The Worst Forms of Child Labour in Asia

Main findings from Bangladesh and Nepal

IREWOC 2010

Contributing authors:

G.C.M. Lieten

Afke de Groot

Anna Ensing

Nanna Baum

Mariette de Graaf
This research was made possible by Plan Netherlands

Project Supervisor: Professor Kristoffel Lieten

Publication Coordinator: Sonja Zweegers

Photos: Afke de Groot, Anna Ensing, Mariette de Graaf

Copyright: IREWOC 2010

IREWOC, Hooglandse Kerkgracht 17-H, 2312 HS Leiden, The Netherlands

info@[Link]; [Link]

ISBN: 978-90-79078-24-0

IREWOC, the Foundation for International Research on Working Children, aims to generate
theoretically informed research on various aspects of child labour and child rights, as well as
to raise awareness and to motivate action around this complex issue.
Contents

Acknowledgment 3

Introduction 5

Worst Forms of Child Labour in Nepal: Three Urban Sectors 11

Working Children in Kathmandu: the Move to Urban Areas 21

Young, Poor and Female: a Triple Burden for Working Girls in the Homes and
Streets of Dhaka 27

Hazardous Child Labour in the Leather Sector of Dhaka, Bangladesh 37

A Risk Assessment of Child Labour in the Tanneries of Dhaka, Bangladesh 49

Girl Domestic Labour in Dhaka: Exploitation and Humiliation 59

The Supply of Girl Domestics: a Matter of Semi-Feudal Relations 67

Recommendations 73

References 79

1
Acknowledgment

The research project Worst Forms of Child Labour in Asia was funded by Plan Netherlands.
IREWOC is greatly thankful for all their support. Plan cannot be held responsible for the
views expressed in this report or for the presentation of data.

IREWOC highly appreciates the local support it received from various persons and
organisations in Nepal and Bangladesh; particularly the children who told us their stories
and allowed us to base this analysis on their experience.

3
Introduction
Kristoffel Lieten

Two international conventions have been of the utmost importance when confronting the
child labour phenomenon and belong to the most ratified ILO treaties ever: ILO Convention
138 (Minimum Age Convention) and ILO Convention 182 (Worst Forms Convention). Both
conventions are the end result of protracted negotiations in which governments, trade
unions and employer organisations from practically every country in the world were
involved, and can thus surely be identified as a consensus of “the world community”.

The implementation of the conventions, however, continues to be their weakness. One of

the reasons why implementation often fails is the disagreement about which sectors and
which work should be regarded as child labour, or as a worst form of child labour. The
research conducted by IREWOC in Bangladesh and Nepal, for its project on Worst Forms of
Child Labour in Asia, studied a number of relevant labour sectors in which children are
involved, and specific activities that they carry out.

ILO Conventions
In 1973 the ILO adopted its comprehensive Minimum Age Convention (No. 138) which
requires states to design and apply national policies to ensure the effective abolition of all
forms of child labour and to set the minimum age of employment at 14. ILO C138 is not a
rigorous one-size-fits-all measure. Indeed, various age-specific, country-specific and
sector-specific specifications (exceptions) are to be applied to the general rule that
children should not work as labourers.

ILO C138 constructs three age categories. In the youngest category (6-12) work is
prohibited, but individual countries can make exceptions for light work in family
undertakings and work in the household, including domestic work. In the 13-14 age
category, only light work is allowed, i.e. work outside school hours and not beyond the
physical and mental ability of the child. 14 hours per week is regarded as the maximum
labour time per week. In the category of adolescents (15 and above or after compulsory
schooling), regular work is permissible, but not in sectors that could be harmful to health,
such as the mining or the chemical industry. ILO C138 concedes that not all countries have
the same level of economic and social development and that leniency should be applied
when setting the minimum age of employment. Countries with a lower compulsory school
age are permitted to opt for a lower age (12) at which light work is allowed, and the
minimum age for full employment can be lowered accordingly to 14 (from 15).

5
In addition to the age concession, ILO C138 permits countries that have a poorly developed
administration and economy to exclude certain sectors from this rule. However, sectors
that cannot be excluded are mining, transport, construction, electricity, plantations and
manufacturing. National legislation in many developing countries already make
concessions for certain sectors and certain types of undertakings, e.g. with a small
workforce and, even in the 6-11 age category, work in family undertakings; such practice
is implicitly acknowledged, as long as it is not dangerous to the child and does not
interfere with schooling. The convention, by including and recognising activities in the
non-wage sector, goes a long way in covering the most important child labour segment,
namely children who work within the family undertaking, such as the family farm. Most
child labourers indeed work in agriculture and many others assist in artisanal work or small
business within the family. Household labour remained unrecognised, however, until a new
consensus emerged in 2009.

Despite the fairly liberal wording of ILO C138, many countries, particularly in South Asia,
have decided not to ratify the convention: India, Bangladesh and Pakistan have not done
so. Moreover, the effective abolition of all child labour, which the convention asks for,
proves to be a difficult task. One complication, for example, is the ground reality that not
all work done by children is child labour and that not all forms of child labour are equally
harmful. Children do a variety of work in widely divergent conditions. The work takes
place along a continuum, from possibly beneficial at one end of the continuum to harmful
and even destructive at the other end.

Drawing a definite line between child labour that is intolerable and other forms of child
work runs the danger of incorrectly condoning certain situations in which children are
working. On the other hand, not drawing such a line may make the struggle against child
labour more cumbersome. A frontal attack on all forms of work done by children may not
be convincing, especially in conditions where governments, parents and children have a
normative understanding that the work done by children is not injurious, is necessary for
survival, and does not interfere with schooling. The ILO has followed such a realistic
approach:

Whether or not particular forms of work can be called child labour depends on the
child’s age, the types of work performed, the conditions under which it is
performed and the objectives pursued by individual countries. The answer varies
from country to country, as well as among sectors within countries. [ILO 2002]

Much of the work done by children falls in the grey area between two extremes and at
some point a line needs to be drawn. This was done by ILO Convention 182, adopted by the
ILO in 1999. An ILO report stated: “Giving priority to combating the worst forms of child
labour is simply a matter of doing first things first. It provides an entry point to promote
and facilitate further action to attain the ultimate goal.” [ILO 2002] ILO C182, also known
as the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, identifies two categories of intolerable
forms of child labour:

6
 • The unconditional worst forms, categories 1 to 4, include slave labour,
prostitution, participants in armed conflicts and illicit traders.
• The hazardous forms, which are all sorts of work that expose children to danger
and jeopardise their physical and moral health; it is work “which, by its nature or
the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or
morals of children.”

The Convention explicitly calls for immediate and effective measures to secure the
prohibition and elimination of these worst forms as a matter of urgency. Because of their
harmful nature both categories of work are prohibited for children under the age of 18
years of age.

Magnitude
Child labour remains a significant problem. Global figures, including the existing
overestimations and underestimations, are a rough indication of the serious nature of this
problem. Statistically, the available data has been improved over the years. The numbers
suggest a steady decline, particularly in hazardous child labour [Lieten 2009:64-76].

Working Children Child Labourers Children in Hazardous Work

Age 2000 2004 2000 2004 2000 2004

5-17 No. (million) 351.9 317.4 245.5 217.7 170.5 126.3

% of age
23.0 20.3 16.0 13.9 11.1 8.1
group
% change -9.3 -11.3 -25.9

5-14 No. (million) 211.0 190.7 186.3 165.8 113.3 74.4

% of age
17.6 15.8 15.5 13.7 9.3 6.2
group
% change -9.6 -11.0 -33.2

Source: ILO as presented in [Lieten 2009:74].

In 1995, the number of child labourers between 5 and 14 years of age was fixed at 250
million. In 2000, the ILO used other sources and methods of research to arrive at a sum of
approximately 210 million children. By 2004, the figure declined to 191 million [ILO
2006c]. In its global report on child labour, the ILO [2006b] announced that “the end of
child labour is within reach”. The incidence of children aged 5-17 in the so-called “worst
forms” of labour witnessed an even sharper decline. It dropped by 26% to 126 million. An
even more perceptible change was seen in the age group 5-14: a 33% decrease[ILO 2006c].
Of all child labour in the world, 60% is stated to occur in Asia, 23% in Sub-Sahara Africa, 8%
in Middle and Latin America and 6% in North Africa. In Sub-Sahara Africa, 26% of children

7
are reported to be active as child labourers; the participation rate is 19% in Asia, 5% in
Latin America, 15% in North Africa and only 2% in developed countries. [ILO 2006c]

A need for qualitative data

Despite the fact that ILO C182 has been ratified by most countries (171 in March 20101),
policies of governments and NGO’s still do not systematically make the distinction
between the worst forms of child labour and other forms of child work. An overview of
child-centred NGOs suggests that the majority of NGOs are working with children who
perform light tasks for only a few hours a day, and who are involved in activities that seem
to have no lasting negative consequences on the mental and physical development of the
child. Significantly fewer NGOs work with children who find themselves in the worst forms
of child labour as defined by ILO C182 [Van den Berge et al. 2008].

The importance of ILO C182 is that it focuses on the most immediate and urgent task,
which is a doable and uncontroversial task: to eliminate the worst forms of child labour.
However, as reality shows, much child work that is not detrimental to the child’s
wellbeing, and can in fact be beneficial to the child’s development, is considered by some
to be child labour. This does not help the cause which seeks to rectify the most urgent
cases. On the other hand, many activities that are most certainly detrimental to the child
and its future, and most definitely fall within the definition of child labour, are justified
with the common arguments of “social customs”, “cultural patterns”, “tradition” and
“poverty”. Considerable fine-tuning is needed and qualitative approaches are essential for
understanding real conditions on the ground: “insight more than measurement;
understanding more than models.” [Skeldon 2000:25]

Child protection policy commonly aims to protect children from the following four
situations or conditions: exploitation, violence, abuse and neglect. These different aspects
need to be investigated when studying child labour. In the worst forms, children are
forced to work long hours under unhealthy conditions, and usually receive very low wages;
they work without social protection and are treated disrespectfully, thus lowering their
self-esteem.

In spite of this international understanding on the relationship between the worst forms of
child labour and child protection, specific data is lacking. The enormity of the problem
warrants, and requires more empirical evidence. More research indeed needs to be done
to identify not only the harm done to children, but also the specific needs of the children
found in the worst forms of child labour. What type of protection do they need most?

This summary presents the findings of the IREWOC project on the Worst Forms of Child
Labour in Nepal and Bangladesh. (Studies in Latin America have already been completed
for this project (Bolivia, Peru and Guatemala).) The research documents the ground reality
of child labourers and their families. The focus is on the living and working conditions of

1
But not by India, which has one of the largest child labour forces in the world.

8
child labourers, thus also looking at the family context. Research questions include: how
do the children themselves and their family members (or other community members)
perceive the working conditions of the child labourers? What is the mechanism by which
children end up as labourers? What are the consequences of the work children do, and
what are their prospects? How do they perceive the role of education? By following the
children intensively over a period of time, we explored the push and pull forces and came
to better understand the conditions of child labour in these particular sectors, from the
point of view of the children and their families.

The evidence should contribute to answering the question as to how a proactive policy can
take shape. The opinions of the children and their parents are specifically taken into
account when forming recommendations. Policies will have a better chance of
implementation if the various mechanisms and justifications are taken into consideration.

9
Young brick kiln worker in Kathmandu

10
Worst Forms of Child Labour in Nepal: Three Urban
Sectors
Afke De Groot

When the Government of Nepal initially selected seven sectors to be classified as worst
forms of child labour [ILO/IPEC 2006], the brick kiln and the restaurant sectors were not
included. Inevitably, there was a lot of critique on the limited scope of the seven sectors
that were identified by the government. As a result, these and other sectors were included
as worst forms of child labour in later documents, such as the National Master Plan on
Child Labour (2004-2014)[Government of Nepal]. This research, based on living and
working conditions that workers are exposed to, looks at the validity of this inclusion as
worst forms. This article gives an overview of three sectors studied during 2008-2009 in
the Kathmandu Valley: children working in brick kilns, children working as porters at
markets, and children working in local restaurants and small tea-stalls. The selection of
these sectors was made after consulting Nepalese child-centred NGOs and academics
working in the field of child labour, and is based on their urban setting, accessibility, and
the relative absence of other studies on these sectors as opposed to other well-researched
sectors, such as children working in carpet factories. There had been a rapid assessment
on the situation of child porters in the nineties as part of the ILO Time-Bound Programme
[ILO/IPEC 2001]. The Kathmandu-based NGO CONCERN conducted surveys on other sectors
including restaurant workers [CONCERN-Nepal 2003] and brick kiln workers [CONCERN-
Nepal 2005].

Children working in brick kilns

The making of bricks consists of various stages. Most children are involved in the moulding
and stacking of raw bricks. Some older children also help with the preparation of clay, an
activity that requires a lot of power. Children are also found in the second stage of the
brick-making process: carrying bricks to the chimney. These activities are obviously
harmful for children and hazardous to their health. In addition, there are other, perhaps
more hidden characteristics of the brick kiln sector that require us to critically examine
the lives of children who are found at brick kiln premises, even when not overtly working.

Children working at the brick kilns can basically be divided into two groups. The first group
consists of (older) children who have come individually or with friends with a clear purpose
to earn money for themselves or for their household. The second, much larger group
includes children who have come with parents or other family members. They vary in age,
and include very young children who were required to join their parents who came to the

11
brick kiln purposefully to work, as they are not able to stay behind in the village, as well
as children who came to assist the family by making bricks, or taking care of the household
chores. Depending on the amount of work they are required to do, and the viewpoints of
the parents, some of these children are able to attend school, if available near the brick
kiln, while others are not.

Young boy working at the brick kiln

Children working 12 hours per day on moulding, stacking, and carrying bricks are visibly
doing work that is physically harmful to their young bodies. However, the specific
characteristics of the brick kiln sector lead us to conclude that these children actively
involved in the brick-making process are not the only ones that should be considered to be
in a “worst form of child labour”, as defined in ILO C182. Other children, who are perhaps
only involved in household duties and maybe even attend school regularly, should not be
excluded from the definition of “worst form”. Not only the nature of the work that the
children do, but also the environment in which the children live, can have a harmful
impact.

All these children live in self-made huts on barren soil made of raw bricks, which are
covered with a tin plate serving as a roof. These houses provide no protection against the
elements, and the same space is used for sleeping as well as for cooking. The quality of
water available on the premises is extremely poor. Women and children fetch drinking
water from residential areas near the kilns, but the polluted water from the kiln premises
is used by people for bathing and cleaning dishes.

12
The dampness of the wet clay, exposure to dust and the smoke of the kilns, leads to
coughs and other respiratory diseases. Children living and working on brick kiln premises
furthermore run the risk of injuries as a result of falling bricks or other dangerous
situations, as they usually walk barefoot and lack protective gear. Due to a lack of basic
hygiene knowledge, children were found with exposed and untreated wounds. The
climate, to which their housing arrangements provide no shelter, also leads to common
diseases such as eye infections and fever. Diarrhoea is also common due to the polluted
water and lack of nutritious food. Health facilities are lacking, except from incidental
distributions of bandages and simple medicines such as painkillers.

Labour in the brick kiln sector is of an informal nature. There is no registration system,
neither for adults nor for children living and working on the premises. Workers are usually
hired through contractors (naikes), and since there thus is no direct contact between
owners of the kiln and the workers, it is difficult to tackle the problem of child labour
through the employers. Owners and supervisors are aware of Nepalese legislation on child
labour, but they argue that children are joining their parents “as a helper”, and never “as
a worker”. That children are found to be working is “the responsibility of the parents”.
The supervisors claim to be incapable of interfering with this social practice.

