HELSINKI: “Child labour is evil,” says Aimé Bada, a defender of minors’ rights from Senegal. “But it is a necessary evil, because without the income the children earn in the poorest countries of the world, their families would be worse off.” Bada knows what he is talking about. He spent his childhood earning to pay family bills; he had to. He has now become an advocate of children’s rights, and in that he includes the right to work. Bada told a workshop on child labour in Helsinki that children must be given the right to define the terms of the work they have to perform, and protected from abuses by employers, both at the domestic and the corporate level.

The workshop he addressed was held in the framework of the Helsinki Process, a North-South dialogue on new approaches to resolve global problems launched by the Finish and the Tanzanian governments in December 2002. Bada called for a radical reform of institutional education in developing countries, especially in Africa. “School must be reformed to allow children to work at the same time that they are learning,” he said. “School must respect African oral teaching traditions, and incorporate in its programmes the learning of professional skills, as well as ways of conduct that allow children to become worthy citizens.” Unexpectedly, perhaps, many participants agreed.

“Condemning child labour is silly and unproductive,” Päivi Mattila, social scientist at the University of Helsinki who has done extensive research on child labour in Asian, Latin American and African countries, told IPS. The International Labour Organisation has set standards to prevent child labour, and the United Nations has long ago passed a convention on the rights of the child, she said. “Still, children in India, the Philippines, Brazil, and in Senegal, continue working.” If child labour is to be reduced and eventually eliminated, schools must be improved dramatically, she said. “School would only become an alternative for poor children in the developing world when it begins to provide education useful for real life.”

Institutional education must include training in skills such as auto mechanics, electronics and carpentry, she said. “And such teaching must reduce gender discrimination. It cannot be that girls always learn cosmetics or cooking, while boys always go to the carpentry or mechanics courses.” Unicef says up to 250 million children from developing countries are working, about half of them full time. —Dawn/Inter-Press News Service