India's+Position+Paper

This page has been created by Joseba Hidalgo.

Committee: International Labour Organitation Topic: Child Labour Country: India

Child labor in India is a big problem which directly affects the Children's Rigths. It is a serious and extensive problem, with many children under the age of fourteen years old working in different factories making handworks with their little hands, working in mines, etc... The Indian government has said that there are 20 million child laborers in the country, while other agencies say that it is 50 million.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the body of independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by its State parties.

In Northern India the exploitation of little children for labor is an accepted practice and perceived by the local population as a necessity to alleviate poverty. Carpet weaving industries pay very low wages to child laborers and make them work for long hours in unhygienic conditions. Children working in such units are mainly migrant workers from Northern India, who are shunted here by their families to earn some money and send it to them. Their families dependence on their income, forces them to endure the onerous work conditions in the carpet factories.

In the Indian Costitution (1950) there are four politic rules about the Child Labour. They are: No child below the age of 14 years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any other hazardous employment.  The state will assure the health and strenhgt of the children at early ages for not to be abused or forced to hazardous work becouse of needs.  Children shall be given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity atheir childhood protected against the moral or material abandonment.  The state shall endeavor to provide within a period of ten years a education fot the children under the year of fourteen years old.

In 1997, some researches indicated that the number of child laborers in the industry in the district of Kanchipuram in India, exceeded 40,000. This numbers included children who were working as laborers in loom factories. Rural Institute for Development Education Have worked very hard in many activities to improve the situation of child laborers. Working collaboratively, RIDE could finally reduce the number of child laborers to less than 4,000 by 2007. On November 21, 2005, an Indian NGO activist. Junned Khan, with the help of the Labor Department and NGO Pratham prepare a very much big raid for child labor rescue in the Eastern part of New Delhi, the capital of India. This process could finally rescue 480 children from over 100 illegal factories operating in the area of Seelampur.

For the next few years, Junned Khan have done extensive campaigning on the issue of children involved in hazardous labor trying to support the Children Rights, advocating with the central and state governments for formulation of guidelines for the operation and rehabilitation of children affected by child labor. In 2005, after the recovery, Junned Khan, collaborated with BBA, they file presented a petiton in front of the central and state governments trying to rescue the children involved on child labour. For the following years, the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) in India met with the Goverment of Delhi and created an "Action Plan" for the rescue and rehabilitation of the child labour.

Actually, At least 13% of the world's children are working, 94% of those are in the developing world. This scheme of work examines how and why this practice happens and the difference between young people in the UK and India.

Of 12.6 million children in hazardous occupations, India has the highest number of labourers in the world under 14 years of age. Although the Constitution of India guarantees free and obligatory education to children between the age of 6 to 14 and doesn't allow the employment of children younger than 14 in any hazardous environment, child labour is present in almost all sectors of the Indian economy. Companies including Gap, Primark, Monsanto , etc... have been criticised for using child labour in either their operations in India.

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