The way labourers are recruited is an added complexity in the struggle against child
labour. Households are visited in the village by naikes, who provide the head of a
household with money in advance, usually around the festival season, which is also the
agricultural lean season, when families are in need of extra money for celebrations or to
pay off loans. The head of the household then needs extra workers in order to be able to
make enough bricks for the advance to be repaid in a relatively short time. Parents of
working children commonly expressed the need for the children to contribute in the
production of bricks in order to be able to clear the debt, but children are also expected
to contribute to the work in the household, which is common among poorer segments of
Nepalese society.

Due to the perceived need for their children to work, it is difficult to reach these children
with attempts to get them back in school. That difficulty also applies to older children
who had probably already left primary school to make money in order to support
themselves or contributing to the household’s income. But the very existence, or absence,
of a school nearby may effectively counterbalance (or strengthen) the practice of utilising
family child labour. Two NGO-run non-formal education centres were set-up at kiln sites.
These initiatives were able to provide basic writing and numerical skills to a group of
approximately twenty children, whose families were all working near the schools (both
located on the same premises). A collaboration between local government schools located
in nearby residential areas, a child-centred NGO and a cooperative brick-kiln owner
seemed more effective, as the majority of children of this kiln, in particularly those who
came with their parents to the city, were attending a formal school. However, these
initiatives are unable to install educational facilities near all kiln premises, and fail to
reach those children who came independently from their families and struggle to earn as
much as they can. They are also unable to reach those who are required to work 10-12

13
hours a day, supporting their parents in their work in Kathmandu, which parents still
perceive as more important than receiving a few hours of schooling every day. It should be
noted that many children who came with their parents to Kathmandu in order to work,
were said to have been enrolled in school in their villages of origin, and claimed to
continue schooling upon their return to the village.

Children working as porters

Short-distance porters, including young boys carrying goods, can be found all over
Kathmandu, but particularly at bus stations and at markets. This study focused on child
porters at the Kalimati Fruit and Vegetable Market. Just like in the brick kiln sector, there
is no direct link between management and (child) labourers, which impedes tackling the
child labour problem. The market management, security officials and traders had very
little knowledge of the realities of (child) porters’ lives, with the exception of a few
traders with whom porters had established connections over time. They furthermore did
not seem to distinguish child porters from adult porters. In their perception, boys aged
fourteen, for example, are not referred to as child porters.

Porters can find work at the market twenty-four hours a day. Traders do business between
4 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., requiring porters to carry loads for their customers. Fully-laden
trucks arrive throughout the night and need to be offloaded. Porters are independent and
free to decide their own hours. Younger porters work during the day, as offloading trucks
during the night is heavier and requires some experience in carrying huge loads. Nepalese
legislation prohibits children to carry more than 25 Kg [ILO/IPEC 2001], but the porters at
the Kalimati market were found to carry much more than that, and children below fifteen
were found carrying loads up to twice that amount. Most of the work is available during
morning hours, and as children are paid per load or per trip, earnings vary per day.

During hours when work is unavailable some groups of porters were found hanging around
the market with friends and performing various chores, such as assisting truck-drivers or
traders to make a few extra rupees, while others headed out to various market areas or
construction sites in Kathmandu to work as a porter. Thus, working hours and earnings
vary and are also dependent on other factors such as the frequent bandhas, which prohibit
the traffic into Kathmandu, including trucks trying to reach the market to deliver their
goods.

Porters indicated they are, on average, able to make 200-250 Rupees (€2-€2.50) per day.
Most of the work is done between 4 and 10 a.m., after which they leave the market to eat
and to work at other locations, such as construction sites. Some of them return to the
market later in the day in search of more work. Most of the porters have their dinner at 8
or 9 p.m., after which they go to sleep. As porters are free in deciding their own working
hours, it is difficult to give exact working hours.

Unlike brick kiln workers, many child porters prefer their lives in Kathmandu to their lives
in the villages. Most of the porters stay with friends and relatives from their village, either

14
on the market or in a small rented room the Kalimati area, and to a great extent have
control over their earnings. But despite certain positive aspects that children mentioned
about the work as porters, including its availability and flexibility due to the absence of
owners and/or employers, living and working conditions of porters are extremely dismal.
They have to carry heavy loads in a congested, dusty and heavily polluted environment, in
which they are exposed to a number of health risks. They often walk barefoot, and have
no more than a piece of jute rope to carry their loads, suspended from their foreheads.
Some also use a back cushion to give some support. Carrying such loads, which are
sometimes even heavier than their own body-weight, can lead to physical problems, and
children reported painful legs, back pains and regular headaches. However, especially the
younger porters did not seem to take into account the long-term consequences of their
regular physical pains. In addition, children are exposed to the habit of smoking
cigarettes, and, to a lesser extent, the use of alcohol and drugs.

Young porter carrying a heavy load – suspended from a strap tied across his forehead

Child porters come from poor families, and often have insufficient clothing to protect
them during cold nights. Whereas some porters share a small, congested and poorly
ventilated room with others in the market area, others have no shelter whatsoever and
find a place at the market to sleep. Even though a child-centred NGO runs a small health
centre in the area, particularly aimed at the child porters, not all porters were aware of
its existence, and others instead preferred to “go home to take rest”. In addition to a

15
health centre, the NGO is also active in encouraging child porters to find their way back
into school, and are very successful in doing so. Some porters, however, prefer to stay out
of sight, probably out of fear of losing their recently gained freedom by leaving their
village.

Like brick-kiln work, porter work is seasonal, and is often carried out complementary to
agricultural work at home. By far the majority of child porters frequently visit their homes
to visit their families, and to help out with (agricultural) work at home. This is an added
reason why it is very difficult to reach the urban working children, as they do not stay in
Kathmandu permanently. It is furthermore difficult to persuade the children to take part
in programmes aimed to get them back into school, as these children have already taken
the step to leave school in order to start work and, in case they do return to their villages,
to earn enough money to take back home. Once being able to independently earn money,
they’ve lost interest in education altogether, as they feel they would also lose their
freedom. It should be noted, however, that porters who were in their twenties, and who
had worked at the market for quite some time, started to express feelings of regret, and
emphasised the importance of education for children. They felt the effects their work had
on their bodies, and were worried about their future as labourers without any options.

Children working in small restaurants and tea stalls

Child labour in restaurants and tea-stalls is a very visible phenomenon. Children are
present in most of the small tea-stalls and local restaurants (note that children are
difficult to be found in the more expensive restaurants in tourist areas of Kathmandu). We
can by and large categorise them in two groups. Whereas some have made up their own
mind to come to the city to work, although influenced by older siblings and peers, others
have been sent by parents or other influential adults. Even though girls are also found in
this sector, most of the children are boys aged 11 years and older. Their main duties
include serving tea and snacks to customers in the restaurants and/or to surrounding shops
and offices, collecting and washing dishes, running small errands and keeping the
restaurant premises clean. Cooking is generally left to experienced and skilled (young)
adults rather than to the child workers, but children are asked to do preparatory work,
such as making dough for dumplings, and cutting vegetables.

Working days are long for children, as these restaurants and tea-stalls open at 6 or 7 in the
morning and close at 7 or 8 in the evening. Eateries located at bus stations and other
central locations have even longer opening hours. Depending on the size of the restaurant,
at some places children also have to work beyond opening hours, to prepare for the next
day. They work on average twelve to fourteen hours per day, during which they get very
little time off. Salaries vary, and the workers are provided with food at the restaurants
they work.

Some children, who also live with the employer, are also occasionally provided with
clothing for themselves and/or family members. In terms of working and living conditions
children can be categorised in two groups. Whereas in smaller eateries the owner, often

16
himself originating from a remote area, has usually recruited a child worker from his
village by making arrangement with his parents, at other larger eateries, children have
found the working place through their social network of friends who were already working
at the same eatery or in the same area. Jobs in sweetshops and local restaurants are easily
available, as they employ a lot of staff, which do not tend to stay in one place for a very
long time. Especially in the small eateries around the bus station children tend to change
workplace relatively quickly, and working at one place for only a week is common.

A young restaurant worker – here he is washing dishes and cutlery

Due to a lack of a social network of friends and/or family nearby, children dependent on
their employer are more at risk to be exploited at the workplace than others. Depending
on the employer’s mentality, they are more difficult to reach, as they are “hidden” from
the outside world or introduced as sons or daughters when questions are asked. Children
from the Terai2 sometimes have the added disadvantage of not mastering the Nepalese

2
The southern belt of Nepal: a plain with elevations ranging from sea level to 300 m.

17
language, as their local language, through which they also communicate with their
employer is more similar to Hindi than to Nepali.

Living conditions depend on labour arrangements. Children who are personally recruited
from the village by the employer usually live in the employer’s household, where they are
also provided with food; workers in larger eateries normally eat and sleep at the
restaurant’s premises. Here workers sleep together in a room adjoining the restaurant, if
available, or else on tables used for customers during opening hours.

The children have few days off. Children who found employment independently are free to
leave when they feel like doing so, and can try to find another employer. Others look
forward to Dashain and Tihar, Nepal’s most important festivals in the fall, which is the
only time-off for most. During the festive season flocks of migrant labourers, including
owners of small eateries, leave Kathmandu and head to their families in the villages to
celebrate the festivities together. Most child workers do so as well, and use the
opportunity to bring money and other goods home to their parents and siblings.

Just like porters, workers at restaurants who independently found employment, indicated
certain benefits of the sector they work in. It is easily available, especially through an
existing network of friends and relatives in the city. Secondly, they are provided with food
and a place to sleep. This way they can save on living expenses, and they can earn their
own money, which they are free to spend in whichever way they like. Their working
conditions, however, are similar to the children who have been recruited by the
employers: they work long hours for low wages and have to put up with dominating
behaviour of fellow (adult-) workers. They work in small, congested, unhygienic and poorly
ventilated spaces, and face dominating behaviour of customers as well. They also face
dangers when using sharp knives with their small hands, in traffic when delivering orders
of tea and snacks, and when picking up empty glasses from offices down the road.

Conclusion
The assessment of the impact on children should not only include the working conditions
of the child labourers, but also the living conditions of children around the workplace.
Sectors should be taken as a whole, regardless of the specific duties, because other
children, who might not be considered to be working in a worst form because of the
nature of their actual activities, are also exposed to similar hazardous conditions.

Workers rarely make a conscious decision to work in a particular sector, but end up
working through an existing social network of friends and relatives already working in the
sector, or due to a relationship between employers and contractors (naikes) with their
parents. Their situation, including the perceived need and/or wish to earn money, does
not allow them to consider long-term effects of their work on their physical condition.

Once the labourers are in their twenties they become more and more confronted with the
physical impact of working at a young age. They start to regret dropping out of school.
They start to worry about their future opportunities as a labourer, and start to

18
contemplate the need for good and continued education for their own children. When still
young, however, the children are steadfast and proud about being able to contribute to
their household’s income by sending home money periodically, or making money for their
own survival. They realise the importance of education, but most respondents were quick
to add that schooling is more relevant for their younger siblings. Some of the workers are
in fact working to pay for their siblings’ education.

Child labourers have made a transition to a next phase in their life, in which there is no
longer place for schooling. They justify the option they have chosen, or were made to
choose, and they outwardly suppress any lingering doubts. They defend their position as a
labourer, which some tend to view as a sign of agency; but for many of these child
labourers this defence is actually a mental justification which keeps them going and helps
them to deal with their situation. This makes it increasingly difficult to reach these
children, and to encourage them to return back to school.

In the villages it was found that working children who passed the age of twelve years were
considered fit to start working. However, norms have been changing fast and parents
among the poorer segment of society are in fact inspired by other families, and wish
likewise that their children have better opportunities in their future lives than they
themselves ever had. Likewise, whereas adults in middle- and higher-class households
employ children in their restaurants and households, they do everything they can to
provide their own children of the same age with the best education they can offer them.
They perpetuate social acceptance of child labour for the “children of the poor”.
Awareness of existing child labour legislation is not enough, as for example restaurant
owners and brick-kiln owners justify the employment of children with the view that they
provide a benefit to the children by providing them with work, as they would otherwise be
“begging on the streets”. According to them, not providing children with the opportunity
to work would only victimise the children even more. This argument however perpetuates
the cycle of poverty.

19
Young restaurant worker in Kathmandu – Here he is seen chopping vegetables

20
Working Children in Kathmandu: the Move to Urban
Areas
Afke De Groot

The rural-urban migration is typical for most developing countries. The movement is
caused by the perceived pull forces in the cities, the social and economic opportunities
provided, but more so by the push forces of the villages, the extreme poverty and
unemployment. Migration has a severe effect on children. The findings from the study in
Kathmandu have confirmed that most child labourers are originally from (remote) rural
areas. They have come to the city with family, peers or on their own account, and not
only face the realities of work, but also the added challenges of living in an urban area.
Many boys who work as porters or in the restaurant sector were found to have left their
village on their own account, leaving their family behind. In addition, data gathered in
villages in the Sindhuli district, from where many children had left for urban areas in
search for employment, showed that many children, boys in particular, had made up their
own mind to do so. This decision has been made within a context characterised by
poverty, family crises and other factors, in which work seems to be the best of all options
available to them. Their decision to go to work is thus heavily influenced by external
factors, which leads to the question whether their decision to leave their village has been
completely voluntarily, and thus whether it is indeed a matter of agency or in fact one of
compulsion. Moreover, they are likely to have expectations of living in the city, which do
not accurately reflect reality. This article primarily deals with the push and pull factors
that motivate the move of children from rural areas to cities in search of work.

Places of origin
A majority of child labourers working in the worst forms of child labour in Kathmandu are
migrant children. Many of them have come from districts bordering the Kathmandu Valley
like Dhading, Nuwakot, Sindhupalchowk, Kavre, and Makwanpur, and other districts in
Central-Nepal such as Sindhuli, Ramechhap and Gorkha. But they come from more remote
areas as well. Children working in brick kilns, who predominantly came to Kathmandu
along with family-members rather than alone, also hail from more remote districts such as
Rolpa and Dang in West-Nepal. Many porters come from Western districts such as Rolpa,
Dang, Rukum, and Pyuthan, but there is also a large group from the Eastern districts of
Udaypur and Okaldhunga. Children are also recruited by their employers from their own
village in more remote areas such as Butwal, Rupandehi and Gulmi in West-Nepal, Dhanusa
and Jhapa in the Eastern Terai and Solukhumbu in the Eastern Mountains.

21
Once in the city, the character of the work is informal and, in the case of porter- and
brick kiln- work, seasonal. Due to lack of a proper registration system of these labourers,
there is no official demographic data on child workers available. Many restaurant owners
hardly know from where their workers originate, let alone do they know anything about
their background.

Finding work in Kathmandu

An important observation is that workers do not make a carefully considered decision to
work in a particular sector. Instead, they find work through their social network, and
follow the examples of relatives and peers. Children working in brick kilns often do not
have a choice as they are merely joining their parents. The majority of the labourers
(including younger ones) are recruited by contractors (naikes), and employed by kiln
owners in order to find sufficient workers to keep the kiln running. Due to the harsh rural
living conditions workers are lured by money, which is provided to them in advance, and
which commits them to a certain kiln to work throughout the kiln season. This money is
provided to the head of the family, who takes his own children or make arrangements with
other family-members or neighbours to take other children from their village in order to
meet their work requirements, repay the advances and earn some extra money. Children
are not directly recruited by naikes, and kiln owners claim that they are not responsible if
parents decide to employ their own children. However, as a result of local pressure to
strictly implement existing child labour rules, some of them nowadays prohibit parents to
bring school-aged children to the kiln, but this practice is rare.

