4) Every Day More Children Go to Work
By Néfer Muñoz and Abraham Lama

SAN JOSE/LIMA, May 6 (IPS) - An estimated 17.4 million children and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean must work in order to help feed their families or to survive on their own, says the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

A new ILO report released Monday, "A Future without Child Labour", states that less than 50 percent of child workers complete primary education, and less than 20 percent finish high school. The vast majority lack any possibility of continuing education at the university level.

The international community has engaged in an intense campaign, promoted by the ILO, to eliminate child labour, an effort that began in earnest in 1989 with the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

According to the ILO, child labour is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. The existence of child labour perpetuates poverty across generations, slowing economic growth and social development.

The Geneva-based ILO released its global report on child labour simultaneously Monday in several cities around the world, including Lima and San José, as part of its follow-up on the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

In Latin America, 50 percent of the boys and girls who are employed work in the agricultural sector.

On the South American continent, the country with the highest proportion of minors in the labour force is Paraguay, with nearly 40 percent of children under 15 working, while the lowest rate is in Chile, where just 1.9 percent of children work.

Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru share the second worst record, with 20 percent of their children having jobs, while in the rest of the South American countries the rate ranges from eight to 14 percent of children under 15 in the labour market.

The ILO report states that 246 million children ages five to 17 work worldwide, including 179 million who are engaged in tasks that are dangerous to their physical, mental or moral well-being.

"In other words, one in every eight children in the world are exploited in the worst forms of child labour," said ILO director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Agustín Muñoz in Lima.

In Central America and the Dominican Republic, meanwhile, a total of approximately 2.4 million children under age 15 work, which is an offence against their right to education and recreation, said the ILO representatives Monday in the Costa Rican capital.

In six Central American countries and in the Dominican Republic there is more than one child worker for every five children under 15.

Children's rights activists gathered in San José to express their concern about the situation in Central America and urged the region's governments to take immediate and concrete action to halt child labour, which has seen a dramatic increase since 1993, when the total was 1.5 million girls and boys.

The Central American governments are concerned about the magnitude of the phenomenon, but "it is no secret that child labour represents a complex problem," said ILO director for Central America and the Dominican Republic, Enrique Bru, a Uruguayan national.

Several international conventions define child labour as work performed by minors under age 15 - who in Central America number more than 12.7 million - and as an offence against children's and adolescents' right to education and recreation.

In six countries of Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama) and the Dominican Republic, the ILO calculates that 2,456,902 children hold a job, said Bru.

The figure is based on preliminary studies that are still under way in the region. Belize, although located in Central America, is not included in the research.

The numbers announced Monday show a marked difference with the ILO's estimates of nearly a decade ago, in 1993, when it estimated there were 1.5 million children working in those countries.

"We do not know if this change represents a considerable increase or if we have improved our counting systems," said Carmen Moreno, an expert from Spain who is the regional coordinator of the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

"The Central American country that causes greatest concern is Guatemala," said Moreno. There, 23 percent of the children, or 937,321 boys and girls, have a job.

Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the United Nations. In the last few years, its 12 million inhabitants - and the children in particular - have suffered the consequences of drought and hunger, on top of social inequalities.

Farming, handling toxins, manufacturing fireworks, scavenging in garbage dumps, work in construction, fishing and markets, and victims of the sex trade are the areas in which most child workers can be found in Central America and the Dominican Republic, according to the ILO.

These sectors subject girls and boys to conditions that are very dangerous.

"Undoubtedly, the major employer of children is agriculture. The bad part of farming is not the work itself, but rather the difficult conditions the children face and the long workdays," said Moreno.

After Guatemala, Honduras has the highest incidence of child labour in Central America, with 484,305 minors working (21 percent of the population under age 15).

Next comes the Dominican Republic, with 470,436 child workers (18.9 percent); El Salvador, 185,283 (17 percent), Nicaragua, 182,333 (13 percent), Costa Rica, 147,087 (15.4 percent), and Panama, with 50,137 child workers (6.6 percent).

