How to End Child Labor

 

 

It was a massive international solidarity march in 1999 along the streets of Geneva. Thousands of children and supporters from all over Europe and Asia were there to encourage and support the approval and signing by the world’s nations of the document, “Worse Forms of Child Labor Convention 1999.”

 

I was there with other NGO representatives giving voice to our deep concern for all children and especially the Filipino children that were enslaved in unjust, exploitative labor practices. A huge problem then but an abomination that is still with us today despite the passing of the convention that inspired new child protection laws in the Philippines and around the world.

 

I marched with Filipina activist Cecilia Flores-Oebanda and my friend and fellow child right’s activist Kailash Satyarthi of India who had campaigned and promoted non-violence action against child labour for many years for the children of Asia and in particular India. He was awarded in 2014 the Nobel Peace Prize along with Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan for their work “focusing attention on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.” They promoted the rights of the child to be free from labor and to have an education.

 

At the Preda Foundation, our team had campaigned since its founding in1974 and continues to work to end all child labor especially the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. For that work, we were honoured and recognized by the awarding of four nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and other human rights awards. These have helped to highlight the importance of standing against child exploitation which is the challenge and duty of all persons who recognize the rights of the child not to be exploited and abused and turned into commodities and dehumanized laborers especially as sex workers.

 

Twenty-two years after the convention was passed, we are still rescuing teenage girls from sex brothels and motels, sex traffickers and child sex abusers. The victim-survivors are broken and suffering as their dignity was taken from them. This is symbolized in Geneva by the huge 12 metres (39 feet) high sculpture of the “Broken Chair” in front of the Palace of Nations. It is a sculpture in wood (5.5 tons of it) by the Swiss artist Daniel Berset, made  by the carpenter Louis Genève. It is an ordinary chair with one leg broken that reminded us, as we marched under its shadow of the dark cloud of pain, of the broken lives of victims of violence. A reminder of our duty to always stand for and take action to prevent, rescue and heal the victims-survivors of exploitation and abuse.

 

 The dark cloud of deprivation, loss of education, family care and love and personal freedom and loss of dignity and self-confidence so necessary for the development of a child is taken away when the child is maltreated and abused.   The Philippine nation-wide survey of 2011 revealed that there were 2.1 million children aged five to 17 years of age in labor, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) government survey. This has surely increased today due to the economic decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey showed that 95 percent of them were in hazardous work, 65 percent of these children were aged 15 to 17 years old. Fifty-eight percent were working on farms, the rest divided to working in mines, on the streets, in sex work or as domestic laborers.

 

Every year  Preda Foundation rescued and saves dozens of abused children. In one of several operations four children were rescued from dehumanizing sex work aged 14 to 17 from sex hotels in Olongapo City. One of them, call her Julie, is only 15 years old. She had been groomed by “friendly” traffickers after she had suffered physical abuse and rejection by her mother and brother. She ran away from home and eventually went to stay in the house of the human traffickers who had groomed her and took her to meet male customers- local and foreign sex tourists- and they collected most of the money. One day, she was brought with several other girls to a sex hotel and there was a rescue of the victims by police and social workers and Julie and other girls were brought to the Preda Home for trafficked girl victims.

 

They were shocked at first at the abrupt arrest of their three traffickers who were taken away by the police and charged with human trafficking and put on trial. Julie and the other three children were brought to the Preda Foundation home. They were welcomed with respect and dignity and given personal needs and a nice bed and shower room and new clothes. They had never been treated with respect and their rights were explained to them and the opportunities to study, learn and have therapy to heal from all the abuse they had suffered since childhood.

 

They realized that for the first time in their lives, they were free of the abusive control of exploiting adults. They felt personal freedom and protected. They never had such freedom of choice before. They had medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and were cured.