Porters and the majority of restaurant workers find employment through their existing
network of friends and relatives, who are already working in Kathmandu. Among porters it
is interesting to observe that groups of workers originating from the same village or group
of villages cluster together. These villages have known a long tradition of young men going
to work as porters in Kathmandu, often to complement their agricultural work in the
village. These types of workers, despite harsh working conditions, enjoy a relative amount
of flexibility as they are not bound to one particular employer, and are able to leave their
work if they find better work elsewhere. These workers, especially the porters around bus
parks, are found to regularly change jobs. However, this flexibility and ‘freedom’ does not
apply to all children. Indeed, there are also children who have been recruited directly
from their village by tea-stall owners often originating from the same village. Depending
on the workload, the living conditions and type of contract the employers have with the
parents, some of these children can be considered bonded labourers. Because of the
money that the employer has paid to the parents, children are not allowed to leave the
employer. The lack of a social network in the city presents an added challenge, and results
in children being totally dependent on the employer.

22
Why children leave the village
Various circumstances have pushed children to leave their village to work in Kathmandu.
First of all, children tend to follow the existing trend in a village. They know the examples
of groups of friends and relatives who already work in Kathmandu and who encourage
others to join them in order to be able to make some money for themselves, or to support
their relatives in the village. There are cases in which the family earnings are so low that
an extra income from the city is an absolute necessity for survival, but some of these
children may have opted to go to the city themselves and were never given the approval
of their parents. In a number of cases the living conditions of their family in the village are
such that there was no economic necessity to leave. The attraction of city life, and the
romantic notions involved, stimulated them to do so.

Children are pulled by what they perceive as an attractive way of life in the city, without
any parental rules or teachers telling them what to do, and with the additional benefit of
being able to earn a little cash money. The perception people in rural areas have of life in
the city is often romanticised by stories of people who have been there, supplemented by
images from movies and series seen on television. Captured by curiosity, young people will
join others when the opportunity arises. Many children are furthermore easily motivated
by seeing the examples of others, in particular the behaviour of people who are close to
them, such as fathers, older siblings, cousins, or neighbours.

In addition to this group of children, some children are forced to leave their village to
work. This can be the case when their already poor situation is intensified due to sudden
changes in the household such as illness or a death in the family, or an inability to provide
food and care to all the children (normally in very large families). Children working in
restaurants, who were directly recruited by their employers from their village, usually
come from such families. Also, the disappearance of one or both of the parents can
drastically change a child’s life; so too can the remarrying of the guardian. Children of
previous marriages often face abandonment or domestic violence, forcing them to run
away from home. Alcohol abuse of the father is another big issue in many villages in
Nepal, leading to an increasing burden for the children.

In addition to these dire family circumstances, there are other factors that push workers
from the village. First of all, rural areas in Nepal do not provide sufficient alternative
earning opportunities and so young men, rather than being unemployed and loitering
around, are forced to leave the village in search of work in urban areas or even abroad.
Although most child labourers are not from landless families, the land ownership is mostly
insufficient to support and employ the entire household. Secondly, due to a failing
education system in rural areas, children drop out of school and into other activities. This
option comes easily to children in illiterate families, and/or communities that know a
tradition of labour and where studying is not stimulated. Instead, the culture of labour is
common and familiar to them. The argument was commonly heard, including among
parents who were initially reluctant to allow children to move to the city, that whereas
staying in the village would not benefit anyone in the household, in the city children would
have the opportunity to earn money. Children then learn to accept their role as a

23
contributor to the household’s economy. The ideology that child labour is proper for
children belonging to the poorer segment of society is still tacitly accepted. Particularly
among higher- and middle- class households where children all attend school, child labour
among the poor is accepted, as it “is the only option for these poor children, as their
parents cannot afford their food and schooling.”

Furthermore, once the children gain access to financial means to buy their own food, new
clothes, supporting their families or whichever way they choose to spend their money, it is
difficult to convince them to return to school or return to the village. A point of no return
has been reached. In addition, many of them have a great sense of responsibility towards
their family and are stimulated by being able to contribute to their family’s income,
regardless the extent to which it is actually necessary. It should be noted, however, that
not all children are able or willing to save money in order to give it to their parents. This
very much depends on the circumstances in which they left home. Some, particularly the
porters and restaurant workers, spend their earnings immediately on food and other living
expenses, and also on cigarettes, or Nepalese movies in the cinema.

Many migrant workers do not spend the entire year in Kathmandu, as their help is also
required at home during agricultural intensive seasons. The majority of migrant workers
return during the festive season in the fall (Dashain and Tihar), but depending on the
distance between Kathmandu and the villages of origin, many go home several times per
year. Workers indicate that these homecoming visits are valuable for restoring family-
relations, but also necessary for a rest, and thus beneficial for their health.

The attachment to the village, and the level of longing to go back, very much depends on
the type of work they do. Child workers in brick kilns generally agree that they prefer the
village environment to the brick kilns in the city, with most complaints being about the
bad weather conditions (the cold nights during the winter and intolerable heat during
daytime), the quality of (drinking) water and the polluted urban air. Children in
restaurants and those working as porters on the other hand, in particular those who enjoy
relative freedom in their working hours, do not regret their decision to leave the village
and come to Kathmandu, despite harsh working conditions. They are able to get food and
earn money, and it makes them feel proud to be independent.

Children’s contribution to the household’s income

Many children are encouraged to work and contribute to the household’s income. The
study, however, also documents that this is not always the case: whereas not all these
children are absolutely required to contribute, other children, especially those in a
bonded relationship with their employer, are not able to send money home. They are “one
less to mouth to feed”, but cannot effectively contribute to the household’s income.

The perception of household members, who have remained in the village, of the
contribution their children make is ambiguous. Some families proudly presented visible
improvements they had been able to make since a son or daughter started earning, such as

24
the construction of a concrete roof for the house, or the ability to eat meat once in a
while. Other parents had been disappointed with the contribution, and again others would
prefer to call their children back once they discovered the realities of their children’s life
as a labourer in the city. This also shows that the decision of parents to allow or send their
children to go to the city to work is often not well thought out, as they lack the knowledge
to make a calculated decision. They are clueless about what is right and what is wrong for
their children, and simply rely in copying what other villagers do or have done in the past.
Community members, however, pointed out that due to an increasing number of villagers
with (negative) experiences of working in the city, changes in terms of this awareness do
take place, which is, for example, reflected in the increasing challenge brick kilns face to
find sufficient labourers to work for them. The reality remains, however, that as long as
there is no social security system providing people with a basic income, villagers have
insufficient alternative income opportunities. In the case of many families, the structural
constraints still prevail over a changing consciousness about a suitable childhood.

Conclusion
One characteristic of child labour is its migratory nature. Families who settled in the cities
some time ago and who have become embedded in the urban social and economic
structures, by and large manage to earn a livelihood and provide their children with a
suitable childhood, including schooling. Child labour occurs mainly when families have
moved to the city recently and are still seeking their place, or when they move in
temporarily in search of employment during the lean agricultural season. This may take
the form of contracted labour, e.g. in the brick kiln industry, in which case entire families
move to an urban or semi-urban area and collectively engage in the production process. In
other cases, children may have to move to the city on their own, either attracted by an
existing labour employment network, as in the case of the restaurants, or just hoping for
random employment, as in the case of porters.

One of the main challenges in tackling the child labour issue is the mobility of children in
the wake of the rural-urban migration, which is quite often a seasonal migration. Even
children reached by NGO initiatives tend to stay in Kathmandu only for a few months per
year, and they can suddenly leave one place, making it difficult to track them down.
Particularly if work is seasonal, the programmes aimed to remove children from harsh
working conditions do not reach those children in the worst conditions. In addition, when
children have been bartered, in exchange for an advance to the family back home in the
village, they will be hidden by their relatives or employers and prevented to join any NGO-
initiative. Programmes that require the children to give up work altogether and to return
to school during a substantial part of the day have the added disadvantage that child
labourers, even if they had free time to spend, have already developed a clear opinion
that is not in favour of continuing schooling, and do not want to abandon the opportunity
to earn money. A large group of working children in Kathmandu have indeed made their
own decision to come to Kathmandu to work, rather than being sent by others. They have

25
done so in a context characterised by poverty. In the context they live in, their decision to
work seems, in the short-term, to be the best option available to them.

Most observers isolate “poverty”, in its broadest sense, as the main factor causing child
labour. However, in the villages from where many children have migrated, there are many
other families who live in equally poor conditions, but who send their children to school
rather than to work in the city. Consciousness about a suitable childhood has definitely
been changing and there is still a lot to be gained when it comes to making people aware
about the realities of living and working in the city. But, unless people have a realistic
view of the challenges labourers have to face in urban areas, children will remain leaving
their homes in search of money-making opportunities elsewhere, and end up working in
hazardous conditions. The opportunities in the city, particularly in the capital, remain an
attractive prospect for poor families and children of poor families. Once in the city, they
often have to face the dire consequences.

26
Young, Poor and Female: a Triple Burden for Working
Girls in the Homes and Streets of Dhaka
Anna Ensing

Worldwide, the participation of girls in the labour market in general and in hazardous work
specifically is lower than that of boys [Buvinic et al. 2007]. Female children are more
likely than boys to be less frequently employed in economic activity or to be attending
school, but they are more likely to do household chores [ILO 2006c]. We studied working
girls in Dhaka in three main groups: girls working in home-based industries; girls working
informally outside the home; and girls working in formal industries. We documented their
activities and the related hazards and studied the way working girls themselves perceive
their situation.

A girl in Bangladesh
Girls find themselves, especially when compared to boys, in a disadvantageous situation
regarding their health and in relation to physical and sexual violence. On the positive
note, UNDP [2005] figures on enrolment rates confirm that Bangladesh has achieved equal
access for boys and girls in primary and secondary education [Raynor et al. 2006]. The
lowest enrolment rate and the lowest quality in primary schools is now recorded in urban
slums [Cameron 2008: 1; UNB 2009].

It was estimated that almost two million girls were working (10% of the girl population),
either in combination with school or not; 80% of the girl population attends school and
does not work. The great majority of the working girls in Bangladesh live in rural areas
(81%) and are involved in agricultural work (60%) [Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 2003]. It
should be kept in mind, though, that girls are often working in unpaid jobs at home and
that their presence in the labour market is invisible [Blanchet 1996: 77]; statistics don’t
always depict a complete picture.

Home-based industries
The most common home-based industries are karchupi (bead and sequins work) and
embroidery, which represented respectively 14% and 1% of girls in the informal sector
[ILO/IPEC 2002: 29-30]. Other home-based jobs are the manufacturing of paper bags or
paper flowers, the production of agarbatti (incense sticks), home-based manufacturing of
bidi (cigarettes) [Blanchet 1996], or manufacturing leather gloves [Ensing 2009]. Home-
based work is not normally a full-time occupation, and is also mostly temporary.

27
The Bangladeshi law does not prohibit children to work in home-based industries; an
exception to ILO Convention 138 is made for “family and small-scale holdings producing for
local consumption and not regularly employing hired workers” [ILO 1973]. The work is
often considered to be part of the household chores. However, these family enterprises
are frequently incorporated into larger production units through subcontracting. The
subcontracting work, associated with the piece rate system, low payments and work at
home, is usually done by women, adolescent girls and small children; an invisible and
underpaid labour force [Blanchet 1996: 83, 87, 94; Mehrota & Biggeri 2004].

A young girls shows the sari she has produced at home

A ‘shock’, or misfortune, such as the loss of the family's income earner through death or
illness, can be the direct cause for children to start working. In cases of extreme poverty,
girls are more likely to be employed at home, while boys work outside. The position of a

28
woman in Bangladesh is regulated by norms related to purdah (female seclusion), which,
in practice, functions as a physical restriction on the mobility of women; it defines ‘the
home’ as their proper place [Kabeer 1985]. Especially unmarried girls in their puberty,
tend to be involved in activities that restrict them to the private sphere [see also Naved et
al. 2007].

The girls themselves agree that “a safe job is a job at home”. Besides safety, status and
respect also play a role; a girl doesn’t want to be considered as belonging to a
dishonourable family. For society, the most important issue for a girl is a ‘good character’,
which is best demonstrated by socially acceptable behaviour [Joseph 1997].

Household chores are often combined with work in home-based industries and also
mentioned as a reason to work at home. Girls contribute more to the household than boys,
and the older they are the more they contribute [Delap, E. 2000; 2001]. Hazards faced by
working girls at home in Dhaka thus can’t be determined only by looking at the home-
based industry they are engaged in, but should include the entire set of tasks carried out
in the household.

In home-based industries, contracts are unreliable, girls work hard for little money and
activities have some health risks. An ILO survey estimated that girls who work a full day in
karchupi earn approximately 10 taka per day (0.10 Euro) [ILO/IPEC 2002: 24]. Most girls,
however, agreed that “an independent job is better than to work for an employer. Then
you are free and nobody bothers you.” Also working with relatives or friends is considered
to be important. There are no fixed working hours, making a combination with school
possible.

The girls complained very little about the physical effects of the work. Nevertheless, some
mention was made of sore backs, mainly brought on by the position while working, or
injuries to hands from working with needles and scissors. Girls making incense sticks also
mentioned headaches and blisters.

Finally, work in home-based industries is often seen as a way of acquiring useful skills for
the future and beneficial for marriage. Good men, according to the girls, prefer to marry a
good girl: a girl who is quiet, shy, and who stays at home.

Working informally outside the home

We distinguished three main types of informal work outside the home that girls are
involved in: scavenging, commercial activities and chipping bricks, although most girls
actually do a bit of everything. Scavenging includes collecting waste from the streets to
sell, collecting firewood (wooden sticks or paper) for own use, and collecting vegetables
or rice from the market floor, to either sell or for one’s own consumption.3 Commercial
activities include selling flowers, water, vegetables, ready-made food, or other items,

3
In this fieldwork no children were included who work as scavengers at the landfills. In the
neighbourhoods selected for research, there are no landfills and girls pick waste from the
street.

29
either in a fixed place or ambulatory. Girls also assist commercial vendors with washing
vegetables at the market, bringing water to the rice mills, or wiping the floor in front of a
shop. Some girls work on construction sites, where they chip bricks4. Lastly, some girls are
involved in begging. In this research, however, we decided not to include begging as a
work category. These activities require no experience; any girl can join.

Girls who are found working out in the public domain only do so because of extreme
poverty, which makes most social norms redundant. Sending daughters to work outside the
home is usually something parents only do when they have no other options; patriarchal
institutions and purdah simply crumble. Household poverty is most present in migrant
families, female-headed households and families with a high number of children in one
family, especially a high number of girls. It is often the lack of an older son that makes a
poor family decide to send a girl to work [White 1992: 36]. For orphan girls who live
without relatives at all, working in the streets goes hand in hand with living on the streets.
The girls on the street rarely attend school.

Young girl selling popcorn to passengers in passing cars

4
The rapid process of urbanisation in Dhaka in the last decades has resulted in a fast
developing construction sector. This has led to more jobs in the building sector as well
[Khaleda Salahuddin & Ishrat Shamim 1992: 57]. Especially women and children have been
employed in the low skilled manual works such as brick chipping – this involves using a
hammer to chip bricks into gravel.

30
All jobs on the street are poorly paid: around 20 taka (0.20 euro) a day. Most girls showed
little concern for exactly how much they could earn; they are more interested in receiving
a fair payment for their products and efforts. The majority of the girls hand their earnings
over to their parents or caretakers. The exception to this is the girls who live on the
streets and work for survival.

