Education is key to abolish child labour

Even 23 years after having banned child labour in India, the country continues to be home to the largest number of child labourers in the world ��� 17 million. On the World Day Against Child Labour, celebrated every year on June 12, there was a common consensus ��� moral outrage is the first step to eliminate child labour, and access to quality, equitable education for all children is imperative.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour and action to eliminate it. Every year, the day links governments, employers' and workers' organisations, and civil society, among others, in the campaign against child labour.
This year, the focus was on the girl child and education being the key to empower her. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), International Labour Organisation (ILO), United Nations Childrens' Fund (Unicef) and other members of civil society met at a joint conference to highlight the importance of educating the girl child and ending child labour. According to ILO estimates, there are around 218 million child labourers worldwide of which 100 million are girls, and more than half of them are exposed to hazardous work.
Highlighting how education can transform a child's life, especially girls, Shantha Sinha, chairperson, NCPCR, said: "Going to school opens up new avenues and opportunities with girls learning to think, explore, discover, question and acquire knowledge. Besides, it also delays an early marriage. Only if all working children are in school can it lead to equity and justice, further deepening the foundation of our democracy." She added: "On this day, we must create a social trust and faith in the poor, to stand by them, and celebrate their victories for having taken the right decision to send their children to schools instead of work."
Experts strongly reiterated that in order to end child labour, all children should be sent to school. Krishna Kumar, director, NCERT, said: "This is a national agenda. There is a huge sense of urgency to address the issue. Though the gender gap has been significantly improved in the past 20 years, still girls in our society grow up with terror as they don't feel safe. So if most of them are living in terror, how can they contribute to the growth of society and nation at large, and this is a major impediment that holds back our country in terms of national development."
Experts' views
The act to ban child labour today covers only 15% of the total child labour population in the country, according to Dipankar Majumdar, director, Child Rights and You (CRY). He said: "Sectors like commercial agriculture, unregulated factories and immediacies like chronic poverty, that employ close to 80% of the child labour, is not covered by the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986."
He further added, "Every census shows staggering figures of children engaged in labour across the country. In fact, we see this being directly proportional to the increasing poverty in the country. In such a scenario, how can the situation improve? On the positive side, the government has taken some concrete, commendable steps, the most recent one being the ban on child labour in the domestic sector. But what the government also needs to address is the root-cause, which is poverty."
Child labour is nearly always rooted in poverty compounded by other forms of marginalisation ��� gender, language, ethnicity, disability and rural-urban differences, said Ko��chiro Matsuura, director general, Unesco. "This is why the current economic and financial crisis calls for heightened vigilance and urgent measures to mitigate its impact on the poorest. According to forecasts, an additional 50 to 90 million people could be driven to extreme poverty. Evidence shows that child labour often increases during an economic downturn, as parents withdraw their children from schools to supplement family income and delay the entry of their youngest children. Girls are all the more vulnerable in times of crises," added Matsuura.
There is no better investment for a society than education, in particular girls' education, opined Matsuura. "Educating girls today, have a lifelong impact on their health, nutrition, employment and growth. Most fundamentally, education is a basic human right that is currently denied to 75 million children, 55% of which are girls and this needs to be addressed," summed up Matsuura.