 

Julie and the others with the guidance of the therapists, counsellors and social workers accepted the opportunity to study, learn and have Emotional Release Therapy. There in the padded therapy room they cried and shouted out all the hurt pains and anger of their lives since childhood. After months of therapy and a happy life in the community where they felt fully accepted, respected and part of a family of twenty children like themselves, they felt stronger, self-confident and empowered. They overcame the fear of their cruel parents and pimps and testified against them in court leading to convictions. They were free from the traffickers for the rest of their lives. Today they are stronger and learning a new livelihood so they can support themselves with a small business helped by the Preda Foundation. These are just a few of the 100,000 or so children trafficked into the sex business every year, according to Unicef. A shocking number of child laborers in the worst form of hazardous exploitation of children.

 

Working together with good people that are determined to end this child labor and with committed government officials that will implement the law, there is hope to greatly reduce the extent of the child labor and exploitation. 

The Most Important of All

There is one day of the year set aside to remind us of the horrible painful truth that there are millions of children around the world working in the fields, factories, brick kilns, construction sites and sex clubs. The clothes we wear, if made in a poor developing nation, are likely to have been made with some form of child labor. The millions of single men on sex tours abuse working children to satisfy their perverted sexual fantasies; it’s a cruel world of exploitation of those declared to be the most important of all in God's family and equal to Jesus of Nazareth.  

Preda Fair Trade organization has campaigned for years to free children from the worst forms of child labor like unpaid slaves in sex bars and clubs. They are in the most hazardous situations where they have to dress in bikinis, pole-dance, be groped, laughed at, molested and be exposed to life threatening diseases and even physical assault. In many bars, they are sold to highest paying sex tourist.  

Beth-ann was given by her father to a distant relative when she was 12 years old and she was never sent to school. Instead, she was turned over to the Mamasan of a sex hotel and brought up there as a sex object for local and foreign men. When rescued by the age of 15 by the Preda social workers, she had the mentality of a 9 year-old, illiterate and unable to relate to adults having been a sex object for most of her life. There are thousands like her in many countries.

She is slowly recovering and trying to live a normal life outside of the sex bar and bravely learning to read and write and finding a new set of behaviors and values. There are thousands like her who are still slaves, working in sex bars with the connivance and licensing approval of local government officials who benefit from the sex industry themselves and frequently are hotel or bar owners.  

Child labor is, in most situations, the evidence of extreme poverty and exploitation of the poor and the marginalized people. The children are offered jobs as domestic helpers in the city, a down payment is made to the parents in a remote village and the children are carried off to the sex bar or brothel. Another destructive form of so called sex-work for young teenagers is making pornography.  Their images are sold live on the internet for pedophiles to view them. It’s a billion dollar business and the children are the work force.

How is it that until 1989, child labor was generally accepted as necessary, desirable even and it took thousands of years for the Convention on the Rights of the Child to be written and passed. I was a delegate to the drafting conference in Helsinki.  Then Convention No. 182 on the worst forms of child labor was written and passed by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and passed as international law by the United Nations in 1999.  I marched through Geneva to lobby the ILO to pass Convention 182. It bans the worst forms of child labor. However, it is still being violated around the world. Millions of children are unschooled and work in every kind of labor situation to help their families survive.

How is it that children have been held in work bondage for thousands of years and forced to work and be sexually abused. What has been forgotten are the extraordinary statements and acts of Jesus of Nazareth in regard to children. When asked who is the most important in the Kingdom of God, Jesus placed a child in front of them and said a child is the most important of all. He gave them the inalienable right and place of greatest importance in God's family.

“The most important in the Kingdom is this child”, he told his followers. “To accept one of them is to accept me”, he said. What an extraordinary declaration made at a time when children were considered the property of parents and as non-persons with no rights and only part of the work force. The Church did not oppose it or declare it as intrinsically wrong or have a dogma about it, despite the practice of child labor being a direct contradiction of the Gospel values and of Jesus himself.

Children were number one in Christianity at the beginning, until the institutionalization of Christianity that is. It took secular society in 1989 and 1999 to recognize the inalienable rights of the child. Sadly, it was not the Church who advocated and established in international law, these rights of the child. Instead, it has a nasty history of child abuse, a contradiction of the teachings of its founder. It is now that Pope Francis and enlightened church leaders and child rights advocates are vigorously undoing that past and trying to make amends for that most unjust and abusive past.