The girls involved in brick chipping suffer from sore limbs and blisters, and are exposed to
the elements. Commercial activities are less harmful to the girls’ physical health;
although, trying to sell to people in cars can also be quite dangerous. Working with waste
materials is harmful because the work is exhausting, girls can hurt themselves when they
pick up sharp objects like glass, and as the children tend to eat from the streets, they can
contract a number of illnesses.

Working on the streets is also emotionally draining because of the reactions from other
people. Girls working in public are often criminalised because of the prejudices against
them. The girls also complained of getting very dirty when working; people look at them
with disgust and it damages their self-esteem. Adolescent girls are particularly concerned
about their physical appearance, mainly because they know they should be getting married
soon.

Girls working in public feel extremely exposed to aggression and violence. There is nobody
to support or protect them. Girls are not just violated or abused by passers-by or
employers, but also by police. Especially the girls who live without their parents wish for
“good adults” to protect them.

Friends are important for the working girls and make work lighter. Street workers often
work in groups, forming true friendships, trusting one another, and protecting each other
when necessary.

When adolescent girls are not able to maintain their distance or privacy from male
strangers, as is the case with girls working outside the home, they are likely to be
confronted with sexual and mental harassment [see also [Link] & [Link] 2000].
Because of the age implications there are in fact very few girls above 14 working in public;
only those adolescents whose situation is most extreme, and who perhaps have no family,
will continue to work outside their homes.

The harassment can go further than verbal abuse. The girls become “spoiled” if they are
touched by a man who is not their husband; they and their family lose their honour. More
serious incidents include girls being sexually abused, kidnapped or even killed. Whether
true or simply rumour, the stories circulate in the slums and scare the girls. The only way
in which girls can prevent being bothered by men, is to work accompanied by a male
relative.

Finally, a possible consequence of the problems that adolescent girls face on the streets is
an early marriage. It is often seen as a solution to harassment on the street. A marriage is
expected to offer financial protection for a woman, but also physical protection.

31
Working in formal industries
The growth of the Ready Made Garments (RMG) industries in Bangladesh in the ‘80s and
‘90s attracted large numbers of women, and girls in particular. Girls already start working
as assistants before they turn 18. After some time, a girl can become an operator, who has
more responsibility and works with machines.

Because of the relatively better pay and safety levels, girls generally find garment work a
good choice of employment. Work in a garment factory, although not in a girl’s home, is
still considered to be inside work, and thus relatively safer than working in public. The
safety particularly involves protection from indecent exposure to men.

It is known that working conditions in the factories, of especially women, are generally in
contradiction with labour laws [see for example Nielsen 2005; AMRF Bangladesh & CCC The
Netherlands 2009; Hearson 2009]. The working conditions of girls below 18 are often worse
than general.

Girls between 14 and 18 are legally allowed to work in factories, but their working
conditions are supposedly regulated. According to the National Factory Act, they can work
for a maximum of 5 hours per day, and they cannot work between 7 pm and 7am [U.S.
Department of State 1994; Blanchet 1996]. In practice, underage girls work the same
amount of hours as adult women, but are often paid less.

A garments job is always fulltime and can therefore not be combined with education.
Overtime is common and can extend the working day up to 14 hours or more. When girls
first start to work in the factory they are just assistants, and earn the official minimum
wage of 1662 taka per month. Often, though, underage girls are paid less. When a girl
makes a promotion and becomes an operator the salary increases up to around 3000 taka
per month (30 euro).

In addition to the long working days, the environment in most factories is not favourable
for the girls’ health. Several girls in garments complain about continuous headaches during
work. Although work in garment factories is often claimed to be the safest job for a girl,
there are nevertheless several reports of verbal abuse, physical punishments and sexual
harassment.

Being a working girl

Poverty is considered to be the main problem for working girls, and the foremost reason
for having to work. The girls argue that rich girls, contrary to poor working girls, can go to
a good school, they can eat all they desire, they don’t have to work at home, they don’t
need to leave their relatives at the countryside and they don’t need to live in a slum.
Furthermore, rich girls are not exposed to verbal abuse; they are more respected by their
environment. Poverty thus forces girls into situations that conflict with society’s gender
roles, but also denies them protection from society’s judgement.

32
In addition to being poor, working girls suffer because they are female. Males are favoured
in Bangladeshi culture because daughters will get married and leave the house, while sons
continue to benefit the family, bringing in an income and a wife [White 1992]. Girls have
less freedom than boys and are more controlled by their families; they have to be more
responsible and they are permitted less fun. Some argue that boys have more and better
job opportunities than girls. Boys have to do much heavier and often hazardous work, and
they are often beaten. But girls suffer more from sexual harassment and disrespect.

The third threat to these girls is their young age. They feel that adult and married women
live better lives than young girls; they will not be bothered anymore, they will be
respected by employers and other people and they can go outside without any problems.
Being older and being married thus infers safety and less vulnerability.

Working girls in Dhaka are faced with a triple threat: they are young, poor and female.
The three factors reinforce each other and result in the girls’ extreme vulnerability.

Working girls in Dhaka, especially from 12 years onwards, have a great sense of
responsibility for their own lives. They want to solve their problems and to bear their
sorrows alone, without involving other people. They also make their own decisions such as
joining NGO projects. However, there are also many decisions that the working girls
cannot make for themselves. Girls start to work when their families need the support;
they continue to work because they cannot solve and end the poverty of their families.
Similarly, most girls choose to keep quiet when harassed out in public because raising their
voice is a form of agency incongruent with the cultural norms for girls’ behaviour, which
would provoke worse reactions. Society’s structural constraints clearly limit the girls’
agency in these cases. The working girls in Dhaka may show agency, but the structures in
which they find themselves determine for a great part to what extent they are able to
progress in life.

When talking about the future, the working girls in Dhaka are generally positive, but they
also remain realistic. The majority of the girls expect improvements in their lives once
they grow older. In the future, the girls still see themselves as poor people, but with a job
to sustain their living, and a husband to protect their social standing and honour. All the
working girls agree that they would treat their future daughters well and offer them a
better life than they have had.

Conclusion and recommendations

This study aimed to show how the class, age and gender of working girls in Dhaka are a
triple burden and create extreme vulnerability. Their vulnerability results in poor working
conditions, limited agency or bargaining power, and disrespect or harassment by their
social environment. The girls involved in this study worked in home-based industries, out
in the public domain, and in formal industries.

33
Home-based jobs are generally considered to be a good choice because it takes place in
the safety of home, the working hours are flexible and not excessive, and there are
relatively few health hazards. Home-based jobs need not in themselves be considered as
hazardous labour, but since they are often combined with household chores, the real
workload can only be determined when household chores are included. This is especially
true for girls since they are, increasingly with age, held responsible for household chores.

It may not be possible to prevent all work at home by underage children, given the
dramatic levels of poverty, but specific dangerous activities, such as incense stick making,
should be banned from home-based industries. The provision of better infrastructure in
the neighbourhood, e.g. water taps with running water or child care facilities, would
already go a long way to decrease their overall workload (which always includes household
chores).

Girls collecting rice from the market floor

Generally, girls in Bangladesh are considered to be adolescent from 11 years onwards and
are expected to behave like women at the age of 15. Girls in adolescence are subject to
traditional gender roles. This means that girls who work in the public domain are breaking
the norm and are verbally punished and judged for it. Working on the streets, even in the
most honourable activities like washing vegetables at the market, attract vicious remarks
and physical threats, including sexual harassment. These girls cannot find protection
anywhere.

34
Extreme family poverty, and most often rural poverty, is normally the root cause for young
girls working, and especially for girls working out in the public domain. However,
improving the situation of these working girls does not rely entirely on the development of
labour laws and poverty reduction, important as they may be. Improvements must also
take gender discrimination, and specifically girls’ discrimination, into account.

Street children appear to benefit well from the shelters where they can find protection.
But also outside the shelters and without the direct support of the facilitators, these girls
should be ensured of protection from abuse. The streets need to be transformed from a
place without justice into a public space with the same “rules” as in any private/formal
workplace. Laws and policies, but also national security and justice system, would play a
role in this transformation. Only then can the rights and safety of unmarried girls on the
streets be guaranteed.

In formal industries, girls between 14 and 18 years old work the same long hours, and
under the same conditions as adults, despite the legal regulations in place that dictate
shorter hours. Overwork results in health problems, exhaustion and sadness. Moreover,
they are continuously the subject of sexual disrespect, particularly verbal abuse. The
working conditions in the factories, despite the legality of the work for adolescents, make
this a form of hazardous child labour.

In formal industries, legislation is in place. Inspections in formal workplaces should be

gender sensitive and pay special attention to the rights of female workers. Stricter
measures should be in place to prevent excessive work hours and (sexual) harassment. The
correct implementation of legislation, rather than a total ban on adolescent girls working,
will foster better economic positions for the girls.

Working girls in Dhaka consider themselves disadvantaged and feel discriminated because
of being poor, female, and young. The three factors reinforce each other. The working
girls do have agency, but it is agency within a constraining framework. The girls have an
especially strong degree of independence and sense of responsibility, which allows them to
survive, physically and emotionally, despite the dire circumstances. The dire
circumstances, however, cannot be changed by them. They face poverty on the one hand
and cultural constraints on the other.

Legislative measures and practical support for all three groups of working girls should go
hand in hand with more general policies and awareness raising about gender equality. Such
policies and awareness would be able to increase the social value attributed to girls and
make clear that adolescent girls have rights, including sexual safety. Meanwhile, support
to girls’ education remains highly necessary. Besides basic education, for adolescent girls,
education in combination with professional skills training would be appreciated. Only then
can the vicious cycle of female poverty be broken.

35
Young girl in Dhaka helps to collect mud and carry it home

36
Hazardous Child Labour in the Leather Sector of
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Anna Ensing

The main objectives of this study was to identify all stages that together form the
production chain of leather and to observe the involvement of children in these stages. We
documented the working children’s living and working conditions, outlined the main
reasons for the children to be involved and looked at the impact of existing projects to
combat child labour in this sector.

The context
The leather manufacturing enterprises produce leather items varying from footwear to
belts, bags and wallets. Leather and leather products are principal export products and
the sector provides a significant portion of employment in the country. The production of
leather takes place in tanneries, most of which are concentrated in Hazaribagh, a district
in the south west of Dhaka city. Child labour in the leather sector is a sensitive topic,
considering the importance of leather for the national economy. The eradication of child
labour has been put high on the agenda but despite this, still many children are found
working in different parts of the production chain. The ILO-IPEC, in 2007, specified that
approximately 260 children work in leather tanneries, 3040 children work in shoe factories
and 320 children were working with leather products [ILO-IPEC 2007].

The production chain

Children are involved in a wide variety of activities directly or indirectly related to the
leather industry and in the further treatment of its waste products. To understand the
involvement of children it is necessary to dissect the chain.

Butchers and slaughterhouses around Dhaka sell the raw hides and skins to middlemen,
who sell them to storehouses in Old Dhaka. Storehouse owners have their employees clean
the hides and skins with water, remove the redundant flesh, trim the sides, and salt them
to extract moisture. Tanners from Dhaka then visit the area to buy the salted hides and
skins and transport them to their tannery.

37
Producing leather involves three main processes: preparatory, tanning and crusting. The
skins go through different stages: from raw hide, to wet blue leather5, to crust leather6
and then finally finished leather [Gain 1998; UCIL 2004]. The large-scale tanneries, which
are often mechanised and use chemicals imported from Europe, can produce all three
stages of leather. Some artisanal tanneries are involved in producing only the initial wet
blue stage of leather. Tanners without their own tannery or without the capacity for all
production stages pay a fee to use someone else’s tannery. Production chains are thus not
always easy to follow since the final products can be made by several different tanners in
several different places.

Finished leather is used for manufacturing. Leather manufacturers can be divided into
large-scale and small-scale factories. Some products, such as leather gloves, are partially
fabricated in people’s homes. Large-scale factories tend to be export oriented, while
small-scale factories sell mostly to the local market. Children are mostly found in small-
scale factories, where monitoring and international influences are less evident.

Throughout the entire production chain, waste materials are discarded. Often, these are
used in new production chains, in which children are also involved. Scraps of wet blue
leather and crust leather are used for the production of meatbone, which is sold mainly as
food for poultry and fish.7

Children’s work
There is little participation of children in the supplying of hides and skins. In tanning,
however, children are still observed working in many units in Hazaribagh. They are usually
employed by independent tanners, i.e. tanners with a lease tannery. In some large-scale
and exporting tanneries a child was occasionally seen working, but it was the exception
rather than the rule.

Children in the wet blue stage mostly function as assistants to adult workers. For example,
after liming, children lift the leather out of the pit with a pair of tongs. They transfer the
pieces of leather to the drum and remove them again after the chemical processing.
During the crust stage, children dry the leather, either inside the tannery or outside on the
field. This is referred to as toggling.8 Children also trim the leather: they cut the uneven
edges with a little knife. During the finishing stage in less mechanised tanneries children
dust the finished leather, they paint the leather, and afterwards dry and sort them. In

5
Wet blue leather is also called chrome-tanned leather. Chromium discolours the hides
blue, hence its name.
6
Crust leather is a hide or skin that is thinned, re-tanned and lubricated. It is the second
stage of the leather production process.
7
Also known as Meat and Bone Meal, or MBM. MBM contains all types of animal parts that
are discarded during rendering (food processing) or, in this case, tanning. It is added to
animal feed to improve the nutritious content. The use of chrome-containing solid wastes
for meatbone production, however, may cause serious health problems to the animals.
8
Toggling involves pegging hides to the ground so that they can dry.

38
addition, children in many tanneries offer “general assistance”: they prepare or buy tea,
they are sent to the chemical shop when needed, or they function as messengers.

Leading leather manufacturing and exporting companies9 usually have their own tannery,
factory and sale centres, and they are all eager to state that they comply with the
international codes of conduct regarding environment and labour standards. However,
through the method of subcontracting some exporting companies may unknowingly use
child labour in their chain, either in the small workshops or in the household industry.

Children in small scale factories conduct various tasks related to the manual production
process of shoes and leather goods. They draw patterns for gloves, cut the leather, and
sew the parts together into the final product.

Children are often also involved in assisting the salesmen in the numerous shoe shops,
markets and shopping centres. Their tasks include helping clients, getting shoes or other
products from storage, but also keeping the shop clean, bringing tea for the salesman or
his clients and doing the dishes after his lunch.

Finally, children work with waste materials. The production of meatbone involves adults
and children from 13 years onwards, both men and women, although the latter are scarce.
The job of the children is mainly to remove, with their hands or feet, the hard particles
from the meat and wrap up the meat in bags.

Children’s background
The leather sector is a male dominated sector and also working children are predominantly
boys. The only stage of the chain in which many girls are involved is in the manufacturing
of shoes and gloves.

The age of the children in the production chain varies between workplaces and activities,
but no children below 8 years old were found working10. Boys who work in tanneries are
between 9 and 18 years old, although the majority is older than 12. Toggling is done by
boys between 10 and 15 years old. In small factories, children work from 9 years onwards,
but most of them, especially girls, are above 12. In home-based manufacturing, children
start participating at a younger age; the youngest child we found was an 8-year-old boy. In
shops, boys work as sales assistants from 9 years onwards. In the meatbone process
workers are normally somewhat older than in other activities; they are usually 12 years
and up.

9
The two most influential companies producing leather, footwear and leather goods in
Bangladesh are APEX Adelchi and the multinational company BATA. Both outsource parts of
their production to smaller tanneries.
10
The exact age of Bangladeshi children is difficult to know since most babies have not
been registered at birth. Most children don’t know their exact age and neither do their
parents. Quotes in this report use the age that was mentioned by the child him- or herself
or his or her family. In some cases it is based on estimations of the researcher.