"Hearing those figures is like being hit by a heavy blow," said the Children's Defender (Ombudsman) of Costa Rica, Mario Víquez. In many cases, he pointed out, child workers not only work extensive hours, but they also suffer discrimination in wages.

According to the Children's Defence Office of Costa Rica, working minors aged five to 12 receive just 12 percent of the minimum wage, those aged 12 to 15 receive 27 percent, and those 15 to 17 receive 47 percent of the minimum wage.

ILO Convention 138, adopted in 1973, establishes 15 as the minimum working age (14 in Latin America), and Convention 182 bans what it defines as "the worst forms of child labour". All Central American countries have ratified both conventions or are in the process of doing so.

Central America's major challenge is to implement the laws and take concrete actions to guarantee children their rights to education, recreation and development, said Costa Rican children's rights official Alberto Quiñones.

Meanwhile, 10 countries of South America - in addition to making the commitment to progressively eliminate child labour - have agreed to take part in IPEC, an alliance of more than 90 donor and recipient countries.

The ILO's definitions of child labour take into account local and cultural circumstances, as well as the desire of parents to contribute to the training and education of their children, allowing them to carry out certain types of work that the ILO considers admissible.

"Millions of children around the world perform legitimate work, remunerated or not, that are appropriate to age and level of maturity. By working they learn to take on responsibility, acquire training and help their families," Muñoz said.

However, working minors too often suffer abuse and dangerous working conditions, he admitted.

6) Lead Poisoning Is Not Child's Play
By Mario Osava - Tierramérica

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 1 (IPS) - Children in Latin America can no longer play freely on the ground, say health and environmental experts, pointing out that industrial waste has contaminated the soil, with lead in particular poisoning their blood, causing stunted growth, deafness and mental disabilities.

A study by the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) conducted in the mid-1990s found that the concentration of lead in the blood of Latin American children in urban areas of several countries averaged 15 to 20 percent higher than the limit of 10 micrograms of lead per decilitre (10 ug/dl), established by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Lead is one of the most dangerous threats to children's health, says the WHO. Every day, 5,500 children worldwide die of illnesses related to environmental pollutants.

The main source of lead contamination in cities is leaded fuel, particularly gasoline used by motor vehicles. But exposure to the lead used in several types of industries (mining, paints, ceramics, batteries) is increasingly common, and these hotpoints of contamination are sometimes not discovered until years or decades later.

Such is the case of the neighbourhood of La Teja, in Montevideo, Uruguay, which in the last century was home to foundries, metal workshops and various industries, most of which have been shut down as a result of a series of economic crises.

Two years ago, a child from La Teja was found to have more than 30 ug/dl of lead in his blood, three times the limit set by the WHO. Later, numerous other cases of lead poisoning were found in that neighbourhood, in other districts of the capital, and in other Uruguayan cities.

The community affected by the lead contamination launched a broad mobilisation to demand answers from the authorities, but ended up in a clash with the government.

Of the approximately 7,500 children examined, the Health Ministry only recognises a few hundred cases: those with more than 20 ug/dl.

The government "still does not have concrete data about the number of people affected," Raquel Rosas, a director at the Public Health Ministry, told Tierramérica.

There is no reliable information about the true scope of lead poisoning among children in a given area, and the levels of exposure vary dramatically from country to country. Measurements made by PAHO in the mid-1990s ranged from concentrations of 3.4 ug/dl in Trinidad and Tobago to as high as 28.8 ug/dl in Ecuador.

Peru, the world's fourth exporter of lead, is one of the most contaminated countries, largely because there is a lack of appropriate environmental standards or prevention measures, say experts.

In several areas of the mining town of Oroya, 150 km east of Lima, the blood of 13 of every 30 children under age three is contaminated with at least 42 ug of lead per decilitre, according to a study conducted in July by toxicologists from the U.S.-based Columbus Children's Hospital.