We were all children once and may have memories (or suppressed memories), of childhood hardships, drudgery, hard work and even abuse. We can be happy that we have survived and we can understand more easily the suffering and plight of the millions of children who continue to suffer abuse, illiteracy and life of hard labor. They may not survive.  This we can prevent and undo.

We must draw on the spirit of truth and empowerment and be prophetic, missionary, active in speaking out and defending children and promoting their rights. They are the most important in God's kingdom, (Matt.18.1 -5, Mark 9.33-37, Luke 9.46-48) and have a place of honor that must never be taken away from them. 

Reggie's Flight to Freedom

As if the upheaval,death and destruction of Typhoon Haiyan(Yolanda) was not enough suffering for up to a million survivors human disasters are still ongoing and we are trying to protect children and orphans from  exploiters and traffickers. We sounded the alarm months ago and we are still very active in preventing hurt and healing the victims.

Reggie, 17, a victim of human trafficking from a remote village in Bogo, Northern Cebu, one of the towns badly affected by the most powerful typhoon (Haiyan/Yolanda) in history to hit land. Desperate  for a job to get food for his hungry family and grandmother, he was lured by criminal  human traffickers to join a large fishing boat with six other victims.

After many days of hard work day and night, the fishing boat made land in Batangas port on Southern Luzon Island to sell the big catch. They helped off- load  the fish. To their shock the boys,several of them minors, were not paid but ordered back to the boat. They refused and ran away from these harsh conditions. 

Reggie found his way to Metro Manila after walking for almost two days carrying his few pieces of old clothes in a yellow plastic bucket that was his only possession. He begged for food along the way.

Arriving in Manila, instead of getting help and protection from the authorities, he received additional misery and hardship when he was taken  off the street for being a vagrant and was put into a youth detention prison in Pasay, Metro Manila. There Preda social workers ,rescuing other children, found him behind bars malnourished,hungry and forced to sleep on the concrete floor in an mosquito infested cell that was as hot as a boiler room.

He was left there and forgotten without a legal complaint or charge made against him or a court hearing. Thats  the plight and  injustice suffered by  thousands of children around the country. Our campaign  to change the system is meeting stiff resistance. 

There was no one to listen to Reggie's story or help him. He was left in the jail with other youth,some as young ten years of age in sub-human conditions. Every day, he survived on only a handful of rice and a spoon of vegetables as his daily food.

He felt abandoned, lost and very frightened and threatened by the bigger boys who controlled life in the cells and took most of the food for themselves and made the younger ones wash their shorts and T-shirts and forced them to sexually comfort them.

His day of release was a happy one for him. He almost cried when brought out from detention by Preda social worker Emmanuel Drewery and father Shay and was taken immediately to a restaurant for a good meal as he was famished, malnourished, weak and depressed.

This is the first time I have ever eaten in a restaurant², he told them.

He grew up in an impoverished village in the remote part of Northern Cebu island which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan(Yolanda). It was that extreme poverty that drove him to look for work on the fishing boat where he was put into forced, unpaid labor.

After his rescue, he asked to stay at the Preda Boy¹s home where he was happy and recovered his physical and emotional strength. He joined the  other lucky  forty youths who were also released from horrific unhygienic and psychologically damaging conditions of bare jails and prisons by the Preda Foundation workers. They got a court transfer order by writing to the judge.

They were jailed by police without charges or for what amounts to a misdemeanor like stealing food but greatly exaggerated and made appear to be robbery so the policeman could meet his quota or get a promotion.

Reggie was free and loved to play basketball and go swimming with the other boys there in the no-gates ,no-guards open living home staffed by nursers and social workers. Troubled youths don't rebel when they are respected and properly cared for. Reggie was free of the traffickers but had suffered greatly because of them and the uncaring authorities.