39
A great majority of the working children migrated from the countryside. Poverty in
combination with social problems is often the reason to migrate to the city. Most boys and
girls migrated with their families to Dhaka, but some boys migrated alone. The latter are
expected to support themselves and to send some of their income to their families. These
boys usually end up working in a tannery or a factory, where they can also find a place to
sleep. Alternatively, the boys live with a relative or a village neighbour. In the migrant
families the parents work, but children have to contribute to the household.

Living conditions
Hazaribagh is one of the most polluted areas in the world.11 The inhabitants of Hazaribagh
and surrounding areas are exposed to health hazards created by the tanning process and
other stages of leather production. Boys who live in the tanneries are affected by the
dangers of the industry 24 hours a day. Besides, boys who sleep at the workplace have no
privacy; the rooms are always shared.

Generally, the working children tend to ignore and trivialise their health problems. Most
migrant children, without family, have no official means of getting free health care12. Most
working children in the leather sector are thus denied their right to live in a healthy
environment and their right to good health care.

In addition, many boys suffer from the fact that they have migrated. Their lives have
changed radically from village life, living with a poor, but caring family, to a lonely
working life in the city.

The majority of the working children in the leather sector do not receive any type of
education. There is a group of children who have never attended school; a group of boys
who have attended education at the madrasa (religious school), and children who have
finished only primary education. The working children that do go to school seem to have a
hard time combining education with work. In Hazaribagh, teachers of different schools
mentioned poverty and the need to work as the main reasons for dropout. On the other
hand, not all schools are receptive to working children. Working children, in already
marginalised positions, are thus increasingly excluded. Another problem is that employers
are not interested in supporting the working children in part-time education. Only children
who make leather gloves at home can go to school, since they work for their parents with
flexible working hours.

11
In June 2008 the environmental magazine ‘Ecologist’ wrote in an article titled ‘Hell for
Leather’ that Hazaribagh belonged to one of the 30 most polluted places on the planet.
[Link]
[Link]
[Ecologist Film Unit 2008]
12
The Smiling Sun Franchise Program is a clinic that does not ask for a green card, and so
even children without a card can find free health care here.

40
Working conditions

Tanning

Working days in a tannery can last up to 14 hours. Although there is officially one free day,
the children often work 7 days a week. Work in a tannery is always a fulltime job and most
children have little time to play, or to travel to their parents in the villages. Especially
children who migrated to Dhaka on their own, lack a personal network of people around
them.

Young tannery workers rinsing chemicals from hides and soaking them in preparation
for shaving

Spending many hours in a tannery is risky for one’s health. Most children don’t use gloves,
boots or masks and are in direct contact with harmful chemicals and hazardous waste
produced in the tannery. The work is also considered risky because of the accidents that
can happen. Children, however, don’t complain much about their conditions and learn to
consider risks as “part of the job”.

Children who work in tanneries are employed without any form of contract. Most children
start working without any salary and there is no standard duration for this
“apprenticeship”. Salaries vary between 1000 and 2500 taka (ca. 10 – 25 euro) per month
depending on age and experience.

41
Children involved in toggling, work outside and are much less affected by chemicals. The
harsh aspects of this work are mostly related to weather conditions and the stooped
position they must hold during work. They work with sharp pegs and hammers, without any
gloves or protective footwear, and so many accidents involve injuries to hands and feet.
The children who toggle are paid per unit: 20 or 30 taka per 100 dried pieces of leather.
Working hours are not fixed and depend on the workload. A daily income is approximately
100 taka (ca. 1 euro) for a full working day.

Boys toggling – squatting and stooping for many hours each day

Manufacturing

Working in a large-scale shoe factory is considered to be a relatively good job by most

employees, including children. Nevertheless, some conditions are in contradiction with
international regulations; some factories already employ children at 13 years old. Although
official working hours are from 8 am to 5 pm, overtime is rather common. Girls
complained about the irregular payment and as in most jobs, they don’t receive any type
of contract.

Most children, however, work in the small-scale and informal manufacturing units, where
conditions are even worse. These “factories” are no more than bare rooms in which people
work on the floor. There are rare reports of physical punishments in the small factories. It

42
is worrisome that for many boys the factory is also the sleeping place, and that they are in
the workplace almost 24 hours per day.

The children who manufacture gloves at home work in the relatively best conditions. They
work fewer hours, their work can be combined with school, and they usually work with
their parents or other familiar persons. It is normally the mother who is officially
employed as a manufacturer; the children help but don’t get paid.

Young boy cutting leather for gloves

Waste materials

The children involved in drying the meat for meatbone rarely take a day off work.
However, since meat needs to dry in the sun, there is less work during the monsoon
season. When it is dry and sunny it is very common for the workers to work from 6 in the
morning to 6 in the evening. Children earn around 1800 taka for a full month’s work. The
workplace is usually full of smoke, and the smell is awful. Working in smoke affects
children’s lungs and burning leather releases harmful chemicals [K. Kolomaznika et al.
2008]. Most workers are, however, used to the smell and they more often complain about
the soaring temperatures.

43
Sales

The boys who work in shoe shops start just before the shops open, around 10 in the
morning, and stop working just after 8 in the evening, when shops close. Most shops are
closed on Fridays, which is the workers’ day off. The boys are not exposed to very
dangerous conditions or heavy physical activities. The worst aspects of being an assistant
salesman are the long working hours and the fact that this job cannot be combined with
education. The salary of a child shop assistant ranges between 1000 and 2200 taka per
month, depending on age and experience. A period of “apprenticeship” is common.
Especially the boys who live in their employer’s house don’t earn a salary at the beginning.

Young assistants in a shoe shop

Why do children work in the leather sector?

Push factors

The first and most frequent reason children start to work is poverty. Rural poverty is
widespread and may be aggravated by ‘shocks’, such as a family death or illness, which
are often an immediate cause for children to start working. Children in the countryside or
in urban areas are aware of their poverty and feel responsible for supporting their family.

A second factor is related to education. Children not only stop school because they work,
but many also appear to start working because they have not been enrolled in education

44
or they have dropped out. Especially the increase in costs between primary and secondary
education is a reason to stop education. When a boy is not doing well at school and does
not take much interest, it is often the older relatives who send him to work in Dhaka. An
additional explanation that some parents use to explain their children working is “the
workplace as a safe environment”; it can function as an alternative to the street.

Pull factors

Big companies generally employ few children directly. In the first place because these
companies produce high quality leather or leather products for export on a large-scale,
and they therefore need better skilled labour. In the second place because machinery is
used for production and children are generally less competent to manage machines. In the
third place because the big exporting companies are aware of the negative image attached
to child labour and inspections are most likely to take place in their enterprises.

Most small entrepreneurs have the opinion that work is the only alternative for the poor
child. Many of them originate from poor families, and have even been child labourers
themselves. After years of low paid work, they have managed to save and make a small
investment to set up their own business. Because of the low investments and production
cost, their products are of relatively poor quality and only sold in the domestic market.
There is less money to invest in labour, there is less need for quality products and there is
a strong demand for cheap products. Besides, there is hardly any inspection on child
labour in these companies. The economic benefit of hiring children instead of adults is
quite substantial. Also the availability of children is a factor that contributes indirectly to
the continuity of child labour. In toggling the payment is so low that adults are not willing
to do the job. Other jobs are considered to be typical for children because adults refuse to
perform them, such as preparing tea or being a shop assistant. Finally, some employers of
children use the “nimble finger argument” when they argue that children are more
efficient in their job.

Some children work with their parents, for example in leather gloves manufacturing; their
parents are contracted by a small businessman. In these cases, the businessmen have no
knowledge about who exactly manufactures the gloves. It is an example of subcontracting
within the family. Parents say that their children “help” them, rather than that they are
working. The reason for involving them in work is that they get paid per unit and the
child’s help increases the family income.

Regulations and inspections

The Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments is responsible for
inspections. The Department, however, has some shortcomings, especially concerning
inspection of child labour. It has a small staff, the state inspectors are generally known as
corrupt functionaries who can be bribed easily, and while the inspections have a strong

45
focus on formal and export-oriented companies, most children work in informal
workplaces producing for the local market.

A specific feature of the leather sector, making the situation even more difficult to
control, is the system of subcontracting and its general informality. There are no national
policies regarding small and micro entrepreneurs, and no tannery unions to influence
policy. Since these industries are broken down into so many different types of specialised
enterprises, it is easier to avoid labour laws. Child employers also blame unequal
competition. Only worldwide labour standards would prevent them from defending child
labour in the name of unfair international competition.

Interventions: successes and failures

Ever since Bangladesh signed ILO Convention 182 there have been a significant number of
projects and programmes focussing, at least partly, on children working in the leather
sector. The IPEC project “Preventing and Eliminating the Worst Forms of Child Labour in
Selected Formal and Informal Sectors in Bangladesh”, which started in September 2000,
addresses the leather tanneries as a worst form of child labour13. The Ministry of Labour
and Employment in 2004 started the project “Eradication of Hazardous Child Labour in
Bangladesh”14, which provides non-formal education for children working in hazardous
activities in Dhaka City, including the tannery area (Ward 48 and 49) in Hazaribagh. A
similar project is coordinated by the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education together with
UNICEF, called: “Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban Working Children”15. The target
group includes working children, not necessarily active in hazardous conditions. Save the
Children, within the programme Child Clubs, commenced a project in January 2008 that
promotes participation and protagonism of working and non-working children.

An important conclusion concerning all government and NGO interventions is that the most
vulnerable children are hardest to reach. Children also living in the workplace, for
example, are not reached by any type of project. Others live with a relative or village
neighbour, who in a way are a source of protection, but who also fence them off from the
outside world. Not surprisingly, they are rarely reached and most of them are not even
informed about the possibility of joining an NGO project. The majority of the NGOs don’t
enter workplaces. Work in a factory or tannery is almost without exception a fulltime job

13
The specific project in the tannery area started in 2002 and was finished in 2004. The
five sectors included in the general project were bidi, construction, leather tannery,
matches and child domestic work. In 2005 the survey on child labour in tanneries, titled
“Bangladesh Baseline Survey on Child Labour Situation in Leather Tannery Industries in
Dhaka District” was published as a part of this project [Karim 2005].
14
This project is technically supported by the ILO. The first phase, which started in 2000
was funded by USAID; for the second phase, which started in 2004 and is still going on at
the moment, funds only come from the Ministry of Labour and Employment. The project is
expected to end in 2009 or 2011, depending on funding.
15
This project received financial and technical support from UNICEF, and financial support
from Canadian CIDA and Swedish SIDA. The first phase ran from 1997 to 2004 and the
second phase, which is going on at the moment, started in 2004 and will end in 2011.

46
and employers are not interested in employing a part-time worker and letting him
disappear to attend classes. For those working in Dhaka without any family or relatives, a
change in job would entail a loss of housing. For this group of children, NGOs haven’t
found the right solutions yet. The boys are difficult to reach, they have to earn money for
the survival of their family and they are fenced off from outside influence by employers
and relatives.

Furthermore, projects have difficulties with the eradication of hazardous child labour in
the leather sector because, at the lower rung of the technological and economic scale,
with low profits, low salaries and dramatically bad working conditions, hazardous
conditions do not seem to be a hindrance to accepting employment. The new migrants in
Dhaka do not have a choice but to take up any job available. Children are no exception. It
is hard to reduce hazardous child labour in Dhaka when the flow of migrant children
looking for work keeps on coming.

Recommendations
A preventive approach focussing on rural poverty reduction would be necessary to put an
end to children from the countryside migrating to Dhaka for work. Pre-empting migration
would especially protect children from leaving their families and living without protection
in their unhealthy workplace.

Furthermore, children tend to start working when, for various reasons, they are not
attending school. Without good education, work will continue to be considered a better
alternative in a context of poverty. The fight against hazardous child labour in the city
therefore starts with a struggle to improve universal primary education in the countryside,
for both boys and girls.

Policies including support for small entrepreneurs conditioned with strict regulations
would enable them to professionalise their business. Vocational training and official
support to the development and implementation of new technologies will be required. But
considering the competition in the global market, only the implementation of world wide
labour standards would prevent them turning to child labour. External pressure, without
first solving the internal complexities surrounding the leather sector, may aggravate rather
than ease the problem.

47
Tannery work site – It is clear to see how wet the floors are, and how the boys
unloading the drums stand up to their knees in water and chemicals.

48
A Risk Assessment of Child Labour in the Tanneries of
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Mariette de Graaf

Children involved in Dhaka’s leather industry are engaged in activities that are commonly
believed to be dangerous to their health and development. This study therefore conducted
an occupational hygiene risk assessment of the specific tasks children perform in this
sector. Occupational health standards have, however, been developed for healthy male
adults and are based on an evaluation of health effects after a 40 hour workweek and a
working life of 40 years. These standards cannot simply be applied to children. In medicine
the current approach is to adapt a dose according to weight, but in occupational health
directives, no such standards have been set for children.

Scientifically, little is known about possible harmful health effects of work performed by
children [De Waal 1996; Forastieri 1997; Fassa & Facchini 2000; O'Donnell et al. 2002].
When they work under the same conditions as adults, children are exposed to the same
dangers, but it is expected that the effects may be greater in children because they differ
anatomically, physiologically and psychologically from adults. The limited epidemiologic
research that exists, suggests that children are more prone to accidents and that the
lifting of heavy loads will lead to a greater effect on their musculoskeletal system.
Children are also more sensitive for the effects of exposure to chemicals, noise, heat and
ionizing radiation [Fassa & Facchini 2000]. Other factors that play a role are the greater
need for sleep in children and their lower capacity to assess risks. The level of physical,
physiological and mental development, determines the specific risk factors for children of
any age. Effects on children in the short or long run will also strongly depend on the
characteristics of the work [O'Donnell et al. 2002]. In addition, the general health status of
the child is relevant: is the child healthy (‘healthy worker effect’) or unhealthy (for
example, because of malnutrition) when he starts working [Levison & Murray-Close 2005].

Working children in the tanneries of Hazaribargh, Dhaka

The process in the Hazaribagh tanneries consists of different stages. The main stages are:

• The making of wet blue leather

• The making of crusted leather
• The making of finished leather
• The transport of the leather
• Toggling (pinning the prepared leather flat to the ground so it can dry)

49
Children can be involved in each stage and the following tasks were identified during this
study [see also BILS 2000; Ensing 2009]:

• helping adults to wash raw leather with several chemicals

• working as a loader to transport the raw leather from one place to another
• trimming of leather with a small knife or with scissors
• cleaning finished leather
• painting leather
• collecting finished leather
• toggling
• work as support staff, like fetching tea or cleaning

Each stage is characterised by its own working conditions. In addition, the overall
environment (machines, heat, noise, electricity, etc) adds to the risks found in all stages.
The main risks involve exposure to chemicals and ergonomic stressors. Effects can be
reversible or irreversible and emerge in the short or in the long run. The level of danger
when exposed to chemicals is determined by the hazardousness of the substance, the
concentration of the substance, the exposure time, the route of exposure (e.g. inhalation,
skin contact, ingestion) and the protective measures (ventilation or use of protective
equipment). The effects of ergonomic stressors are determined by the nature of the
stressor (posture, load) and exposure time.

In a study of the occupational health effects on adult tannery workers in India, the
workers suffered the following problems [Öry 1997]:

• Back problems: lumbar backache (15.5%)

• Respiratory problems: respiratory irritation (3.8%) and asthma (2.2%)
• Skin problems: contact dermatitis (2.6%) and chrome ulcers (2%)

The making of wet blue leather

The process of making wet blue leather is characterised by the broad assortment of
chemicals used. Based on the information gained during this visit to the tanneries in
Bangladesh16 and on available literature, I have evaluated the risks by using COSHH
Essentials17, an instrument to assess the risks of the used chemicals.