There are 2,000 children age two whose future is threatened, but the Peruvian authorities have yet to impose stricter environmental standards on the mining industry.

Lead penetrates the body through inhalation, ingestion or through the skin and is more harmful to children because the metabolism of a child absorbs the lead more readily than does that of an adult.

Furthermore, children are more exposed because games and play tend to put them in greater contact with the contaminated ground.

In 1998, Peru's Health Ministry acknowledged that 5,000 children living near the mining areas in the port city of Callao registered 20 to 40 ug/dl of lead in the blood. Nearly 100 percent of the 350 students at the María Reich public school have more than 40 ug/dl.

A mobilisation led by Ida Ballasco, mother of two children with lead poisoning, convinced the city of Callao to close six mining installations that did not comply with standards for preventing contamination of the surrounding areas.

In Brazil, the authorities of the southern city of Baurú closed the Ajax battery factory in January because it violated environmental laws. In April, the first cases of lead poisoning were found.

Of 860 children living within a one-km radius of the factory, 301 surpass the WHO limit of lead in the blood, Jaira Rocco Kirchner, director of the city's mobile health units, told Tierramérica. The 22 who registered more than 30 ug/dl were hospitalised. All will be subject to medical observation and follow-up over the next 10 years.

A major challenge facing neighbourhoods like Tangarás, in Baurú, is how to decontaminate the soil. Under consideration is the removal of the surface layer, where the lead particulate is concentrated, but then the problem is how to store such a large volume of contaminated soil.

The situation is worse in the slum settlements of La Teja, in Uruguay, where the ground has 3,000 to 15,000 parts lead per million units of soil (ppm).

Acceptable limits in industrialised countries like Canada and the United States range from just 140 to 400 ppm, says Luis Lazo, director of environmental development for the Montevideo municipal government.

"Nobody should be living in those parts of La Teja," comments Lazo.

At the first Summit of the Americas, held in the U.S. city of Miami in 1994, the presidents of North and South America declared that lead poisoning among children was a serious public health problem and agreed to eliminate leaded gasoline by 2000.

To date, 15 countries have eradicated or dramatically reduced the lead in fuel (Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil were the pioneers), but few regulate the handling of industrial waste, which often ends up contaminating the ground where children play.

(IPS correspondents Abraham Lama/Peru and Diana Cariboni/Uruguay contributed to this report.)

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7) Sexually Exploited Boys Often Forgotten, Activists Say
By Suvendrini Kakuchi

YOKOHAMA, Japan, Dec 20 (IPS) - Saman (not his real name) was 12 years old when he was lured into becoming the sex partner of a foreign man living in a large house in a famous beach resort in Sri Lanka .

''I first went because I was offered work by the man who wanted me to weed the garden. A few weeks later I was seduced by my master in his swimming pool,'' he later told a counselor.

''I kept seeing him because I could send money to my mother, who was working alone to support my five siblings and also because he showed me a lot of love and affection,'' he added. Saman is one of the estimated 30,000 male children in Sri Lanka known as ''beach boys''.

Often, they get money or material goods in return for sex -- and this has become an integral part of the sexual services in tropical tourist destinations across the globe.

Experts who met at the Second World Congress for the Commercial Exploitation of Children, which ended Thursday, report that the number of male children working as prostitutes, beggars or cheap labour is growing. The issue of child soldiers, as young as eight years old, is another form of male child abuse, they add.

But experts also point out that the sexual exploitation of boys was often sidelined at the high-profile international conference, where the focus was more on the sexual exploitation of girls, since most of the time they are most affected by sexual abuse.

''Statistics for abused boys are hard to come by, but definitely, there is an urgent need to address this gender problem because boys must be protected,'' says Irwanto, an Indonesian researcher on street children at the Centre for Societal Development Studies at Atma Jaya Catholic University.

Most of the huge number of reports presented at the conference here detailed research on girls, and referred to boys under the general category of children.

The lack of a workshop to discuss male victims - there were more than 100 workshops in the four-day conference -- is also a telling example of the haziness covering the issue, they say.