After several months of recovery and rest at the Preda Home for Boys, he was ready to travel home and experience his first ever airplane flight which was a great thrill for him. He went with Mr. Francis Bermido, the Preda Executive director and his assistant director Emmanuel Drewery. Besides attending to the administration of all the Preda projects, they frequently join in the field work and direct and supervise the Preda relief and anti-trafficking training seminars in Tacloban and Palo.

There the Preda education and psycho-therapy team are helping hundreds of traumatized  survivors cope with the greatest natural disaster to hit the Philippines. 

They also distribute thousands of packets of vegetable seeds. to help the small farmers grow food. The greater unnatural disaster is the slew of politicians that are plundering the treasury and stealing the money that could be used to help the victims.

Reggie was thrilled when together, they took a low cost flight on Air Asia and landed in Cebu. Within a few hours of  travel through the wrecked countryside of torn up coconut trees and shattered houses Reggie was happily and tearfully reunited with his family.In the middle of such widespread disaster from the typhoon where the trafficking of children and youth is spreading this is one of several happy endings.

Preda Foundation will provide more help to the family of Reggie to help them recover from the losses to their livelihood and the near destruction of their little house. Thanks to the supporters and donors,better times lie ahead with a scholarship for Reggie to finish his education and get good employment.  

Fair Trade Dried Mangos, A Taste of Justice

I was visiting villages where a new group of small farmers had become members of the ever growing Preda Fair Trade partnership. They lived off mixed farming and mango trees. They proudly showed me some of the benefits of the fair trade payments and dividend bonuses they received for their mango fruits.

Each family had something to show: a new well and hand pumps for clean water, a piggery, a small store, a new metal sheet roof on their small house, and a goat. Their children are going to school and there was no child labor. Simple things, but so important to them. Life had greatly improved because of Preda Fair Trade practices and that is how it should be. With greater social justice in the developing counties, life could be even better for the billion hungry people in the world.

In one village, the Preda fair trade had built a small community center where people could gather and shelter from typhoons and a Preda partner in drying mangos, “Profood”, donated a two-room school.

Junito, a farmer in Mindanao said, "Because of the good price I get from Preda for my mangos, we have better food and my children are going to school. They don't run off to the town where they would fall into bad influence, even though we are poor, we have a decent life". 

That is one of the important unseen benefits that Preda Fair Trade brings - the prevention of child labor and exploitation. Unfortunately, thousands of teenage children, boys and girls in the Philippine islands where Preda has it projects, are lured away from poor, hungry homes with a promise of good jobs and pay as domestic helpers or in cafes and hotels.

When they arrive at the city with a recruiter or person trafficker, they are frequently sold into a sex bar where they are abused and sold to local or foreign sex tourists. The parents of the children do not know where they have gone or they too have been paid money to allow their children to go find the work. Preda social workers save many of these children and provide a safe home with therapy and education, and reunite them with their parents.  

In the Preda Fair Trade partnership, the farmers receive seminars about these dangers and never to allow their children to go with recruiters. Preda has been working in this way since 1975 and implementing agricultural improvement programmes.

Overcoming poverty and hardship is a struggle for the poor and while they work hard to grow the food for the rich and better off people in the towns and cities, they don't get the just reward for their hard work and skills in producing food that keeps everybody else alive. The goal of Fair Trade is to have a fair, living income for the small farmers. Fair trade advocates are challenging this unjust system, trying to make a more fair global trading system.

In a special way, the fair trade importers like DWP and GEPA in Germany and Libero Mundo in Italy have an alternative system. They buy direct from the farmer cooperatives for coffee or mangos though the Preda Fair Trading organization, then supply the products to the network of world shops all over Europe. The shops are managed and operated by dedicated volunteers who are aware and knowledgeable about the situation of injustice and exploitation in the developing world.

The world shops provide a wide range of beautifully presented, fairly traded products to thousands of concerned customers who want to make this a better and more just world and don't want to be part of the exploitation and unfair international trading system.

Not only do these products directly help children in the Philippines but also children in the European countries because of the healthy nature and being free of all chemicals and additives. One third of the children in the UK for example suffer obesity due to unhealthy foods.  