The making of wet blue leather is predominantly a wet process. Chemicals (0.5–5%) are
mixed with large amounts of water (1–4 times the weight of the leather). The way in which
the leather is treated with these mixtures differs between tanneries and the different
phases in this stage.

16
I was able to conduct a general study of the health effects on children working in the
tanneries in Bangladesh during October 2009. The study was made possible by the Dutch
Occupational Hygiene Association NVvA.
17
[Link]

50
The first operation in this process makes the leather resistant to bacteria and prepares it
for tanning. In the smaller tanneries the leather is often treated in pits, inside or outside;
in the medium-sized tanneries they mostly use drums. Evaluation of this process shows
that in the process of shaving, liming, de-liming and pickling, the used chemicals can be
categorised as hazardous.

The exposure to chemicals is medium or small during the stirring activities in the pit and
the manual transport of the leather from the pit or drum to other locations. The stirring
activities, which are done several times a day with a large bamboo stick, are too heavy for
small children to perform, but adolescents have been seen to be involved. The unloading
and transportation of treated leather is done by children, but only when the pieces of
leather are small enough. Because the leather is wet, it is exceptionally heavy, and so the
transportation is mostly done by adults. Children are thus unlikely, during this stage, to be
exposed frequently or to a significant level.

Young tannery workers assigned to the drum. A concrete bath-like structure beneath
the drum captures all liquids, including chemicals. The boys stand in the fluids for
hours at a time when removing the skins from the drum.

Exposure is highest during the removal of the treated leather from the pit or drum, when
large sections of the limbs are exposed to the mixture. During the field visits of this study,
no children were seen emptying the drums, but earlier studies confirm that this does occur
[see Ensing 2009]. When the drums are emptied workers end up standing in the mixture,
often for several hours a week. Some workers use protective equipment like boots, aprons

51
and gloves, others don’t. If the exposed body parts aren’t washed thoroughly after
exposure, the water will evaporate and the dissolved chemicals remain on the skin. Many
of the used chemicals can cause (severe) burns and serious damage to eyes. A toxic effect
can also occur if chemicals are ingested. Since most people in Bangladesh eat with their
hands, ingestion of chemicals can easily happen if hands are not cleaned before eating.

During cleaning processes of the pit or when fluids come together, there is a possibility of
the formation of toxic gasses, like hydrogen sulphide, ammonia gasses and chlorine. A few
indicative measurements performed inside and outside near the open pits did not show
concentrations in a range that is dangerous to health.

The concentrations measured in Dhaka were:

• hydrogen sulphide < 10% of the Dutch exposure limit

• chlorine < 10% of the Dutch exposure limit
• ammonia < 1% of the Dutch exposure limit

If we were to apply the method as used in medicine (dosage according to weight), and
assume the weight of a child to be a minimum of 30 kg (about 10 years old) and the
average weight of an adult to be 75 kg, then the levels found here would be considered
relatively safe. However, it must be taken into account that only a small number of
samples were taken, and other tanneries may show higher levels.

The second operation when making wet blue leather is the tanning process itself. The
chemical used here (alkaline chromium sulphate), is not very hazardous. Sometimes
adolescents help in this process, but no direct health risks are expected. In some tanneries
the chromium sulphate is added to the pickling mixture and the same effects, as
mentioned above, can be expected.

Sometimes children are sent to fetch small amounts of chemicals from the chemical shops.
This is potentially a risky task, depending on the characteristics of the chemical and the
way it is packed. Transportation of large quantities of chemicals or the collection of used
chemicals from the bigger tanneries is done only by adults.

The making of crusted leather

In this stage the leather is dyed and softened (liquoring with oil). The chemicals used vary
widely, depending on the desired colour or quality of the leather. When the chemicals are
used in drums, people are mainly exposed after opening the drum and during the removal
of the leather. Adolescents have been seen helping to remove the leather.

In some smaller tanneries, the dyeing takes place by manual spraying. This is done by
skilled adults, but younger children are around and have been seen collecting the leather
pieces and removing them to get dried elsewhere. When collecting the pieces the children
are exposed to, and inhale, the sprayed dyes. Because the children are small, they are at
spraying height. Small children were also seen sponging paint onto the leather. The route
of exposure here is through direct skin contact. Being exposed to the spray of dye is much

52
more dangerous than sponging, since small particles in the air can be inhaled or affect the
skin.

Dyes consist of several types of chemicals:

• The solvent: all the dyes (used in the drums and in spraying) are water-based,
which implies that no serious effects are expected on the neurological system
when exposed for multiple years;
• Pigments and filling substances: these may contain lead or chromate. In western
countries these hazardous pigments are barely applied anymore. It is unknown if
these are used in the leather process in the tanneries of Hazaribagh. It was not
possible to make a clear conclusion about the health effects of the dyes. The dyes
are made locally, and the vessels were not marked with their chemical make-up.
Further research of the materials used will thus be necessary.

A young boy in a Dhaka tannery - Here he is seen sponging pieces of leather with dyes
and other chemicals.

The making of finished leather

During this stage a finishing solution is applied by spraying or sponging. Children can also
be involved in this process. The chemicals include dyes, but also binding and fixating
chemicals. Sometimes thinner (an organic solvent) and preservatives are used, which can
have harmful effects. The same considerations apply as in the case of the making of crust
leather.

53
The transport of the leather
During the production process the leather is transported a number of times. The internal
transportation of the wet leather is mainly done by adults because of the weight and
slippery character of the wet hides and skins. Sometimes children are involved in the
lifting and carrying of hides over small distances (meters). The skins are placed on the
head and then thrown to the ground or on to a cart.

Young tannery worker carrying skins on his head

Young children were seen moving freshly painted leather to a place in the sun. They
carried about 2–3 skins on their heads at a time, so the total weight was still small. But
larger loads are also carried. A boy of about 13 years old was seen carrying 10 kg (about 50
skins of 0.2 kg each) on his head; a younger boy carried 20 skins of about 0.3 kg each.

No scientific literature was found on the effects of carrying such loads on the head,
neither for adults nor for children. However, when loads are carried in the arms, held
close to the body, a maximum load of about 20 kg is recommended for adults. So it may be
expected that – when these children are frequently carrying loads like this - health
problems may arise.

Sometimes children are involved in the transportation of bigger quantities of leather by

bicycle. Older children have been seen pushing loaded bikes, whilst younger children

54
helped. Based on the available information, it is hard to make an evaluation. If the energy
exerted for this activity is too intense, or if the frequency is too high, long-term negative
effects on the health may arise.

Toggling
Children were often seen toggling. Pieces of wet blue, crusted or finished leather are
stretched and nailed to the ground or to a wooden floor, so that they may dry. After a
couple of hours the nails are removed by hand or with a device.

Toggling is performed whilst bent-over or squatting. These positions are very tiring when
performed for a prolonged time. The toggling itself involves a repetitive action of the arm.
Because the toggling can last a couple of hours at a time, health effects may be expected.
Some of the boys, mainly the boys in the toggling fields, are paid by the number of skins
they have toggled. Because of this, they may feel more pressured to work faster and take
fewer breaks to take a necessary rest. Since the work is done outside or in the open field,
climate may take its toll.

Environment
During the tanning process, machines are used for fleshing, shaving, plating, etc. Although
children are not directly involved in operating the machines they are constantly in the
vicinity and may be exposed to risks. Children are more prone to accidents because of
their physical and mental level of development. Some of the machines produce noises
above acceptable levels, but since the number of machines is generally low in places
where children are working, it is not expected that children will suffer from hearing loss.

Older children (14 years and older) trim the leather with a knife or a pair of scissors.
Cutting accidents do take place.

Sometimes children are asked to operate the electricity switches near the drums. The
electricity switches are not always safely constructed and a dangerous situation may arise.

In some (parts of) tanneries, the floors can be very slippery because fluids are easily spilt
during the unloading of the drums or the pits, or during transportation of the skins.
Besides the danger of hurting oneself when slipping and falling, there is also the danger of
direct skin contact with chemicals spilt on the floor. Since many children wear open shoes
(slippers) or no shoes at all, skin contact occurs frequently.

Finally, it is important to note the long working hours of the children. In addition to all the
potential dangers, a lack of rest during the day or sleep at night can have serious
consequences for the body’s ability to repair itself. This applies to adults, but is even
more relevant for children. Moreover, the longer the work, the longer they are exposed to
the various risks mentioned above.

55
Conclusions
The evaluation of the health risks of children is straightforward in the case of toggling.
Here the postural aspect, the speed at which they have to work, the work pressure and
the climate conditions, have a combined negative impact on the musculoskeletal system
when the work is performed for too many hours per day, and for too many years.

In tanneries, the kind of activities a child performs varies strongly over time. There is no
daily pattern, not even for adults, and children are asked to help where and whenever
necessary. The hazards are therefore more difficult to define.

The use of chemicals is the most significant risk factor. Two situations can be
distinguished:

• During the wet part of the process children are hardly involved, but the exposure
still occurs indirectly (contact with spilt chemicals) or incidentally (when gasses
are formed through chemical interaction).
• During the dry part of the process children can be directly exposed to a lot of
chemicals during tasks such as leather collection and sponging. The main exposure
routes are inhalation and skin contact. A risk assessment is hard to make, because
the composition and/or the safety aspects of the mixtures is mostly unknown to
the users, but it is to be expected that a number of chemicals may be harmful.

A few working conditions should also be considered as significant risk factors:

• Working in a hot environment, working for prolonged hours, and working for many
years may contribute to a negative health impact.
• The safety of children is not guaranteed when they are working in the vicinity of
machines and with instruments like knifes and scissors, especially when floors are
wet and electrical installations are unsafe.
• The older the children get, the more tasks they are given and the greater the risks
they are confronted with. Physical strength and job experience are important
factors that determine the working conditions and workload.

The main question is whether or not the activities carried out by children in leather
production are dangerous from the perspective of risk evaluation. It can be concluded that
the work of children in tanneries involves activities that are (potentially) harmful for
children. However, a lot is still unknown about the exact work the children perform and
means of evaluation are missing.

Evaluation methods are developed in the West. In the evaluation of the risks of working
children in non-western countries, especially in tanneries, the following problems arise:

• Specific standards for children are lacking: the effects of different kinds of
exposure, like chemicals, noise or ergonomic stressors, on children are unknown.
• The work is not performed according to a regular daily schedule. Tasks are
irregular and therefore difficult to evaluate.

56
 • The exposure to chemicals in tanneries is very complex. Especially in the stage of
crust and finished leather a wide variety of chemicals is used. Often the exact
name, composition or danger symbols are lacking. Some of the chemicals are
reused and for many chemicals a toxicity evaluation has not yet taken place.
• Specific evaluation methods for the kind of work performed is lacking. For
instance, little is known about the effects of carrying loads on the head or working
in high ambient temperatures.

Risk assessments are a non-judgemental contribution to the knowledge about the effect of
work on children. The yardstick is whether or not the set limits are crossed, although
unfortunately no such set limits have yet been constructed for children. The risk
assessment performed here is to be understood in its wider context, which includes the
consideration of multiple other hazards involved in child labour. Issues, such as being
separated from parents, power relations in work, no time to play, no access to education
and the economics of child labour, are all to be considered when determining the urgency
for the elimination of child labour.

57
Spraying chemicals and dyes onto the skins – Although younger workers are not directly
involved in spraying, it is clear to see how contact with and inhalation of the sprays
occur. No precautionary clothing or face masks are used.

58
Girl Domestic Labour in Dhaka: Exploitation and
Humiliation
Nanna Baum

In recent years, socio-demographic characteristics of child domestic workers, as well as

the working conditions to which they are exposed, have been written about extensively.18
According to an ILO study [2006a], Dhaka alone has close to 150.000 child domestic
labourers, who were mostly girls. About 23% had started working before they turned 8, and
33% when aged 9-11 years. They all worked 7 days a week, and an average of 9 hours per
day. More than half of these children were not receiving any wage. Only 11% were allowed
to go to school. The ILO survey indicates a hard life from a very young age onwards, but an
analysis that focuses only on factual working conditions, ignoring the ways in which the
child is socially and emotionally treated inside the household, cannot fully explain the
extent of the potential or actual damage to the child.

Existing research on the perceptions and emotions of child domestic workers, if

undertaken, is commonly limited to one-time visits and questionnaires. This study is novel,
as it went beyond the observation of factual conditions, and had extreme close contact
with the child domestics. This study attempts to provide an in-depth illustration of a child
domestic’s suffering, which goes beyond superficial statistics. It reveals a picture of the
typical work- and social deprivations inflicted by employers19.

Anthropological methods of data collection were used in order to gain insights directly
from the source. The fieldwork conducted for this study took place in a secure semi-public
space, outside the employers’ apartments. “SUROVI” and PLAN facilitated the access to
child domestic workers in ‘educational centres’ in Dhaka (Mohommadpur), where the
children could spend a couple of hours every day. Lengthy and repeated interviews with 20
girls, in the age group 7 to 18, were carried out. A long research period of 5 months was

18
E.g. [Momen 1993; Hoque 1995; Rahman 1995; RCS 1999; SHOISHAB 1999, 2001; Khair
2004; UNICEF 2004]. An exception is the Phd Dissertation Child Domestic Workers in Dhaka:
A Geographical Study of Discourses, Work, and Education by Kari Bolstad Jensen [Jensen
2007] and a field study conducted for the book Lost Innocence, Stolen Childhoods by
Therese Blanchet [Blanchet 1996].
19
No appropriate term exists to characterise the person the child is working for and living
with. Employer implies a formal work relationship, but to different degrees, this work
relationship is intermingled with family relationships. The Bengali term mallik represents a
hierarchical relationship that is, as in many semi-feudal systems, sometimes based on
dependency. In this paper the term ‘employer’ is used in accordance with international
terminations. However, the child domestic workers themselves refer to their ‘employer’ as
relatives like aunt/uncle, grandmother/father, or sister/brother.

59
necessary to earn their trust, allowing us to gain a valuable understanding of child
domestics’ thought processes and perceptions.

Between “kajer meye” and daughter

The crucial distinction between domestic labour and other types of (child) labour is the
lack of physical separation between the workplace and the living space. Especially those
children who are live-in helpers or full-time (also referred to as bhandha20) are very far
away from their family, usually in rural districts. Children’s service commonly begins when
they are between six and nine years old, and girls, for various reasons, are often
withdrawn again when they are ‘grown-up’ at approximately 15 years [UNICEF 2004:x].
Domestics carry out various tasks at all times of the day. The most common tasks involve
cleaning, washing dishes, mopping the floor, and serving food. The pay is meagre, with an
average monthly salary of Tk. 224 (euro 2.50) [Khair 2004:XIX]. Commonly, child domestics
receive food, clothes and lodging, which is sometimes the principal benefit of the work. In
addition to a huge workload and long hours with little reward, all forms of violence have
been reported to be very common [Hoque 1995; Khair 2004; UNICEF 2004].

Child domestics’ status within city households varies from quasi-family members (adopted
children from less fortunate families) to bonded labourers. It is the complex nature of the
bonds, and the ambiguous status, which renders any clear characterisation of child
domestic labour near impossible. Yet, children’s realities are often those of bonded
labourers, rather than ‘daughters’. They have a low status, come from a poor rural
background and remain discriminated outsiders within the new urban (middle- or upper
class) household [Pflug 2002:28]. Although, from an outsiders’ perspective, their kajer
meye21 status is more apparent, it is surprising to find that many children still feel like, or
at least aspire to be, family members. Child domestic workers, it appears, do not merely
strive for appreciation and a show of respect, but desire full participation in the family,
based on love and affection. That is a direct or indirect promise given to them when they
came to live and work in the household.

