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Inicio Quiénes somos Corresponsales Resumen Semanal Coberturas internacionales Servicios SEMlac Archivos Enlaces |
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Argentina: Child labor in rural areas, a long-lasting injusticeBy Norma Loto
This came from Ely, a 60-year-old woman who spent her childhood going from Santiago del Estero (1,200 kilometers north of Buenos Aires) to Tucumán to work. Her story ways back over 50 years, but the current situation of many children is, unfortunately, quite similar.
Carolina Llanos, secretary of the Argentinean Union of Rural Workers and Stevedores (UATRE), told SEMlac that child labor involves children under 14 years of age doing paid or unpaid work for many hours a day, on a regular basis, and under harmful conditions.
This problem is so deeply rooted that it is often associated with culture. Sociologist Susana Aparicio conducted a study showing that 13.3 percent of children doing agricultural work are five to nine years old, and 29.6 percent are in the 10- to 13-year bracket.
Another study by the National Committee to Eradicate Child Labor (CONAETI) revealed that most working children live in Chaco, Tucumán, Misiones and Mendoza provinces. They are involved mainly in tobacco, maté, cotton, citrus, tea, vegetable, rice, fruit and soybean cultivation.
Around 194,000 children in the northwestern region of the country are being exploited at citrus, tobacco and sugarcane plantations. Paid by the piece, they seek to support their families.
As most of these harvests cover part of the school year, drop-out rates are very high.
Some 20 million children are subjected to labor exploitation in Latin America and the Caribbean, statistical data show.
A joint CONAETI-ILO-UNICEF survey concluded that 10 percent of the youngest children working in rural areas do not go to school and that 62 percent of teenagers have quitted it.
"They are exposed to many risks, including bad weather conditions and chemical poisoning due to pesticides used at fruit, tobacco, tea and mate plantations in the northeastern and northwestern regions of the country", Llanos stressed.
"They often suffer from osteo-articular and muscular-skeletal diseases because muscles and bones continue growing until 18 years of age in women and 21 years in men", she added.
Local public opinion shuddered at the news that children in northern Santa Fe were being used to set limits in areas under fumigation using light planes popularly called mosquitoes.
An NGO (Rag Ball) published the story of a local boy: The planes throw down insecticides that have a very strong smell. When it is windy, our faces get wet. We work 12 hours a day under such conditions, he added.
It is a fact that pesticide handling is the first cause of death among rural children.
A cultural issue“Like father, like son”, said Rogelio as he saw his son Martín loading a truck with sugarcane. This rural-culture tradition has been passed from one generation to another.
Llanos indicated that poverty conditions, precarious jobs and illegal activities make entire families work to meet daily needs.
"Parents in rural areas assess child labor very highly; they see it as an effective learning experience and socializing instrument", she commented.
A source of unhappinessAll children have the right to be happy, but adversity sometimes becomes the rule. Ely’s story is a clear example of this injustice.
Her testimony can certainly make anybody knock at the door of any government institution and try to redress the situation. “I remember how unhappy we all were” was the phrase she used to describe her plight in a few words. "I just helped my parents", she thought and still thinks.
As she helped them, she could not complete primary education, lived in rundown houses over the harvest and was so cold at night that she often woke up wet. The bathroom was really away from the bedroom.
There are many boys and girls still suffering in a similar manner and the State is still expected to put an end to such an inhuman situation.
Latin America: Child labor in rural areasBy Zoraida Portillo
"I do know what is happening to him: he is poisoned", stressed Ana López, his schoolteacher.
"I have seen many students suffering from similar symptoms because they are involved in fumigation for a long time. Their parents believe that it is easy; they do not know how dangerous it can be", she stressed.
Juancito lives in a small village of Callejón de los Conchucos (western Andean region). There and in many other rural settlements, hundreds of children and teenagers are involved in fumigation on a daily basis. Parents do not know that permanent exposure to pesticides changes hormonal processes and weakens the immune system.
Some children develop allergies and rash, while others suffer from neurological and/or learning disorders, attention deficit and cancer. Pregnant girls and women have spontaneous abortions or babies with genetic disorders.
This came from a study conducted in the 1990s by the International Potato Center and the Canadian International Development Research Center at El Carhi, an Ecuadorian province with a rural population highly exposed to chemical fertilizers in potato plantations.
The study showed that children and teenagers in rural areas were exposed to toxic products that were stored inside the houses and that they were involved in fumigation without taking any precaution.
Representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) indicated that pesticide use is posing a serious threat to rural children and teenagers in developing countries.
These children also participate in goods transportation and cattle-raising, and have work shifts that exceed 12 hours a day and include plowing and machine operation.
They are often taken out of school by their own parents because they need additional labor force to toil the land.
