Advocacy

SDG 8 & Street-Connected Children

Published 10/01/2021 By Jess Clark

According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to develop through play and education. However, some of them live in such precarious contexts that they are forced to work to survive, leaving aside activities that should be appropriate for their age.

Economic growth should be a positive force for the entire planet. We must ensure that financial progress creates decent and satisfying jobs whilst not harming human agency.

SDG 8 aims to foster sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”. It has 12 targets, and it wants to assure that economic sectors at the national level provide the necessary work for workers to have a good life irrespective of their background. The goal is multi-dynamic and one of the most volatile in the face of emergencies that have left millions of people without income and jobs due to the resulting economic crisis.

Read on to find out more about how SDG8 impacts street-connected children, and how CSC is working to reach this goal.

Indicator 8.7

As part of attaining SDG 8 on fair employment and economic growth, Target 8.7 aims to eliminate all kinds of child labour. Goal 8.7 of the SDG8 goal calls for: “immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour (WFCL), including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and end child labour in all its form.” It has a target date of 2025. Within four years, the international community must not only acknowledge the necessity of eradicating child labour, but it must take immediate and effective global action to end it, alongside modern slavery and human trafficking. Ending child labour would also help advance several other SDGs, particularly those related to education and health.

Recent estimates point to 160 million children worldwide in child labour, with 73 million in hazardous work. A related assessment suggests 89.3 million are young children aged 5 to 11, 35.6 million are children aged 12 to 14, and 35 million are children aged 15 to 17. As is often the case with such calculations, these are  – one of our latest statements provides more information about why we think this is the case.

Covid-19 has amplified children’s vulnerability making them more prone to entering the labour market earlier or facilities lacking protocols or safety standards. As children were the group with lower risk of infection or severe symptoms than adults at the beginning of the pandemic, employers might have recruited under-age children to fill positions. New analysis suggests a further 8.9 million children will be in child labour by the end of 2022 due to rising poverty driven by the pandemic.

So, what exactly is considered child labour?

Child labour includes work that children are too young to perform and/or employment that is likely to impair children’s health, safety, or morality due to its nature or conditions. There are two significant exceptions to child labour: 1. allowed light work for children within an accepted national age range and 2. employment that is not classed as one of the worst types of child labour for children beyond the general minimum working age (International Labour Organisation (ILO) established 15 years as the minimum age for admission to employment, which usually matches the end of compulsory education). Permitted light work authorises the employment of children over the age of 13 in activities that do not likely affect their health.

Such exceptions can be overlooked or abused by employers. It is crucial governments provide children with adequate information to understand the labour landscape and their rights which must be part of an educational curriculum based on a child-rights approach (read here for more).

Modern slavery is currently used as an umbrella term for two situations: forced labour and forced marriage. Modern slavery is largely hidden and, therefore, difficult to measure. One in four victims of modern slavery are children – with girls disproportionately affected. Significant investment and considerable improvements have been made in introducing a methodology to better measure modern slavery and street-connected children involved. However, there is still a need to accelerate their implementation in all countries as global progress against child labour has stalled since 2016.

Why do street-connected children work?

The reasons street children end up in dangerous forms of labour are complex. The drivers that push street-connected children into such scenarios vary. They are mainly forced to work to survive. While there are significant regional differences in the distribution of forced labour and modern slavery, most child labour worldwide – for street boys and girls alike – occurs in agriculture. Other sectors where street children also work are livestock, mining, construction, industry, and commerce. Girls are more likely to be in services, including domestic work, and boys are more prone to be in industry.

Working in the street deprives children of many fundamental aspects of childhood, such as play, education, and adequate nutrition, necessary for healthy development. When discussing labour exploitation of street children, we face a big black hole both in legislation and social action.  Even though there are several laws and programmes for action or eradication of this type of activity, it continues to occur. But in general, they have a little social impact on the street children. Unfortunately, as they are in street situations, the work activities that they carry out do not always count as employment. The law can sometimes wrongly believe that they do not directly obtain a salary or an economic remuneration. It is yet another scenario where social policies exclude street children.

Child labour is usually dangerous wherever it occurs. Exposure to inorganic fertilisers, pesticides, and other hazardous agrochemicals; physically demanding duties such as carrying heavy items; extended periods of standing; and exposure to high temperatures are all typical dangers in commercial farming. Household labour presents an isolated scenario, making children particularly vulnerable to physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. When they venture to the streets to work at night, working in the entertainment sector, proximity to traffic and the risk of being lured into illegal activity and the WFCL are some of the dangers they face.  These are only a handful of the numerous dangers that working street-connected children may face.

The consequences of child labour begin with the poverty and economic insecurity linked with informal work. Given that informal employment needs minimal skills and is often unregulated, demand for child labour may increase as informality grows. Some of the most terrible labour practices are in the informal sector . The informal economy is made by activities by workers or companies without being covered by formal arrangements, that is laws and regulations that do not exist or are sufficiently applied.  Informality is connected with lower and less regular earnings, insufficient and dangerous workplace conditions, increased job precarity, and exclusion from social security schemes, among other things.

The fact that street children must work has an impact on their development. Due to the long hours at work, they are forced to give up their studies or combine both activities. Child labour has psychological consequences preventing them from finishing schooling. And this is only part of a difficult cycle to break: children who cannot access education are more likely to become victims of child labour. Going to school gives street children chances for the future, helps them improve their relationships with their communities and gives them back their childhood. On top of this, street children may suffer from exploitation by family or community members who force them to work for them or obtain certain benefits such as living in certain areas or having protection or food.

Taking away their jobs does not necessarily make things better.