The very young and innocent children thus come to the household with high hopes, but
then the behaviour and treatment towards them changes radically. It is a sad experience
to be overwhelmed by the immense amount of work and the poor treatment, and this
sentiment was echoed by many domestic workers, who feel betrayed (mitthé22). After
being contracted out to work and live within the four walls of the employer, whilst
isolated from the parents, their vulnerability is unparalleled and emotional despair gets

20
Literally: tied down
21
The Bengali terms “kajer meye” and “kajer chele” (lit.: working girl/boy) have a
negative connotation in the Bengali society, similar to the word ‘slave’ in the American
context. They refer to a second class human being and nobody likes to belong to this
category. The middle-class employers also do not want to identify themselves as the
“mallik of kajer meye”. Therefore it often is common to avoid this expression and avoid it
by saying ‘I have a girl/boy in my house’ or ‘these girls/boys working in houses’.
22
Literally: strong lie

60
hold of them; it is the moment they become aware of their lack of control, as the
following testimonies illustrate:

There, in my mother’s house, I lived a respectable life... Really, this was the only
place where I could feel myself (ami jekhene amar moto), where I felt like a
human! And really, after leaving my mother’s house, I don’t remember any person
who ever paid attention to me. I was always neglected (onador).

When I came to Dhaka, I never dreamed that I would become a kajer meya
(servant). I always wanted to be a family member, a somewhat lower family
member. I wanted to work for a mallik who said “No, she is like my daughter, she
is not my kajer meye (na se amer meya, kajer meya noy).”

The woman told me: “If you want to eat something you have to do work!” My four
new brothers and sisters always beat me and shout at me: “No, no, you are not
like us. You cannot sit here in my mother’s couch! You cannot sit at the table with
us! Go to the kitchen! Don’t touch our toys.” They have different lives. They have
never been servants, they have never suffered homelessness; they have no sorrows
and experienced no harassment! But me? ... I suffer beating, burning, ‘servant
treatment’, homelessness, and I am illiterate...and I became a servant. Am I
worth anything (amar ki dam ache)?

Good food and clothes, I get both in this house. But if I had to choose, then it is
more important to have people around who love me. I like my village most
because there are many people who really like me. My aunt, uncle, everybody
loves me.

Children’s perception of the household work

While working conditions can undoubtedly be harmful to the child’s physical health,
studies have disproportionately emphasised these physical realities as the determining
factor in a child’s suffering, whilst neglecting the psychological impact. Although it should
be reiterated that hours of work, difficulty of the work, meagre food supplies, etc., are
unacceptable for a child, the children live in similar conditions in their rural households.
What they do not necessarily experience at home, however, is the humiliating treatment
received from their employers. Although the conditions in which children render their
services are vastly different, a comparison of the working conditions and narratives
revealed a consistency among the children: the degree of satisfaction is most influenced
by the quality of status and interaction with the members of the household, rather than by
the type or the difficulty of the work itself, as the following example illustrates.

Meena (9 years) has a heavy workload on a daily basis. However, she claimed to be
entirely satisfied with her life in the city household. She thinks highly of her employers
and does not question many of the hardships of her work. Those who consider themselves

61
‘lucky with the employer’ seldom feel stressed about what appears to be heavy, hazardous
work.

Those children who feel excluded from the family, however, relate stronger feelings of
discontent:

I don’t mind staying up late at night; it’s not problematic for me to not sleep, I’m
used to it. But I’m frustrated the girl doesn’t appreciate me for my services. I do
lots of things for her, whatever she asks me to do. And even though I am doing all
her work, she swears at me and disregards me. She never gives me any
recognition, no matter how much I work for her.

Children’s perceptions of the work benefits

Child domestic workers receive food, clothes and shelter for their services, and in most
cases, little more. Economic exploitation is a serious concern of policy makers, who strive
to ensure better living and working conditions for child domestic workers, but even if
better conditions could be achieved, a system of abused childhood would remain intact.

Overall, the findings suggest that most of the child domestics seemed reasonably
unconcerned about their low salaries and most of them did not seem to feel economically
exploited. Children usually don’t question the wages and labour arrangements, which are
discussed between the parents and the employer. They also have a sense of responsibility
towards their family and are willing to undergo some hardship to support them. As Rotna
(15) said: “My employer never gives the money to me; they give it to my father, because
he knows that my family is struggling because of poverty. It’s good, because I would spend
all the money and my father can use it better.”

In addition to wanting to please and help their own families, the children also wish to
please their ‘new’ family and to become part of the family. The self-deception induces
them to put less weight on financial benefits: “This is my own house. Why should I take a
salary?” (Meena, 9 years) For the child domestics, monetary rewards are less valuable than
the experience of love and inclusion within the household, an experience which they, as
children, keep longing for.

An expression of respect and love can be expressed through small gifts. Although most
children do not care much about their low (or non-existent) monthly salary, they become
distressed about not having any, or little, pocket money, small gifts and the hand-down of
old clothes. Hoque [1995:107] describes these moments, when they are given extra
benefits, as some of the happiest moments they experience. For the child domestic
workers, these gifts make them feel respected as members of the households. It is
fundamental to the feeling of belonging, for which the child aches.

Such small gifts usually do not offset the general feeling of deprivation. Their meals are in
most cases certainly more nutritious than what they receive in the villages. However, the
distribution of food and clothes is normally unequal. Being given leftovers (jhuta muta

62
khaowa) and being made to eat only after all other household members have taken their
food, is often a great source of unhappiness for the children. It again emphasises their
discrimination; as Hasi (13) said:

In the village everybody would get the same food. When I ate spoilt food in the
village, the rest of the members also had this. When they had fresh warm food, I
too took the same food. Maybe there was not enough food, and we had huge food
problems, but we faced that problem equally.

The need for appreciation and inclusion was a generally expressed feeling. Those few
children who are treated with equality are happier than others. Unfortunately, most of the
children felt exclusion and humiliation and considered this as the worst aspect of their
situation.

Children’s perception of their treatment

The implications of physical and sexual abuse are known to the public and have been a
concern for policy makers. In recent years, the impact of violence on the mental health of
children and long-term consequences throughout their lives has been gaining recognition
[Pinheiro 2006].

Many child domestic workers are insulted, tortured, harassed, and raped. Discrimination
and the low status within the household means that these children suffer from isolation
and neglect, and explains their desperate desire to be loved by the employer. Child
domestics were often heard saying: “I have no one who understands me”, indicating that
their sorrows go unheard and their joys not shared. The harmful consequences are
reinforced by the lack of time-off from work and free time with others and thus time to
forget. This form of emotional abuse has often been neglected and undervalued in
political interventions.

Despite having survived life-threatening conditions and constant hunger in the village,
they experience the lack of affection and discrimination in the city as more detrimental
than anything else. Verbal abuse leaves its psychological marks, as one girl who had been
repeatedly beaten said:

I can tell you, my previous mallik was really bad. He did bad swearing. He called
me shoytanar baccha23, shuorer baccha24 and chotoloker baccha25. When he swore
like this I wanted to kill him. Whenever they beat me I just tolerate it. I am just
sitting with my head down. I said nothing. But no one can tolerate this swearing by
the name of the parents.

23
literally: son of the devil
24
literally: son of a pig
25
literally: son of lower class people

63
The children differentiate between fair and unfair physical punishments. Some punitive
measures can be accepted as suitable ‘parental’ behaviour: “Who loves me can also beat
me” (Arif, 15). Physical violence is painful by itself, but the experience is much worse in
combination with ‘unfairness and embarrassment’, like being beaten or being scolded in
front of others:

The worst form of beating is being beaten in front of guests. I always suffered
pain, I can cope with pain. When someone now slaps me, I just laugh out loud and
say: “You think you can scare me by slapping?” But the guests thought that I didn’t
do my work properly and that the mallik has the right to beat me. But it wasn’t
like that. (Roxana 14 years)

Beatings and sexual abuse, was made worse when combined with unfairness, insecurity,
and the disrespect for emotions. Child domestic workers are doubly betrayed by those who
were meant to protect them. Roxana remembers the day of her rape as one of the worst
experiences of her life. But even with this experience, it was not the physical act or the
physical pain that she suffered from most; instead she remembers the unfairness of the
malikan (the lady of the house):

They always burned my skin with the khunti (a big iron kitchen tool). I can cope
with this pain. But I didn’t do anything! Why does she beat me like this? If I get
her, I’ll just kill her! I don’t know who between them is most guilty. But the
woman is worse!

Existing policy interventions usually neglect the emotional aspects that constitute an
important part of child domestics’ quality of life. Implementing a minimum working age
and a standard for working conditions, which may be effective in other fields of child
labour, are insufficient to ensure enhanced well-being of (child) domestics in Bangladesh.
Thus, formalising domestic labour through the introduction of legislation and the
introduction of a regulated monthly salary is inadequate to ameliorate sufferings which
are mostly emotional.

Child domestics feel deprived, but often do not know where to turn to for support or
refuge and feel abandoned by everyone. Among the 20 child domestics in our sample,
three children ran away from the city apartment, two girls developed abnormal behaviour
and were scared of being alone, refused to talk or did not recognise their own parents
after being withdrawn from the employer’s household.

Conclusion
This study has explored the overall quality of life and the experience of child domestics in
Dhaka, Bangladesh. In-depth qualitative research over a period of time was carried out
among 20 working girls, who had left their homes in the village to work for relatively rich
families in Dhaka. The arrangements had been negotiated by their parents. The girls had

64
entered their new lives with hope and excitement, expecting to become part of a new
family, receiving care and respect in return for their devoted assistance in the household.
But, the children quickly found themselves betrayed and humiliated in abusive situations.

The parents of child domestics receive the salary directly (if there is one); the child is
provided with food, clothes and shelter, but is given little else. The children, however,
showed little grievance with a lack of monetary or material benefits. They made it very
clear that they would do their work gladly, to support their natal families, if they received
respect and appreciation for their labour, and if they were cared for and included into
their 'host' family. They had come to the city in the understanding that they had been
accepted by families to come and live with them and go to school, in exchange for some
work in the household.

When the tides turned and the children realised their true positions within the household,
it was neither the physical punishments, nor the possible lack of material goods or even
food, that upset them most; it was the discrimination, exclusion, disrespect, ingratitude,
and other assaults on their emotional needs that truly hurt them. In addition, they were
doubly betrayed when others in the household, or their own parents, failed to come to
their defence.

Policy in the past has focused primarily on the physical well-being of these girls, rather
than their mental well-being. In other words, the satisfaction of material needs, rather
than emotional needs. This study has made clear that child domestic workers run a high
risk of long-term mental health problems, regardless of their material and physical
security (which would be poor even if they had stayed in their rural homes). For such
children, the one and only response can be 'withdrawal'. The mental and emotional impact
on the child domestic worker is at least as nefarious as the physical impact and the
exploitative relationship.

65
66
The Supply of Girl Domestics: a Matter of Semi-Feudal
Relations
26
Nanna Baum

In Bangladesh, child domestic labour has evolved from traditional and previously
unchallenged social practices. It is not unusual for poor families with a large number of
offspring to send a daughter to live in another house for a part of her upbringing. But,
increasingly, domestic work is no longer a family arrangement to benefit the child’s
interests, but rather a commercialised labour praxis in an increasingly urban and capitalist
society [Black 1997:2-3].

Today, child domestic labour constitutes a major segment of child labour. According to
UNICEF [UNICEF 2004], 9% of the households in Dhaka employ a child; in Dhaka alone,
more than 150.000 children, many as young as 6 years, are employed by a middle-class
family, usually without much contact with the outside world, not even with the parents. 27
Of these child domestics, 92% live and work with their employers on a fulltime basis. They
are restrained within the four walls of the household and are subject to the whims of the
employer. The fact that the employer maintains access to the child’s labour and body at
all times, makes child domestic work a unique category of child labour. As a consequence,
many domestics also perform dangerous tasks, or find themselves in exploitative work
relationships, which endanger a child’s physical and psychological health. The work often
involves long hours, or work at night, or confining the child to the premises of the
employer.

Despite the pervasiveness of the practice and the recent international exposure that the
practice of child labour has received, there is little in-depth research on supply and
recruitment mechanisms [Momen 1993; Hoque 1995; Rahman 1995; RCS 1999; SHOISHAB
1999, 2001; Khair 2004; UNICEF 2004] ). Rather general motives, such as poverty, culture,
and gender discrimination are commonly provided and accepted as explanations [see for
example Blagbrough 2008]. However, an analysis that ignores the recruitment processes
and the voices of parents and middlemen will not expose the multi-layered reality of the
practice. The children have been separated from their rural background and have little

26
The fieldwork was carried out together with Fatama Suvra, an anthropologist from
Jahanginagar University; her involvement is greatly appreciated and her contribution to
this paper has been crucial.
27
Attempts have been made to come up with good estimates of the number of child
domestic workers. According to the National Child Labour Survey of 2002-2003, carried out
by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics [2003], the number of child domestic workers in
Bangladesh is 155,883. UNICEF estimated that there were 131,965 child domestic workers
in 2004, in Dhaka alone [UNICEF 2004].

67
contact with their families. In order to find out how they were recruited and how the
separation is kept in place, the research was directed towards the recruitment areas.

The objective of the study was to understand both the overt and hidden reasons why
parents cooperate in sending their children into domestic work, the expectations
beforehand and the experience after the child went into service and the mechanism
involved in the recruitment

The fieldwork took place in three different areas of Bangladesh. Villages were visited in
the Dhaka district because of their close proximity to the city; in the north-eastern part of
Bangladesh, considered one of the poorest areas in Bangladesh; and in the western part of
Bangladesh near the Indian border, where child trafficking is relatively common.
Altogether, in-depth interviews were held with relatives of six girl domestics. Moreover,
interviews were held with six rural middlemen who supply children to Dhaka.

Supply mechanisms
Blood-relations connect urban households with rural families [White 1992:37] and a
majority of child domestics are supplied through these links. Hoque [1995] estimated that
about 50% of girl domestics originate from the employer’s home village. In these cases,
employers normally come from a rich, landowning village family and have had some kind
of semi-feudal relation with the child’s family. In the past they have likely assisted the
poorer family in some way during a crisis by offering them work or other resources.

There are some indications, however, that the presence of a recruiting middleman, who is
neither family of the employer nor the child, is becoming more common these days.
Employers preferably seek help from a reputable arbitrator who can recruit from his
immediate network. Approximately 30% of the girls are supplied through arbitrators, such
as relatives, friends, and neighbours of the employer, whereby the girls’ parents are not
directly known to the employer [Hoque 1995:115]. Generally, employers like to be
informed about the background of the child before recruiting them; they will rarely hire a
child without having some kind of connection. Only 15% of girl domestics are recruited
through less familiar contacts. These middlemen are normally considered to be influential
and ‘honourable’ men in the village, either through landownership, or political and
educational institutions, such as local governmental politicians, NGO workers, and school
teachers. A village arbitrator can create a good social network with the employer by
supplying a domestic worker. Thus, while there are no clear monetary benefits involved in
recruitments (a maximum of 4000 taka), the middlemen gain a relationship with a wealthy
and influential household.

Parents who supply their daughters into domestic work are normally portrayed as
egotistical or even gullible. It is, however, important to understand that it is nearly
impossible to recruit a child without the recruiter having a good reputation in the village.
As one local village leader, and in this case recruiter, said: “The parents always believe
me, because I am a TNO (Thana Nirbahi Executive Officer) woman. They believe that I will

68
never cause any harm to their child.” Middlemen are well-known to the child’s family and
are convincing when they present moral and economic arguments. In addition, prior to
recruitment and employment, the middleman will have likely provided relief to the poor
family.