These families get increasingly poorer, López noted. When children work for so many hours a day under the sun, they fall ill and become a burden. "There is no way to break this vicious circle", she emphasized.
Girls usually drop school earlier than boys. Aside from agricultural work, they do house chores and look for water and firewood in distant places.
"They get pregnant shortly after they stop studying. They look after younger brothers and sisters and their own children", López commented.
"I sometimes see them carry their babies on their backs, with their hands full of cow dung or firewood for cooking. They do not look at me because they are ashamed", López feels.
Children are extremely vulnerable to the risks involved in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food processing, transportation and sale because they have not been properly educated and trained, and have to use working tools designed for adults, an FAO report indicated.
There are 132 million children aged five to 14 working under such conditions, it added.
On the other hand, an ILO report said that 70 percent of working children in the world do agricultural work and around 20 percent of them are under 10 years of age.
The number of children working in rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean has dropped from 16 percent in 2000 to five percent in 2004. The number of children involved in hazardous works has declined by 26 percent in such a period. Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru exhibit the highest number of children working in rural areas.
Child labor versus child exploitationInternational agencies are not against some activities conducted by children in the countryside. If they do not involve any danger and interfere with their education, they are considered to be legitimate and important to develop skills for adulthood, said Eve Crowley, an expert working at the FAO’s Gender, Equality and Rural Employment Division.
"They are not justified if they are harmful, abusive or involve child exploitation", she added.
According to FAO, child labor is harmful to health, prevents children from going to school, and hinders future growth and development. The activities that do not keep them from going to school are acceptable for those over 12, and non-hazardous jobs are permitted to those aged 15 to 16.
Government statistics do not usually include migrant children who do agricultural work in border areas.
Experts at the Mexican National Autonomous University’s Latin American Study Center said that this problem is on the rise. Around 150,000 children try to cross the border every year, they added.
One third of them go on their own. Most of the 90,000 children who really make it stay in the United States to work in plantations. They usually have poor living and working conditions because they are not legal residents.
On the other hand, Guatemalan children begin working as laborers when they are six years old, according to NGO reports. Most of these children belong to indigenous groups.
"We do not like to handle pesticides. They smell very bad and make it difficult to breathe", Nicaraguan children said over a recent survey that involved 1,500 working children and teenagers in the country.
They also complained about working tools. They are too big and difficult to handle, many of them indicated.
Asked about the risks they face on a daily basis, they mentioned accidents, illnesses, etc.
By the time Peruvian rural girls enter primary school, they are expected to help raise cattle, rear other animals, gather firewood, etc. As they grow, they are responsible for many other activities and have to quit school, said a representative of Social Action for Children Network.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Information Technology, one every four girls aged 12 to 17 stops studying and another 200,000 aged five to 17 have never gone to school.
Mexico: Child labor and povertyBy Sara Lovera
Out of the total number of children and teenagers working in the country, 1.5 million are involved in illegal economic activities and are being exploited. Half of them are 12 to 15 years old.
Labor is permitted under the law to those over 14 years of age, but many younger children look after family members and do chores at home.
The latest report prepared by a number of organizations headed by Thais Social Development highlighted the need to put together a National Program to Prevent and Eradicate Child Labor.
"There were 3.3 million working children and teenagers in 2002, and half of them did not go to school", said Norma Inés Barreiro, president of Thais Social Development.
She told SEMlac that both qualitative and quantitative data are being collected and disaggregated. The idea is to remove the myth that child labor helps eradicate poverty.
The problem has not been really visible, and there has been no comprehensive approach to wealth distribution and State obligation to children.
Martí Batres Guadarrama, secretary for Social Development in the Federal District, indicated that the State is the only one that can solve this issue. Local laws establish children’s right to receive scholarships and pencils, pens and rulers for school, and teenagers’ right to receive grants (30 to 60 dollars a month) so that they can go to school on a regular basis. "These are universal rights protected under the law", he told SEMlac.
Experts seek to remove deeply rooted myths: child labor is “something natural that has always existed and will continue existing”, or “it makes an important economic contribution”. Studies have shown, however, that it merely re-produces poverty.
Another myth is related to the lack of a consensus on the impact of the early incorporation of boys and girls into the labor market, the lack of political will, and poor visibility over the problem.
Children do any type of workChildren do any kind of work: gathering the harvest, carrying and/or selling goods, and taking marginal jobs in urban areas.
A survey by the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information Technology (INEGI) showed that two every three children and teenagers work to help their families, support themselves or be able to go to school.
Most working children live in the poorest regions of the country (Veracruz, Chiapas, Puebla, the state of Mexico, and Jalisco).