The fresh mangos are delivered by the small farmers to the food drying station Profood and they are paid the fair price. Then under the highest hygienic standards, the mangos are washed, pealed, sliced and dried in ovens. Then they are packaged and shipped to World Shops and supermarkets mostly in Europe.

After some weeks, the Preda producer development officer goes to the area to visit the farmers and gets the records from the Profood drying stations for the number of kilos each farmer delivered and pays them a bonus dividend. Every transaction is recorded carefully to provide full transparency. There is much we can all do to make this a more fair and just world. Buying Fair Trade products helps this cause.

It’s so encouraging to know there are wonderful people involved in this movement and to hear Pope Francis tell the world that the Catholic Church must focus more on social justice, compassion, peace-making and helping victims and the wounded in this world. We can help bind up the world of injustice by doing justice and supporting Fair Trade. It’s helping heal the exploited children too.

Child Labor Provokes Boycott of Philippine Exports

The United States has called for a boycott of a dozen Philippine exports because of the widespread use of child labor in agriculture, tobacco, pig raising, fireworks and the making of child pornography. The United States Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) acting under the US Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005 and 2008 says some Philippines exports should be boycotted by US customers.

This is a devastating blow to the Philippine economy and should never happen but it is a powerful argument for the promotion and adoption of Fair Trade criteria. The US Department of Labor report covers 58 countries worldwide and the Philippines is among the offenders. The report is an indication of the international outrage and concern for the plight of hundreds of thousands of exploited Filipino children. The Philippine Department of Labor (DOLE) says it is doing all it can to stop the abuse. Many of the Filipino ruling elite living in obscene luxury apparently have no knowledge or interest in the plight of the children.

Children work as long as 12 hours a day on banana plantations that are sprayed with deadly pesticides and efforts by church and NGO groups to have them banned has largely been ignored by the powerful politically well-connected tycoons that own most of the export plantations.

While there is much that needs to change, Fair Trade and ethical trading is growing in the country and boosting exports. Philippine Brand and Preda Fair Trade dried mango is what the government should be promoting and customers are buying. They are free of child labor, chemicals and additives and bring great benefits to children and their families. The proceeds help the children of farmers and the victims of abuse.

Fifteen year-old Amabelle was telling her story and being supported and comforted by Maria, the social worker. This safe haven is PREDA Children’s Home partially supported by the sale of Preda Fair Trade Dried mangos. Here, she found a safe haven and protection from her sexual abusers and exploiters. She told how she was brought from her rural village, lured with the promise of a job in a posh hotel but instead sold to a sex club. She owed money for transport, food, board and lodging and would be jailed if she refused to pay. She was forced to dance nude while being video taped. Later she was taken to a cubicle at the back of the sex club and raped.

The horrific abuse was videotaped to be sold and spread over the internet as child pornography. This is nothing unusual, such child sexual abuse is commonplace here with the complicity of corrupt officials who give operating permits to the sex clubs. The uncontrolled flood of foreign and local sex tourists hungry for sex with minors are the big spenders. They enjoy impunity from investigation, arrest, and prosecution. Between January and August this year almost 4 million tourists entered the Philippines, how many of them were single males? This is an increase of 4 % over this time last year according to Tourism Secretary Ace Durano.

According to some critics, the root of the problem is the non prosecution of the suspects due to corruption, bribery and political influence. However there are too few prosecutors due to low pay, huge case work and the failure of police to investigate, gather and present credible evidence against abusers and traffickers. Meanwhile, the children suffer unbelievable abuse in this modern sex slavery.

Foreign governments, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank give millions of tax payers money to the Philippine government for the so called “development projects” much of it is siphoned off by corrupt officials for lavish living.

But little is given to NGO’s providing safe havens and legal assistance to the countless victims of child sexual exploitation especially done by local and foreign nationals. And at what stage is the prosecution of that suspected pedophile, an official of the World Health Organization caught in the act with small boys in his car in Metro Manila? Unless there is an awaking among Filipinos to defend the rights of exploited children, hundreds of pedophiles and sex tourists will continue to abuse minors with impunity.