Kathmandu Declaration: Convergence of Working Children

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Save the Children Sweden, Regional Programme for South and Central Asia, Save the Children Norway Nepal and other organisations supported and facilitated working children for the South Asia Regional Convergence of Representatives of Working Children event.

Children make up more than 40% of the total population of the globe, with an estimated 350 million children in some form of work. Of these, 60% of the children work in the Asian and Pacific regions (ILO 2002).

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, under Article 32 has specified that the States Parties shall recognise the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

Hosted by the child-led National Forum of Working Children-Nepal, founded in November 2004, the South Asia Regional Convergence of Representatives of Working Children took place in Kathmandu from the 25th to the 27th of August 2005. The Nepalese children took pride in bringing together 40 children representing national, regional, and local working children's organisations from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri-Lanka, and Tajikistan. However, representatives from the children's movements in Afghanistan and Mongolia were not able to join the meeting. These working children represented various work sectors, coming from diverse living situations, ages, gender, disabilities and educational backgrounds.

The participating children agreed to confront challenges collectively with the strength of their united efforts through the South and Central Asia Working Children's Movement developed during the Convergence. They also made a commitment to share the information gained back to their respective countries, and help create their own national forums to have their issues heard and understood.

Impressively, the Convergence successfully resulted in the creation of the Kathmandu Declaration on South and Central Asian Working Children, which will be presented to the SAARC Secretariat with concrete recommendations, developing new strategies for protecting child rights in the workplace. Among the most important strategies planned were:

  1. Initiate community-based campaigns to promote the rights of working children and focus an awareness on Child Rights amongst children.
  2. Establish a Secretariat in South and Central Asia with child representatives from each country that would include both a monitoring mechanism and ombudsperson.
  3. Engage and influence the process of NGOs, INGOs and UN agencies to assure that their views on child labour issues are expressed freely, reflecting their individual situations in their true contexts; thus providing a sustainable and holistic approach to the creation of new programmes and policies.

     

pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/kat_declaration.pdf
Organisation: 
Save the Children Sweden, Regional Office for South and Central Asia
Attachment Link: 
http://www.crin.org/docs/kat_declaration.pdf

Countries

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