CHILD LABOUR: A DISGRACE TO HUMANITY
One of the time-tested and time-honoured lessons of history is that while politicians generally work for the next election, statesmen or stateswomen work for the next generation. The main parties campaigning with vigour and largely without violence for the August 17 General Election are claiming they have long-term plans for the next generation with a knowledge-based economy, high technology and other virtues such as equal education and healthcare opportunities for all. We are not certain as to what extent this will be limited to promise-making instead of going to the higher dimension of promise-keeping though many analysts believe President Maithripala Sirisena -while remaining neutral or actively non-aligned in the campaign -- may be touching the dimensions of statesmanship.
Practically, what is the current reality of the children or the next generation? On a worldwide scale we have heard some shocking and staggering revelations from India’s soft-spoken but passionate child rights activist, 60-year-old Kailash Satyarthi who was jointly awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize last year along with the much more famous girls’education and child rights activist Malala Yousafzai.
In his 34 years as an activist in the battle against child labour or slavery, Mr. Satyarthi -- who insists he does not want his left hand to know what his right hand is doing -- has freed tens of thousands of Indian children, some just five or six years old, forced into servitude by unscrupulous agents, businessmen, landowners and brothel owners. The Nobel laureate has said his commitment to the cause goes back to when he was six and noticed a boy his age on the steps outside the school with his father, cleaning shoes.“I think of it all as a test. This is a moral examination that one has to pass … to stand up against such social evils,” he says. He spoke to the little cobbler’s father and asked why the child was not given an opportunity for education. The father was apparently amazed, saying that for generations they have had no education but worked as cobblers. Mr. Satyarthi put himself in their shoes and there began a mission to dream the impossible dream and fight the impossible foe. He climbs the mountains, searches the seas and follows the rainbows until he finds his dream.
In 1980, Mr. Satyarthi founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) and began raiding factories, brick kilns and carpet-making workshops where children and their indebted parents often pledge themselves to work for decades in return for a short-term loan, the Guardian newspaper reported.He also explained the dangers of his noble mission. “In my own case I have my broken leg and my broken head and my broken back and my broken shoulder, so different parts of my body have been broken while I was trying to rescue children,” he says.
In the late 1990s, Mr. Satyarthi was a lead organiser of the global march against child labour, aimed at raising consciousness about millions of children abused worldwide in a form of modern slavery. He also founded RugMark, an international scheme that tags all carpets made in factories certified as child-labour-free. More recently he has launched operations to rescue girls sold into abusive forced marriages and helped turn hundreds of villages into rehabilitation centres to teach skills to abused teenagers, the newspaper reported. Believe it or not, 168 million children around world are full-time child labourers, Mr. Satyarthi told the CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview last Sunday.
What is the gravity of this crisis in Sri Lanka? According to the latest survey by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) the number of children working during their school-going age of five to 14 is more than nine per cent or in excess of 300,000. Child labour is mainly in agriculture and manufacturing. In 2013, the then government made a moderate advancement in efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour but enforcement efforts continued to be weak, particularly with regards to hazardous child labour. The new government taking office after August 17 needs to give top priority to end child labour or slavery because the child’s name is Tomorrow.
In 1980, Mr. Satyarthi founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) and began raiding factories, brick kilns and carpet-making workshops where children and their indebted parents often pledge themselves to work for decades in return for a short-term loan, the Guardian newspaper reported