Arousing a feeling of interest,
ten leading international organizations are calling on ministers of
labor around the globe in a letter released at the beginning of the week
to protect child domestic workers. They are also calling to ratify the
ILO International Labour Organization Domestic Workers Convention
(Convention 189 concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers).
Furthermore,
this agreement which was adopted in June 2011, will help eliminate
child domestic labor and improve the lives of an estimated 15 million
child domestic workers. In fact, the International Labor Organization
(ILO) estimates that children make up nearly 30 percent of the world’s
estimated 50 million to 100 million domestic workers. These children
often work long hours for little pay, and are particularly vulnerable to
trafficking, forced labor, and physical and sexual abuse. The ILO has
announced that the 2013 World Day Against Child Labor, observed
worldwide on June 12, will focus this year on child domestic labor.
According to Kailash Satyarthi,
chairperson of the Global March Against Child Labour, one of the
organizations signing the letter, Governments can help millions of the
world’s most vulnerable working children by ratifying the Domestic
Workers Convention. He continued saying that child domestic labor is
hidden slavery. Therefore, it’s unacceptable and it is the
responsibility of governments to reestablish freedom, dignity, and
childhood to keep the promises they have been making.
As a matter of fact,
the Domestic Workers Convention extends basic labor rights to domestic
workers, who are often excluded from national labor laws. Under the
convention, domestic workers are entitled to the same rights as other
workers, including weekly days off, limits to hours of work, minimum
wage coverage, and overtime compensation while the convention also
obliges governments to take steps to eliminate child labor in domestic
work and to protect child domestic workers who can work legally, by
setting a minimum age for domestic work in line with existing ILO
conventions, and ensuring that work by children above that age does not
deprive them of education.
Jo
Becker, children’s rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch said
that even girls in domestic work are hidden in private homes, where they
are more likely to be abused and less likely to get an education and
that Governments can make a dramatic change in these children’s lives by
putting the new convention into practice.
The
letter’s signers pushed last Monday that governments use World Day
Against Child Labor to announce publicly that they have ratified the
convention or intend to. Four governments have approved the convention
so far as Uruguay, the Philippines, Mauritius, and Italy, and at least
48 countries have submitted the convention to their parliaments or other
bodies for consideration and that the organizations signing the letter
included child rights, human rights, and humanitarian organizations that
operate in more than 135 countries worldwide.
They
include, Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International, Defence for
Children International, Child Rights International Network, Global March
Against Child Labour, Human Rights Watch, the International Domestic
Worker Network, International Labor Rights Forum, Plan International,
and World Vision.
Encouraging
child labor is genuinely a social crime and need to be abolished for
giving them a better education, better health and better life.
We must not forget that the tender hands are meant to hold books and the young brains for gaining knowledge.
Image source: search on child domestic labor
(AW:Samrat Biswas)