Experts indicated that many children in the six- to 15-year bracket are currently working in urban and rural areas. There are 1.8 million doing house chores; most of them are girls, they added.
Against this background, civil organizations are developing a myth-, bias-free diagnosis based on a national field work, said Jorge Viveros, director of the Educational Research and Training Center.
"We want to know what is really going on because figures are misleading", he told SEMlac.
The capital cityA total of 9,000 children over 14 years of age are working in department stores of the Federal District. They all go to school and their rights are respected. Around 70 percent of them are supporting poor families.
This came from Dolores Unzueta, head of the Working Women and Children’s Department in the local government. "Only one new child labor agreement has been signed in the last 10 years", she added.
Thousands of children are, therefore, unprotected. Over 27 percent of those working in groceries are children to single mothers. "Girls make up 38 percent of them and boys, 62 percent", she stressed.
UnderestimationINEGI figures are underestimated because working children in the six- to 12-year bracket have not been accounted for.
Day laborers often work in the export-oriented agricultural sector, which has signed and is implementing free trade agreements. Three every seven children aged six to 11 in these families are wage earners, and there are 600,000 children working up to 12 hours a day.
One fourth of these children have never gone to school; 46 percent work six days a week; and 35 percent have no day off.
Migrant laborers make up a heterogeneous group from an economic, linguistic and cultural point of view. They are educationally and socially vulnerable. They feel that concerted action is required to putting an end to child labor and exploitation.
Teenagers do mainly house chores. Over three percent of boys and 11 percent of girls aged 12 to 17 are involved in so many chores that they find it extremely difficult to go to school.
Social inequalities are having a negative impact on children and women, Unzueta stressed.
"We all know that local children over six years of age have been doing agricultural work in the north, but the government has paid no attention to such a phenomenon", Viveros concluded.
Central America: Women and migrationBy Sara Lovera
Women like Mariela often speak of humiliation, helplessness, rape and human rights violations. They just want to change their lives.
Mariela managed to get to the north and left her testimony at the Migrant House.
Father Pedro Pantoja is in charge of Bethlehem Lodging in Saltillo (Coahuila), 1,200 kilometers away from the capital city. "Some Central American migrant women are strong enough to become leaders despite all the suffering", he said.
Three of them are sitting in a hall where their cases are reviewed, while some others come in and still plan to cross the border.
They are getting away from poverty and violence, and hoping to improve their economic situation. They all take risks.
Most of them begin the journey in Tapachula, an unfriendly city where there are no employment opportunities for them. They are stolen, taken to prison and threatened. Marisela, for example, was raped by 12 men. She finally arrived in the Lodging, took a shower and had some food.
Martha Villareal, representative of Migration Forum, asked the Mexican government last May 8 to guarantee Central American migrant civil rights while they are passing through the country.
Reports of the National Institute of Migration indicate that around 10,000 Central Americans seek to pass through Mexico every week and that most of them are deported.
María Isabel (25) is married and has three children. She told SEMlac that her husband had been murdered. "I got many trains looking for food for my children. All we want is to have a better life", she stressed.
The situation of Honduran, Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants is two-faced: suffering and growing, according to interviews conducted by Natalia Flores, a scholarship student at the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO).
StoriesVillareal said that the navy, the army and the police harass migrants on a permanent basis. We are victimized by criminals and humiliated by security forces, some of them explained.
There is a migrant station in Tapachula that is never mentioned and is seen as an impervious facility where all kinds of abuse are committed.
A report of the National Institute of Migration indicated that around 183,000 people without identification papers had been arrested in 2007. Most of them came from Guatemala (84,000) and Honduras (58,000), it added.
Women’s voicesMarisela is feeling really sad, terrified. She hit one of her arms getting down from a train. She fell asleep on the railway. A policeman woke her up and asked her to take off her clothes.
So she did. After he had put down his trousers, he realized she had a period. "You look extremely dirty", he said.
She arrived in the Migrant Lodging last February. After a few days there, she confessed that she had raised some money to get to the United States through Mexico.
The Migrant HouseThe Migrant House is a shelter offering clothes, medical care, information on human rights, a Basic English language course, advisory services and telephone communication.
The facility received 8,891 people in the May 2007-April 2008 period. Seventy-six percent of them came from Honduras, nine percent from El Salvador and Guatemala, four percent from Nicaragua and two percent from Mexico.
"Women had accounted for two percent in 2004, totaled five percent in 2007, and have exceeded six percent so far this year", Pantoja indicated.
Flores interviewed eight women aged 22 to 38. Two were illiterate; three had not completed elementary school; one had finished secondary school; one had been trained as a nurse; and one had graduated from university.