''Indeed, girls need to be protected as they are the main victims in sex crimes. Violated boys, however, also suffer severe trauma,'' says Guy Thompstone, a training coordinator at End Child Prostitution and Trafficking of Children (ECPAT), a non-governmental organisation and co-organiser of the Yokohama conference.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are 250 million working children, between the ages of seven to 14 years, around the world.

Boys comprise the majority of those in bonded labour, drug trafficking, and other types of hazardous work that put them under constant threat of harm and even death.

Experts say the overwhelming number of street children are boys. They are often forced to beg and peddle drugs or act as pimps for girls. Widespread cases of sexual abuse and violence by their peers and exploiters have been recorded.

''In most societies, there is a lot less sympathy for boys. The macho culture expects them to be strong and not express emotions easily even after they are abused,'' says Irwanto, who uses only one name.

There is no gender disparity between the causes of the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, say activists and experts who attended the Yokohama congress.

Male children, like girls, belong to poor families, seek work to support their families, and are illiterate.

Thompstone, who has worked with boys in Britain, his home country, says that street children in developed countries are also not that different from their counterparts from the South. They belong to poor and dysfunctional families, and some children are from refugee families.

However, boys make most of their money from soliciting drugs on the streets, followed by prostitution. They are solicited into homosexual communities, which encourage them to depend on goods and presents in return for sexual services.

Thompstone says boys, some as young as 12 years old, are vulnerable to health risks as a result of their sexual abuse and exploitation. Not least, some suffer physical damage as a result of forced sexual encounters.

According to counselors, another gender difference is boys tend to be more aggressive and enter into risky sexual behaviour, a trait that puts them at a disadvantage compared to their female counterparts.

Likewise, they are more likely to face harsher abuse by police officers who would arrest and put them in prison for crimes -- instead of seeing them as victims and sending them into rehabilitation programmes like the girls who are sexually exploited, says Thompstone.

Parvin Patkar, director of an anti-trafficking centre in Perana, India, says the number of boys in the red light districts of India is increasing. India is also recording the trafficking of male children to the Middle East to work as camel jockeys.

Says Patkar, ''There is a demand for boy prostitutes from both foreign and local clients. What is sad is the lack of rehabilitation programmes to suit their particular needs.''

A paper on the trafficking of Albanian children to Italy, released during the Yokohama meeting, cites that a 1998-99 investigation into 600 cases that showed 80 percent of the trafficked children were boys.

A report on China by the non-governmental group Save the Children indicates mostly boys under seven years old are trafficked for adoption - because of the desire for sons -- while young women are abducted to become brides for Chinese bachelors in towns and villagers.

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8) Consensus on Fighting Child Sex Exploitation Grows Wider
By Johanna Son

YOKOHAMA, Japan, Dec 20 (IPS) - Governments, activists and young people on Thursday widened the international consensus on fighting the sexual exploitation of children, by reaffirming their commitment to ''all forms'' of the problem at the close of a world congress here .

Unlike other big conferences, the Second World Congress against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was not a negotiating summit. Instead, its 3,045 participants adopted by consensus a ''global commitment'' that goes further than the issues tackled at the first congress five years ago.

''We reaffirm, as our primary considerations, the protection and promotion of the interests and the rights of the child to be protected against all forms of sexual exploitation,'' said the document.

"Sexual exploitation is like a virus. If you expose it to heat and light, it will die -- and we need to do this,'' said Bruce Harris, executive director of Casa Alianza, based in Costa Rica.

''We now understand the scale of the problem and the complexity of the issues, and the scope of our work has to expand too,'' said Mehr Khan, Asia-Pacific director of United Nations' Children Fund (UNICEF).

''We expect action and implementation,'' said a Filipino youth participant, John Maraquinod. ''There is only one way to go now - and that straight forward,'' said a statement by young people at the conference, attended by 134 governments and 148 non-government groups.

