About the Conference:

The International Labour Organization (ILO) plans to produce a new Convention on Hazardous Child Labour in the year 2000. To help prepare this agreement, a Conference on Child Labour was held in Amsterdam in February 1997.

The aims of the conference were:

• to decide which kinds of child labour are the worst;
• to understand why children work in these jobs;
• to look for ways to stop children from doing these jobs.

People from thirty countries attended the conference. They were:

• government ministers;
• company bosses;
• trade union leaders;
• representatives from international organizations;

and

• eight teenagers who represented organizations of working children in Central and South America, West Africa, and Asia.

These child worker delegates were elected by working children in their own countries. They had their own ideas and opinions about the problems of working children. They did not always agree with the adult delegates, or say what the adults wanted to hear.

THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION: an agency of the United Nations that is concerned with workers' pay and working conditions.

HAZARDOUS (adj): dangerous.

DELEGATE (n): someone who has been chosen to express the opinions of a group of people.

What the adult delegates at the Conference said

Of course, the adults spoke first. Everyone agreed that there must be a definite date for stopping the worst kinds of child labour, but many delegates thought it was important to do more than that.

For example, many of the adult delegates thought that:

• there should be programmes to help the children have normal lives again;
• all young children should go to school and have a good quality education;
• families should earn more money;
• all work for children under the age of fifteen should be banned.

One person who agreed with a complete ban on child labour was a delegate from an international garment workers' organization He said:

"Nearly all child labour is intolerable and nearly all is criminal." If it is not banned, "future generations of working children will never forgive us."

BANNED: not allowed; forbidden.

INTOLERABLE: so wrong that it cannot be accepted.

What the working children at the Conference said

The working children's delegates did not agree with everything the adults said. The working children said:

• the worst kinds of child labour should be stopped;
• there should NOT be a ban on all work for children;
• the real problem is that many people are very poor;
• as long as families are very poor, children must be allowed to work;
• the immediate problem for working children is bad working conditions.

Lakshmi Basrur was the delegate from a working children's organization in India. She explained:

"It is no use to offer us quality education if you will not allow us to work. Our families cannot survive if we do not work. The day should come when children will not need to work. Until then, they should be able to have dignified work and good quality but appropriate education, as well as time for leisure."

Lakshmi also said that before any kind of work was banned, it was important to ask the opinion of the children themselves. If you stop children from working in certain jobs - even very bad jobs - their only choice could be something worse, like crime or prostitution.

DIGNIFIED (adj): receiving respect.

APPROPRIATE (adj): of the right kind.

PROSTITUTION: having sex for money

The adult delegates did not always listen

A few adult delegates really wanted to know about the children's ideas and opinions. However, many of the adults did not listen fairly to what the children said. Maybe they did not listen because they did not want to hear some of the things the children told them.

Trade union delegates, for example, need to protect the jobs of their own adult workers. If children are allowed to work, trade unions fear that companies will employ children and adults will lose their jobs. Therefore it is not surprising if trade unions want all child labour to be banned, and it is not surprising if they do not want to listen to child workers who have a different opinion.

TRADE UNION: an organization of workers formed to help them get what they want.

Working children say work is not all bad

Several of the child worker delegates became angry because some reporters and adult delegates focused only on the bad things that children said about work.

Vidal, the delegate for the child-workers of Peru, started working in a gold mine when he was 12 years old. He spoke out strongly against these adults:

"I want to make it very clear that work is not all bad. I was exploited in the mines, but exploitation was not the only thing I found. There were adults who really cared for us. We also had moments of fun, making a sport of racing each other when we were carrying the ore. There was joy in work."

Work is also important because it can give very poor children a valuable role in their world. Vidal continued:

"Through my work I felt I was part of society. I felt responsible and proud that I was contributing by paying for my education and that of my brothers and sisters."

EXPLOITED: to be treated unfairly for someone else's gain.

EXPLOITATION: unfair treatment of ther people in order to get money.

Child workers are helping themselves

All the child worker delegates spoke in support of the ten proposals for better lives for working children. These proposals had been agreed at the first international conference of working children in India in 1996.

All the child workers represented organizations of working children. These organizations are leading the fight to make the lives of working children better. They are already causing changes. For example:

• Lakshmi's movement is now represented in five village authorities in her part of India;
• The National Movement of Organized Working Children in Peru has written its own curriculum for working children and this curriculum is being used in a government school;
• The National Movement of Street Boys and Girls in Brazil is taking part in establishing the legal rights of working children in Brazil.

AUTHORITIES: the people in charge of a place or an area.

CURRICULUM (n): what you study in a school.

Child workers want to be 'citizens'

The child workers want to be part of their society. They want to be citizens. What does that mean? Vidal explains:

"It is to want to be treated as a member of society, not as a victim of poverty. As citizens we should be respected - whether we are very small kids, working children, adults or old people. Citizenship is the exercise of mutual respect."

MUTUAL RESPECT: respect felt equally by people toward one another .