Most Central American women arriving in the House share some characteristics: they come from low-income families, lack affection and material resources, and have suffered from violence since childhood. Many of them initiated sexual life and got pregnant when they were very young.
Migrant womenNot all migrant women are accompanying their husbands. At a time when extreme poverty is being globalized, women make the decision to leave their countries of origin despite vulnerabilities and risks.
"Migrant women have new roles to play", said Pantoja. "They become leaders and establish social networks in the countries of destination", he added.
While the sun set on Madero Port (Tapachula), I saw some women taking a swim. They were probably planning to head for the north.
Peru: Impact of the summitsBy Julia Vicuña and Zoraida Portillo
Most people think that the 5th Summit was held just to “dip the flag”, because the Lima Declaration contains no real commitment to fighting inequality, poverty and exclusion.
The 57-paragraph document urges to tackle social evils in an effective manner and promote unity because this is an imperative moral, political and economic need.
It proposes a number of practical measures that are usually adopted at meetings of this type, namely, addressing the needs of target groups and promoting gender equality and the rights of disabled people, children, indigenous communities and other social groups that demand special attention.
The 59 presidents who signed the Declaration undertook to work for women’s economic, political and social empowerment and implement the Lima Agenda on the Eradication of Poverty, Inequality and Exclusion.
When summits are heavily attended, they tend to be ineffective. Agendas are too general and are, therefore, also ineffective. Whenever there are so many political differences, positions and approaches enter into conflict, said international analyst Ernesto Velit.
Speaking over local radio, he stressed that there were no real commitments assumed. He mentioned the examples of a proposal by Peruvian President Alan García seeking to tax oil sales and use the moneys to set up a reforestation fund, and another proposal by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to establish a poverty-alleviation fund. "They were given no consideration", he added.
Peruvian Foreign Trade Minister Mercedes Araoz indicated, however, that the Declaration does provide a general framework for action and policy implementation.
Ordinary people believe that the Summit was of little use and only caused trouble. For security reasons, many streets were closed to traffic and peddlers were relocated. There were around 2,000 participants in the event, according to Foreign Ministry reports. May 14 and 15 were declared national holidays.
"Do you think this was good for anything? We are always told that these meetings are good for the country, but they end up benefiting just a few, those who have capital to invest", said Azucena López, a tidbits vendor in Miraflores, an area seriously affected by traffic restrictions because most hotels used for presidential delegations are located there.
"I do not know much about these things, but I believe that the summit that was strongly criticized by politicians was closer to us than that of presumptuous officials", she added.
The Summit of the Peoples was attended by representatives of social, political, trade-union, migrant, indigenous, farmer, women and young-people organizations from the region and Europe.
They met at the National University of Engineering (UNI) in Rimac, close to the economic development area in northern Lima, just a few kilometers away from the official event. There were not so many streets blocked in this district and the number of police agents was significantly higher.
The Declaration of the Peoples was made public at the closing ceremony. It indicates that the predominance of market laws over human rights is the main cause behind inequality, social polarization, environmental degradation and all forms of discrimination. Corporations are granted all sorts of warranties and the State is unable to prepare and carry out national development projects.
At the same ceremony, the jury of the Permanent People’s Tribunal, which was presided over by priest François Houtard, submitted a document condemning neo-liberal practices and economic and financial policies that are endorsed and implemented by European Union member countries.
The forum also condemned European multinationals that systematically violate international law and standards that support civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
The Tribunal decided to ask the United Nations Human Rights Council to appoint a Special Rapporteur to prepare and submit to the General Assembly a report on the concept of illegitimate debt and violations of economic, social and cultural rights perpetrated by national governments and multinational corporations against individuals and peoples.
To this end, it recommended establishing an International Court for Economic and Environmental Crimes, where individual or collective victims may submit their cases.
The organizers of the Summit of the Peoples had to overcome a number of obstacles put in their way by the government. In an effort to justify the lack of official support for the event, Jorge Del Castillo, president of the Peruvian Council of Ministers, said that the parallel summit was “a meeting of losers”.
"As they can no longer ignore us, they try to insult us. President García, Del Castillo and all those who did not want us to meet are the actual losers", said Rosa Guillén, general coordinator of the Summit of the Peoples.
"The four-day meeting was attended by over 5,000 people from some 40 Latin American, Caribbean and European countries", she indicated.
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The Women's News Service from Latin America and the Caribbean (SEMlac), International News Agency, offers this weekly service. No reproduction without authorization. Any comment o suggestion please contact us: semlac@redsemlac.net |
Buenos Aires, June.–
Lima, June.–
Tapachula,
Mexico.– A few steps away from the Guatemalan border in Tapachula,
Central American migrants plan to reach the United States through
Mexico. As there is no train service available, they remove their
shoes and go on walking.