''The good side is that from Stockholm until now, the issue has come out more in the open,'' said Thai law professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, rapporteur for the conference. But more vigilance and joint action is needed because ''commercial sexual exploitation of children mutates and intensifies''.

The Stockholm congress focused on describing the problem, especially the child sex trade and sex tourism. But those at the Yokohama meeting redefined the sexual abuse of children by including other, non-commercial aspects of sexual exploitation - from abuse in the family and early marriage to trafficked youngsters.

The Dec.17-20 conference also touched on issues that allowed deeper discussion of child sexual abuse as well as traditionally taboo issues -- cultural practices that lead to it, links to globalisation and consumerism -- and causes that can be traced to lack of education, poverty, conflicts, discrimination.

''This addresses some of the root causes of exploitation. Some of the exploitation has a commercial side, some do not, so this includes the experiences we young people have gone through,'' said Cherry Kingsley, a survivor of the sex trade who now campaigns for children's rights.

''This started mainly as an issue of sex tourism, by foreign tourists,'' recalls UNICEF's Khan. ''But this congress has gone beyond sex tourism.''

Ron O' Grady, founder of the non-government End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT), agrees that it is time to go beyond the sexual abuse of children by foreign tourists.

''This really emerged out of Asia, and that was the trigger years ago, given the number of western men sexually abusing children in the region,'' O'Grady said in an interview.

''We are going to have that word 'commercial' in 'commercial sexual exploitation' eventually disappear,'' he said. ''It's not a bad thing.''

Others said there has been too much focus on sex tourism, which has been discussed here as but one aspect of the sexual exploitation of children.

''We need to progress faster than we have now,'' explained Marc Verwilghen, Belgium's federal justice minister. ''We have had Europeans and African countries saying they face problems of sexual exploitation that have nothing to do with the commercial aspects.''

The EU issued an ''explanatory declaration'' on the Yokohama commitment, stating that ''the fight against sexual exploitation is extended to all forms of sexual violence and sexual abuse''.

The EU also asked countries to ratify legal instruments for child rights protection like the Convention on the Rights of the Child -- remarks directed toward the United States, which together with Somalia, are the only countries that have not ratified it.

The United States did not have much of a voice at the conference, where its role was often cited for Washington's failure so far to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Washington's explanatory statement said it joined the Yokohama consensus, but expressed some reservations about the decriminalisation of acts related to prostitution. The global commitment document exhorts states to fight the criminalisation of the sexual exploitation of children ''without penalising the child victims''.

The EU and other activists also batted for getting more countries to recognise child protection for people up to 18 years of age, separating it from the question of age of sexual consent. This was also discussed five years ago, but did not progress much here and remains a matter of debate.

Verwilghen said there are also other legal areas that could be raised for international discussion, such as having the concept of extraterritoriality of sexual offenses as the norm and the lifting of the prescriptive period during which victims can bring such cases to court.

Other aspects of sexual exploitation discussed here included an increase in the trafficking of children for different purposes, the misuse of technology, especially the Internet, for exploitative purposes. ''We need to humanise this technology,'' Vitit said.

''The implementation process (of efforts against exploitation) is particularly challenged by five 'Cs' which often obstruct the effective guarantee of child rights: Crime, Corruption, Collusion, Clientilism and Complacency,'' he pointed out.

But some said that despite this week's added commitments, governments and campaigners must not forget the fact that only some 50 of the 122 governments in Stockholm have produced plans of action and many have not been able to comply with pledges made there.

''No more empty promises,'' said Raffaele Salinari of the NGO Group for the Convention of the Rights of the Child. ''We need a political commitment beyond world congresses.'' Young people meantime said they have noticed much more participation for them here, but some said they had expected more of it. ''In a way we were just a mere presence here. We have to have more opportunity to voice our opinions,'' one Japanese young person said.

''Commercial sexual exploitation of children cannot be fought by adults only,'' said April Rose Chiong, a 14-year-old participant from the Philippines. ''They need the cooperation of children and young people.''