Middlemen approach parents who are not only dependent on them, but also regard them
as honourable and trustworthy. In nearly all cases, the middlemen in the process are to
some extent responsible for any transgressions of the child whilst employed. The
middleman will convince the parents that the employers will care for the wellbeing of the
poor family, and especially the girl. Middlemen will sometimes fabricate pleasant stories
about the employers and convince the parents that the employer in Dhaka is very well-
known, very good, extremely well-off, with good social standing and who will never act
inappropriately with the girl.

Parents’ motivations for supplying their daughters

A common assumption is that parents are unable to properly care for their children
because of poverty, and send them to Dhaka for a monthly salary or simply for the food
and shelter provided [Rahman 1995:14]. This study identifies various motivations why
parents enter into the agreement.

Rapport with “The Rich”

One of the major reasons for supplying a daughter to Dhaka is the strong desire of poor
families to strengthen and build up the relation with a rich or influential family. Handing
over responsibility for a daughter to trustworthy and respected people of a powerful
household, reinforces the relationship. The parents hope that their daughters will become
part of a family, and will be treated well. Unfortunately, the rich middlemen or employers
often take advantage of this desire for strengthening the personal relationship, hoping for
reciprocity.

Financial and Material Benefits

In rural areas, poverty creates a strong tendency to fall back on semi-feudal labour
relations with a hope of improving the economic position and achieving upwards mobility
[White 1992:37]. With the child used as a bargaining chip, the rich and powerful family
can be approached in times of crisis for financial or material support. The type of support
the poor people hope for, especially in times of crisis, include a parcel of land for
cultivation, the permission to keep a larger amount of grain for themselves after the
harvest, a marriage dowry, the payment of a medical treatment, or employment. The rich
middlemen or employers take advantage of this desire and will use their knowledge of the
parents’ wishes and make all the right promises to make the deal they want.

69
When parents are approached with fantastical promises, they choose to believe that a rich
family will take in their daughter and give her a better life. In contrast to common ideas,
poverty-stricken families do not send their daughters to Dhaka to reduce their
expenditures or to earn an income, neither for the food and shelter provided. All case
studies make it clear, in fact, that parents generally do not want to maintain a formal
labour relationship based on a tough economic deal with the employer. They know that
working for them without putting in high demands concerning salaries and working
conditions will lead to more cordiality and support in case of need. Nevertheless, most
parents receive some monthly payment (approximately 200tk to 400tk) and like to believe
that this money was given to them out of compassion rather than as a wage in exchange
for the child’s labour. They see the work the child does as a favour returned, rather than
labour that has to be reimbursed.

The interviewed families could generally survive with the little food available. They have
become accustomed to live in poverty and at very low levels of subsistence. Nevertheless,
when promises are made, the various family members start reacting in different ways,
disagreeing on whether to accept the offer, conscious of the risks involved, and, as we
noticed, this can often lead to disagreements and conflicts between spouses, or parents
and their children.

Parental Emotions and Greediness

When it comes to domestic labour, many believe that child domestics come from careless
and greedy guardians. However, in contrast to the general belief parents continue to
worry and doubt their decision. They fear that their child will be beaten, will not get
enough food, or will suffer under a huge workload. The communication with their daughter
is usually extremely limited and the parents are highly anxious about their children’s
wellbeing in Dhaka [Hoque 1995:51].

Parents are commonly indecisive and in disagreement about what to do. They constantly
consider the child’s wellbeing against the hopes for better relations and future benefits.
Unfortunately, no matter how much the parents weigh-up the pros and cons of sending
their daughter to another family, they most often do so form an extremely weak
bargaining position. Due to semi-feudal relations, the request from a rich family for a child
can hardly be rejected without damaging the relationship.

Vulnerability of child domestic workers

In the process of negotiation between parents and employers, capitalist and semi-feudal
labour relations are always involved and complicate the context of domestic work [see
also: [Black 1997:2-3]. Unfortunately, capitalist labour exploitation is hidden behind the
mask of lingering semi-feudal relations. The employer will often simulate informality and
cordiality in order to ‘please’ the parents, but will take advantage of his power over the
girl. Employers tend to feign a parental role and even if complaints reach the parents, the

70
employer convinces the parents that his words, rather than the words of the daughter, can
be trusted.

If the arrangement ends parents will lose not only a financial supplement to their
household, but also a valuable relation with an influential family, which could be vital in
times of crisis. When an employer has agreed to arrange a marriage in the future, in some
cases children may stay in an abusive household until the family’s material needs are
fulfilled. In some cases, when the employer has already given financial support to the
parents, such as medical treatment or a loan, the parents and the daughter are pressured
to fulfil the commitment they made, and the children thus remain trapped in the same
abusive household for a long time. The parents will consciously or subconsciously turn a
blind eye to their child’s complaints. Many girls have internalised this dilemma; they
continue to work in intolerable conditions and stay silent about their sufferings because
they know that any complaints can lead to disastrous effects for themselves and their
families.

Conclusion
The dynamics by which children enter the domestic services have been transformed. Child
domestic labour is increasingly the outcome of capitalist labour relations based on semi-
feudal dependency. The employers seek a reliable household worker in exchange for
money. The rural families, however, hope for an improved living standard by ingratiating
themselves with the wealthier family. Other than their daughters, they have little to offer
the rich families in return.

Despite the significant material scarcity some families can suffer, not to mention the cycle
of debts, parents do not give their children to Dhaka for merely a monthly salary or the
food provided. Accepting poverty as the single explanation to rationalise the decision is
therefore much too simplistic. Parents are aware of the risks involved. While parents care
deeply for their children, they nevertheless uphold the illusion that this arrangement will
bear future fruits for their children and themselves. Thereby, they constantly weigh-up
the child’s wellbeing against the hopes for better relations and future benefits. Thus,
greediness sometimes arises because of deceptions, false beliefs about the relations, and
disillusions about future upwards mobility.

Dependencies of the poor on the rich maintain the supply chain. All interviewed parents
were aware of the possible ‘physical’ risks involved in sending their daughters to the city,
such as trafficking, sexual abuse, overwork, starvation, and physical abuse. However,
children entering domestic labour are not taken away by strangers. Recruiters are usually
considered to be trustworthy by the parents and parents may assume that the risks to the
girls are minimal. Therefore, campaigns that warn parents about trafficking are
ineffective. An extension could be made to the already existing anti-trafficking campaigns
to include warnings against the misuse of social hierarchies and abuse of power, despite
this being a tall order, since it implies a direct confrontation with embedded class
relations in the countryside. Awareness raising must target power holders, and thus

71
potential middlemen, such as NGO workers, LGOs (local government officials), school
teachers, and landlords.

Parents often let their children enter domestic labour because of their concern about the
future dowry of their daughters. Action needs to be implemented at a cultural level
addressing marriage and the abolishment of dowry in rural areas.

An in-depth understanding of social networks and supply mechanisms, as well as the

motivation of parents and middlemen, is crucial for socially embedded and successful
political interventions. This research has identified strong dependency relations in rural
areas, and contradicting ideas and expectations on the supply and demand sides.

Even though efforts by international and national NGOs to stop the supply of children as
household workers have made headway, awareness has been one-sided: priority concerns
raised in TV spots, radio, and other media, ignore the semi-feudal dependency relations of
poor parents with middlemen and employers. The child remains the ultimate victim of this
labour supply based on semi-feudal relations, which continue under the guise of
reciprocity and cordiality.

72
Recommendations

The cases presented in this report all illustrate that poverty is a significant underlying
cause of child labour and that a multi-facetted government intervention – in terms of
economic development, educational provisions and social protection – is a fundamental
precondition for any solution. However, the cases also show how the causes of and
solutions to child labour are manifold and complex, and that policies for poverty
eradication tend to, unfortunately, be too abstract and devoid of reality. More concrete
measures are therefore required. However, these have proven to work well only under
closely monitored and well-resourced circumstances.

Based on our research and analysis, and taking the above into account, we propose the
following recommendations.

1. Poverty-oriented measures, particularly rural programmes aimed at the

prevention of labour migration (of entire families or of children) from the
villages to the cities.

• The solution in the struggle against child labour lies in addressing the root causes,
which have to do with poverty. This requires a social protection system and
alternative income generation programmes, such as food-for-work or rural
employment guarantee programmes, targeting the most vulnerable families in
particular.
• Once these government-financed programmes have taken hold, civil society should
ensure that the most vulnerable families benefit most (as happens with the Rural
Labour Employment Guarantee Programme in India). Locally-embedded civil
society organisations can monitor such programmes and see to it that they also
function as a safety net for broken families and their children. This particular
segment of the rural population is prone to opt for child labour as the only
remaining solution to deprivation.
• The improvement of the educational system in the villages is very much part of
the solution. Village schools and slum schools are often at the tail end of the
educational systems. They cater to the marginalised section of the population, a
section that is presently felt to be redundant to the economy and thus not worthy
of investments.

73
 2. Rural-urban migration, a significant occurrence in many developing countries,
is a major source of urban child labour and needs to be addressed.

• Awareness programmes, informing adults and children about the harsh realities in
city slum life may make the difference, especially if younger children can be
reached through peer campaigns and thus may decide against moving into the
cities, ending up as porters, street traders, restaurant workers, and domestic
workers.
• Awareness raising is not an easy job since many children, particularly in the case
of domestic labour, are contracted though hierarchical structures of dominance
and suffer from the conditions of bonded labour rather than from ignorance. We,
however, have also concluded that parents and children are often unaware of the
harsh reality behind the sweet promises and an information campaign may help to
convince parents not to give in to the pressures put upon them by the village elite.

3. The policy focus should be on local measures rather than on international

trade-related measures.

• Most sectors in which children work are not related to the export of goods or
services. In the few existing cases though, for example in the leather industry in
Bangladesh, the evidence of a direct relationship between child labour and export
is questionable. Export-oriented measures, for both reasons, need to be treated
with caution.
• It is obvious that international pressure, backed-up by the threat of a trade
boycott, has reduced child labour in the formal industries. Where international
attention has been quite intensive, child labour in the much vaster informal sector
has remained unattended and continues on a large scale. Evidence suggests that
workers, who have been removed from export-oriented sectors, now work in
informal sectors. Furthermore the reduction of child labour in the formal
industries has taken place in a qualified way. As the study on girls in the garment
industry reveals, although girls below 14 have been removed from the factories,
girls above that age are working under conditions that do not comply with ILO
norms. Adolescent labour under harmful conditions and intolerable terms thus
continues to be ignored. In this way, the formal garment industry, which also
produces for export, is still very much involved with child labour.
• In addition, the attestation of child labour involvement is complicated by the
intricacies of the relationship between the formal and the informal sectors, in
which child labour is plenty. It will be difficult to attest, for example, if all
exported leather gloves have been produced in formal factories, devoid of child
labour, and that not a single glove has been purchased from the household
industry, through subcontracting or otherwise. It will be even more difficult to
establish that none of the raw materials or semi-finished products were produced
without child labour.

74
• In the fight against child labour, export-oriented and non-export-oriented child
labour should thus not be dealt with separately. For the implementation and
monitoring of national legislation a much bigger inspectorate is necessary in
addition to transparency of production chains.
• In this context, small entrepreneurs should be (financially) supported in order to
be able to implement existing labour regulation within their enterprise. This is
likely to reduce the demand for child labourers, and give an impulse to overall
economical development of the country.

4. Facilitating the access to education and to vocational training for migrant

children

• Schools often do not function properly and poor families, although convinced of
the necessity of education, have a high incidence of dropout. In addition, the
transition to secondary education is often blocked by the remoteness of schools,
the direct fees and indirect expenses, and the social and cultural barriers. In
addition to easing the barriers to education, improving educational quality
(curricula, trained teachers, regular teaching, infrastructure and improved
prospects of a decent job) will help to attract and retain children, in combination
with providing incentives to keep children in school, such as school feeding
programmes [see also: IREWOC 2007].
• All evidence suggests that once children have dropped out of school, for various
reasons, it is cumbersome to get them back into the educational system. A focus
on universal access to elementary education and lower secondary school are an
indispensable component of the anti-child labour movement.
• The children of migrant families, particularly in cases of seasonal migration, will
benefit from (in)formal schools in the vicinity. Some such initiatives have shown
encouraging results, but they still suffer from the overlap of several small
initiatives without much coordination.
• When children, for various reasons, have discontinued regular schooling, an
informal school may be the alternative. Providing them some minimal form of
education, leisure time and social contacts, as we noticed in the case of domestic
labour and of children in the brick kilns, may offer a realistic way out.
• Furthermore, offering vocational training at an appropriate age, in which earning
and learning are combined, can contribute to better future opportunities, and
simultaneously enable them to continue to earn money, so as to fulfil the
expectations of family, and their own desires.

5. Awareness programmes

• All countries have introduced comprehensive legislation against child labour. The
implementation and effectiveness, however, leaves a lot to be desired. One

75
 possible reason is the lack of political will. State responsibility needs to be
addressed and development aid can help to improve the reach of the educational
system and to prioritise public spending to ensure the delivery of social services to
vulnerable households and hard-to-reach children.
• Government monitoring will also benefit from an enlargement and improvement of
the (child) labour inspectorate, with a focus not only on the sectors that have
been under (international) public scrutiny, such as the carpet industry and the
garments industry, but on the entire informal sector as well. The position of girls
specifically needs to be addressed, not only in the informal sector and in the
households, but also in the formal industry, like the garment factories, where they
continue to suffer from general labour and specific gender issues.
• NGO activities will be helpful and effective in raising awareness about child labour
and gender issues, and thus in keeping government administration on the hooks.

6. More research and debate on the risks and harm of work

• It is important to understand where socialisation of children – in terms of

education and light contributions to the household – ends, and where child labour
starts. Many more studies will need to be undertaken in order to document how
such labour damages the present and future interests of the child and of society. A
much more comprehensive research agenda needs to be constructed.
• More research is needed on how labour conditions affect children specifically.
Existing standards are applicable for adults, and fail to take into consideration the
unique physical and mental traits of children at varying levels of development.
• In order to decide whether work (in particular for girls) is harmful or not, non-
economic activities such as household work should also be included in the analysis.
Household work requires a huge investment of time and energy; it doubles the
workload of children. Improving infrastructure in the vicinity (water sources, child
care) would relieve girls from much of their workload.
• In the assessment of the harm done to working children, the context (living
conditions) in which children perform their work needs to be included. The non-
working children (for example, siblings who are too young to be involved in child
labour, but who are given household tasks) undergo the impairment caused by the
environment in which their parents live and work. These non-working children are
exposed to similar risks and dangers, and by becoming accustomed to this
environment from an early age, they are more likely to start working themselves
in similar conditions.
• The best interests of the child should be a leading principle. That principle implies
that it is not always possible to (forcibly) remove the child from labour. This is a
very intricate issue and more knowledge of best practices in such cases is
required. The removal of the child may put the child and the survival of family
members at risk; on the other hand the labour is harmful to the child. If no other
means are available, and the child continues to work – e.g. the girls in the

76
 garment factories, the children moving with their families to the brick kilns, the
domestic labourers – what then are morally acceptable measures? Statements
made from an ethical and political high ground – the complete eradication – or
justified by an ideological defence of the right of the child to work, will not
provide a realistic answer to real conditions.

After adopting Convention 182, the ILO called for the elimination of the Worst Forms by
2016. That target appears beyond the reach of the two countries studied in this report.
However, the evidence collected should motivate a new momentum. More knowledge will
help to strengthen the commitment and boost the world-wide movement aimed at the
elimination of the Worst Forms, while at the same time, and in the same process, continue
to fight all forms of child labour.

77
78
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