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Introduction
From May to October 2004, Anti-Slavery International and its local
partners undertook consultations with more than 450 current and
former child domestic workers in nine countries in Africa, Asia
and Latin America. The results of these consultations, once analysis
is completed in the next few months, will be available in a report
from Anti-Slavery International. In the many individual interviews
and group discussions which took place, child domestic workers provided
an unparalleled insight into their situations, as well as their
views about the kinds of help and support they need most -- and
what interventions protect them best from abuse and exploitation.
Consultations took place in Benin, Costa Rica, India, Nepal, Peru,
Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Togo. Reflecting the reality
of child domestic labour in many countries, the majority of those
who participated were female, but more than 100 boys also took part.
Results have confirmed that children as young as seven years old
are routinely pressed into domestic service. Despite some children
entering domestic labour in the hope of continuing their schooling,
most are deprived of opportunities for education and are working
in conditions that can be considered amongst the worst forms of
child labour. Worldwide, the majority of child domestic workers
are girls, and many have been trafficked, or are in debt bondage.
Child domestic workers are isolated from their families and from
opportunities to make friends -- and are under the total control
of employers whose primary concern is often not in the best interests
of the child.
As figures from the International Labour Organization demonstrate
1, child domestic workers are high in numbers,
yet they remain invisible and marginalised both economically and
socially because of the myths that still surround their employment.
While it is conventional to regard domestic work as a 'safe' form
of employment, in reality a wide range of abuses - including physical,
verbal and sexual violence -- routinely accompanies this type of
work.
How do children become domestic workers?
Children spoke of the many ways in which they were pushed and pulled
into domestic service. The need to sustain themselves and their
families due to poverty was commonly why children began in domestic
service. In India, a number of children were working to repay loans.
In Peru and the Philippines older children spoke of their decision
to seek work in the city in order to pursue their education. A quarter
of participants in Tanzania recounted that they were forced into
domestic work as family members had died due to HIV/AIDS and they
had no reliable relatives to take care of them.
Often it was family problems that were the catalyst for children
to begin work. Family breakups and physical and sexual abuse in
their own families were common causes, as were issues such as alcoholism.
In India, several children cited alcoholic fathers as the reason
they had left home to work in domestic service.
Children were also pulled into domestic service by siblings and
friends already working as domestics, and because of employers'
demands for younger workers. In Nepal children said that it was
hard to continue working as a domestic worker above the legal minimum
working age of 14 years as employers had told them that older children
are more trouble and are able to bargain for higher salaries and
other rights.
What do child domestic workers need?
The rich insights provided by the children are still being analysed,
but several important issues have already emerged which impact on
the work of multilateral bodies and other individuals and organisations
providing direct assistance to child domestic workers.
Results of the consultations indicate that the interventions which
are having the most positive impact for child domestic workers are
those which seek to:
1. Maintain or re-establish contact between the child and her/his
close relatives;
2. Intervene directly with their employers in a non-confrontational
way;
3. Establish and support groups of domestic workers to help themselves;
4. Encourage child domestic workers back into education and to retain
them in education by catering to their specific needs.
Cutting across cultural and language divides, the child domestic
workers who were consulted had some clear messages about the best
kinds of assistance to protect them from the daily abuse and exploitation
that many of them endure. Their common appeals to those who seek
to help them are:
- To provide opportunities for education and training which allow
them to move on from domestic work;
- To assist them in seeking redress from abusive and/or exploitative
employers;
- Not to alienate employers, but to make them part of the solution
to their problems;
- To provide more services which cater specifically to the needs
of child domestic workers (since their needs are often quite different
from those of other child workers);
- To develop longer-term interventions, i.e. not to develop services
for them and then pull out after just one or two years;
- To develop interventions which take into consideration some
of the issues which most affect child domestic workers, for example,
early pregnancy and the effect of HIV/AIDS;
- More awareness raising about their situation, and to ensure
that this awareness raising goes hand-in-hand with concrete services
for child domestic workers;
- Assistance in accessing government and state infrastructure
that can help them; for example, in obtaining birth certificates,
enrolling in school, in accessing health care, in locating families
and returning home.
Perhaps the strongest message to emerge from the consultations
was the importance of those providing assistance to talk to the
children themselves about what they need. The work of Anti-Slavery
International's partners in this area has shown that the most effective
interventions are those which systematically involve child domestic
workers themselves in the planning and implementation of their projects
and programmes.
Recommendations
The views expressed by child domestic workers in the consultations
serve to strengthen the calls to action which Anti-Slavery International
and its partners have been making to the Working Group and to other
intergovernmental bodies for some years.
1. Governments should ratify and implement ILO Convention No. 182
on the worst forms of child labour as a matter of urgency and develop
plans of action which include policies designed to offer better
protection to child domestic workers, including raising public awareness
about the issue.
2. Multilateral bodies such as ILO and UNICEF should redouble their
efforts to make the issue of child domestic labour a priority for
action.
3. Governments should initiate legislative reforms to set minimum
standards of practice for domestic workers of all ages -- either
by ensuring that the scope of existing labour legislation is widened
to include domestic work, or through the enactment of sector-specific
legislation to protect domestic workers.
4. In addition to making good on their commitment to provide good
quality and accessible education and health care for all, governments
should promote the development of specialised basic services for
child domestic workers, such as specialised crisis centres.
1 The ILO estimates that more girls under 16 are
in domestic service than in any other category of work. Recent statistics
from a number of countries show the numbers to be in the millions
worldwide.
See Helping Hands or Shackled Lives: Understanding child domestic
labour and responses to it, ILO, Geneva, 2004.
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