Child Health and Child Labour

Summary: This book is the result and elaboration
of a two-day international seminar held
in Amsterdam on 24 and 25 October 1997
Proceedings of the Seminar 24 -25 October 1997 Amsterdam the
Netherlands
"This book is the result and elaboration of a two-day international
seminar held in Amsterdam on 24 and 25 October 1997
A group of international experts, both specialists and generalists
from different disciplines, invited by the Netherlands Foundation for
International Child Health (NFICH) and the Amsterdam Foundation for
International Research on the Exploitation of Working Children
(IREWOC), engaged in discussions about the health of working children.

Hazardous child labour and explotation of young children call for
immediate intervention because of their threat to the physical and
psychosocial well-being and development of these children. New ways
of intervention and regulation are pointed out. A participatory
community-based approach of this muti-faceted problem is imperative."

Contents

Editorial

Introduction: From Information to Intervention
Sjef Teuns, Jaap Mulder

Plenary Sessions: a brief report of presentations and discussions
Hans Veltmeijer

Part I: Strategies for health care of working children: successes and
failures

Conditions considered as hazardous for the working child
Mohd. Sham Kasim

Child labour: a social health issue which needs ~ community health
approach
G.H. Coppee

Planning and implementation of health programmes for working children
Margaret A. Lynch, Philista Onyango

Toxic Exposures: incentives for action
Michael A. McGuigan

Children in hazardous work in the informal sector in Indonesia
Sutrisno R. Pardoen

Part II: Workshop reports: from information to intervention

How to identify and approach children in hazardous work
Health programmes for working children: prevention, protection and
rehabilitation
New models of intervention in hazardous working conditions for
children
Community-cooperation to reduce harmful forms of child labour
Summing-up: On the need for a multi-faceted approach
Kristoffel Lieten

Programme of the seminar
Dakar Declaration on Child Labour 5996
Kuala Lumpur Resolution on Child Labour 5996
List of Participants

From Information to Intervention

How far have we come? That is the question we asked ourselves at this
third international meeting on the Health Aspects of Child Labour.
The first meeting led to the Dakar Declaration on Child Labour in
1993, the second to thee, Resolution on Health Aspects of Child
Labour in Kuala Lumpur in 1996. In Amsterdam in October 1997 we
realized, that now we had to move beyond conventions, declarations
and resolutions to the next stage of activities: from information to
intervention. We all agreed that there is no easy solution to the
very complicated problem of child health and child labour. But the
main point is that by now we all realize that the problem does exist.

Historically, the first step was taken by the International Labour
Organization (ILO), when its first director, Albert Thomas, tried to
alert the world to the conditions of child labour. A feeling of
global purpose and social progress was needed, including a
sensitivity to the fate of working children. A most important
milestone was the ILO Minimum Age Convention and Recommendations in
1973. At the 1978 Alma Ata Conference 'Primary Health Care, The
Meaning of Health for All by the year 2000', the world was still
divided in three blocks: the first, the second and the third world.
It did not penetrate into the overall thinking of the conference that
most of the world's children live in the third world. In 1979 Joseph
Moerman, president of the International Year of the Child, dedicated
that year to street children, handicapped children and children
exploited by society.

It is hard to believe now that opposition came from the United
Nations (UN), UNICEF and International Society for the Provention of
Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN), which bodies objected to referring
to these children as being exploited. They preferred speaking of
'children in difficulit circumstances'.

The turning point came in 1989 when the Convention of the Rights of
the Child was accepted by the UN. In 1990 the UN Summit on the
Children's Rights Convention first focused world attention on the
working child.

In 1997 the AMIC (Action against the Most Intolerable forms of Child
Labour)-programme, promoted by ILO, was enthousiastically endorsed by
GOs, NGOs and a good number of governments. The programme is the main
issue at the 86th ILO meeting in June 1998 and will also be one of
the central themes on the 1999 UN agenda. In summary: we moved from a
total taboo on mentioning the existence of child exploitation to the
endorsement of the AMICprogramme by the world's main governments and
organizations. The problem of child labour is no longer 'the best
kept secret' of the world establishment. Nevertheless, the war
against the most intolerable forms of child labour has only just
begun. As long as poverty and marginalization keep millions of people
on the edge of starvation it will be very difficult to implement
improvements.

How far have we come? How much information and knowledge on the
health aspects of child labour is needed to formulate action
programmes?

The participants in the Amsterdam seminar all agreed that further
research is an absolute necessity to collect more details or the
state of health of working children Facts and figures are simply
needed to convince policy-makers of the impact child labour can have
on the mental and physical well-being of children, as well as on
their growth and development. However, need for further research
should not be an excuse to postpone further action. The WHO principle
of the Integrated Management of the Sick Child tells us to start the
necessarraction before we know all the causes of the disease. Along
the same line we are too late when we only make plans for
rehabilitation of children, disabled by work.

So, what we can do with the knowledge we have today to prevent the
problems of tomorrow should not be postponed. With this in mind, we
started looking for possible interventions to improve the health
situation of working children. Many questions were raised: Who should
take the initiative for action? How can cooperation at cornmumty
level be achieved? Can we integrate health facilities for working
children in existing services? It is clear that progress has to start
at the local level, corresponding with the needs and ideas of the
people immediately involved, including the employers.

Also, the children need support and courage to speak for themselves.

Internationally, the actions should be very carefully planned and
coordinated with all organizations and disciplines involved: ILO,
WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, ISPCAN and low-profile NGOs like IREWOC and N
FICH. Social scientists and health professionals do need each other
to move forward.

We would like to mention that the recently published book 'Children
at Work:
Health and Safety Risks' by Dr. V. Forastieri (ILO) has been made
available for the participants of the seminar by ILO. It will be
useful as a guideline for strategies of interventions.

If we want to move on to a state of the world's children, in which
the mental and physical well-being of the children is no on er
endangered by working at too young an age, by hazardous circumstances
and by exploitative situations, all professionals and organizations
involved will have to work hard in the years to come. Let's get going.
Sjef Teuns
president IRE WOC
Jaap Mulder president NFICH
Owner: Netherland Foundation for International Child Health - Amsterdam Foundation for International Research on Exploitation of Working Children