One of the most widely held views is that street children should be rescued and not provided with work. While it is not desirable that any child should have to work to get by, the reality is that street children depend on an income to survive and cover their needs. If they must work, they should at least be given age-appropriate work. For example, even if the mandated minimum working age is under 18, children should not be involved in work that might impair their physical development.

Some ways of limiting children’s capacity to work on the streets can be unproductive and not in the best interests of street children, as many of them rely on these economic activities to live. Simply banning children from working or begging on the street might even be more detrimental to their lifestyle, by driving them into the most horrific forms of labour, leaving them exposed to abuse, such as sexual exploitation, illegal activity, or enslavement.

Street children can also face intimidation by police forces who chase them to prevent them from begging on the streets or working without permits. The lack of knowledge of both police and children about their rights makes it possible for them to continue to be abused by the authorities without actual laws that make it illegal for children to be out on the street collecting money.

Detained or not, street children face various injustices and are exposed to abuse by social protection systems that do not cover them due to a lack of identity papers. When they reach adulthood, a lack of identification documents and birth certificates proving their identity and age further complicates their entry to work in the formal sector, enrol in education and access social protection aid.  Ensuring that every street child can access their birth certificate has to be part of multidisciplinary efforts to end child labour.

What does make things better

We know that the most exploitative and hazardous forms of child labour occur in the informal sector. It is critical for labour market policy to promote the transition from the informal to the formal sector and decent work. Reducing the informal economy is a way to achieve success in the regions still behind.

Broader progress in ending child labour generally focuses mainly on improving rural livelihoods. Local producer unions and well-functioning cooperatives are better suited to decrease their reliance on child labour for a living. Another good approach is to build appropriate and adjacent school facilities, which provide parents with a safe alternative to taking their children to fields.

Assessments of child labour hazards in supply networks can help businesses respond to the COVID-19 problem. Efforts to end modern slavery should pay consideration to informal micro-and small companies. Transforming the business model of hundreds of thousands of clandestine small and family enterprises and enhancing working conditions in these settings is needed but commonly overlooked.  Transforming the lower levels of the production chain is considerably more complex than lobbying with big corporations, yet it is where the most immediate change is required. To do this, we must begin by listening to children, the experts in their lives. Building children’s agency is key to meet indicator 8.7.

A good starting point is to support partnerships with other organisations that believe strongly in the collective power to make significant progress. An example of an ongoing partnership is the CLARISSA project. A programme co-developing, with stakeholders including children and families, innovative and context-appropriate ways to increase options for children to avoid engagement in hazardous exploitative labour. It aims to decrease the number of children engaging in the WFCL, modern slavery and improve children’s well-being. CLARISSA’s primary beneficiaries are children in the worst forms of child labour and those vulnerable to being drawn into it. Thus, it is generating tailored activities and interventions through a large-scale action research process that will benefit governments, businesses and NGOs worldwide with practical and up to date knowledge.

Laws that criminalise children for doing labour (like begging and illegal selling) need to be removed by states; who should be creating alternative income sources available to street children and their families. Governments must also strengthen social security schemes. Universal child benefits are a crucial component since they are a simple and proven way of alleviating poverty and increasing access to services for children and their families. They increase the visibility of children and their actual location to governmental institutions.

Above all, listening to street children’s voices and fighting for their inclusion in data collections is also a good starting point. By actively pushing for their opinions and experiences to shape social policy agendas, there is a better chance to address the vulnerabilities that cause them into dangerous and exploitative work. Street connected children are much more likely to return to exploitative conditions and street work if resettlement initiatives do not support them and their families with sustainable income generation – listening to them can positively benefit the system. Ratification of international legal standards on the elimination of child labour is a powerful statement made by countries. The emphasis is now on making actual progress, turning aspirations into national laws – a continuous call for action by civil society to do so and pushing for a world free of forced labour, modern forms of slavery, human trafficking and child labour goes a long way and is a powerful source for change.

At CSC – what are we doing?

“We are working with the premise that if children can share and analyse their own stories, they will generate the best and most sustainable solutions for better kinds of work”CLARISSA

Our advocacy will continue to push:

  • To extend social protection to street-connected children and families to alleviate the poverty that fuel child labour, including easy access to birth certificates.
  • To deliver free and quality inclusive education for all children by the State at least until the minimum age for entering the labour force as an attempt to provide a viable alternative to child labour and give children a possibility at a brighter future (Read more on efforts to accomplish SDG 4 here)
  • To advance processes that deliver a fair income for young people in street situations of legal working age with a strong focus on helping them escape the informal sector.
  • Ensure that the State has legislation that enables it to create the necessary mechanisms for the defence and protection of children campaigning for programmes that directly tackle the use of street children in the workplace to minimise this practice.
  • Advancing data collection that includes street-connected children in the labour force in both developed and low-income countries
  • End the social norms that legitimise child labour – such as avoiding the consumption of products offered by companies who faced allegations of exploitative child labour practices.

Combating the WFCL does not minimise the need to put a stop to child labour in general. Laws must be appropriately matched, for example, to avoid scenarios in which the minimum working age is lower than the age of finishing mandatory education. Children working on the streets must be meaningfully involved in decisions affecting them.

Ending modern slavery will require a multi-faceted response. Responses need to be adapted to very diverse environments. Improving victim identification is critical to extending protection to most currently not identified victims, such as street-connected children who need to be prioritised. Eliminating child labour is a task too big for any one party to solve alone. It is critical to re-establish efforts and steps if we want to achieve it by 2025.

For more about CLARISSA’s work and research and its participatory approach to generating effective, innovative interventions to decrease the number of children in the worst forms of child labour in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal – click here.