2006 Departure
Methodology
A participatory approach would be adopted providing space for the participants to interact with child domestic workers, their parents, community and with other stake holders. Visits to other organizations and discussion with government officials will also form part of the programme. Space would be provided for participants to share their experience and discuss on good practices. The handbook on good practice in programme interventions written for Anti-Slavery International by Maggie Black can serve as a resource for this discussion.Cultural and Solidarity Night to appreciate local culture and interact with other partners.
Follow up and sustainability
The field exchange programme will provide far reaching experience to the participants, in widening their perspective on child domestic workers, understand the challenges and interventions in the countries in the region and design strategies to address these issues. It will also sow the seeds for strengthening the CWA taskforce on CDWs in South Asia and lead to more concerted efforts. The exchange progamme also aims at enabling each country/organization to draft an action plan. All the activities of the field exchange will be documented and shared.
South Asia Field Exchange Program for Promoting Good Practices in Child Domestic Workers Interventions
Countries
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