|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
same old pattern: when kids speak up "inappropriately" groan-ups can't take it |
Current rating: 0 |
by Chuck D
(No verified email address) |
13 Jun 2001
|
|
You might think that adults, seriously bent on ending the oppression of children, would take a close interest in children present [at a recent international conference of adults and younger people on *child labor*,] who had so triumphed over their own oppression as to become articulate advocates for their own cause. You would be wrong. |
It\'s the same old pattern; the hype *understood* is the hype that keeps people fearful and divided EASILY. Any view daring to stand outside of the confines of the prevailing hype (in the mainstream, Left, or Right) gets categorically ignored (when it really counts) and ultimately silenced. So it was for the kids who dared to organize themselves in the 1970s calling themselves Ann Arbor Youth Liberation. They put out 10 YEARS worth of their desires and articulated challenges to *adult chauvanism*, some of which are published here:
www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6904/fpsbk1.html
Did their adults listen? Could they allow themselves to? NOT A CHANCE! Today, we have at least one children\'s UNION, made up of 15,000 child members and led by child members, and they are attempting to once again speak about their experiences and desires (SOURCE: www.motherjones.com). Can groan-ups listen? I\'m TOTALLY skeptical, but i wish the best to the kid labor unions, and hope they LEARN FROM others before them (i.e. the above link) and not be fooled by \"nice\" groan-ups of whatever stripe.
Here are excerpts from the article (by Anthony Swift) which you can read in whole at the url below:
[...]
More conventional delegates who imagined the children might sing a few songs or do a theatrical turn were in for a rude awakening. Attended by government ministers, union and business bosses, representatives of voluntary organizations and international agencies from 30 countries, the Conference launched a formal international debate that will inform the drawing up by the International Labour Organization (ILO) of a new Convention on Hazardous Child Labour, due in three years’ time.
The children’s delegates listened for six hours to statements by Ministers and others before they got their first chance to speak. [...]
‘Nearly all child labour is intolerable and nearly all is criminal,’ contended Neil Kearney, General Secretary of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation, reinforcing his case with a sampling of dire examples of child exploitation. ‘If the agenda of those pushing for action on intolerable forms results in other child labour being ignored I think future generations of working children will never forgive us.’
It was in this context that the children’s delegates gave their countervailing message loud and clear, urging not abolition but regulation. Action should be taken, they said, to eradicate the most pernicious forms of child labour. But, in the absence of a real assault on the root causes of poverty, children had to have the right to work. It was not work but exploitation in the workplace that had to be targeted, and not only that of children. Was it any better to be exploited after the age of 15?
‘We say “yes” to work, “no” to exploitation; “yes” to work, “no” to ill-treatment; “yes” to work, “no” to abuses; “yes” to work, “no” to social exclusion,’ intoned Ana Maria Catin Torrentes (17), of the Movement of Working Children and
Adolescents in Nicaragua.
Romaine Dieng, from the West African Movement of Working Children and Youth, needed no conference to tell her the causes of child labour. ‘The economic crisis, the impact of structural-adjustment programs, unemployment, lack of school and health provision, lack of education, widespread injustice, the chasm between rich and poor, the failure of governments to support working children, and the lack of protection for such children – both girls and boys,’ were among those she reeled off. The many existing laws and conventions guaranteeing children’s well-being had yet to produce any great improvement for the world’s more than 250 million child workers, suggested the children’s representatives. There are laws aplenty – what is lacking is the political will.
For children well schooled in the duplicity of the adult world, promises by politicians of antipoverty and rehabilitation measures are to be weighed not in words but actions.
[...]
Some of the young delegates were furious with reporters and other delegates who used their quotes to portray work as purely dangerous and abusive. ‘That is manipulation,’ said Vidal, of the National Movement of Organized Working Children, in Peru. ‘I want to make it very clear that work is not all bad. I didn’t discover only exploitation in the mines. There were adults who really cared for us. We also had moments of gaiety, making a sport of racing each other in carrying the ore. There was joy in work.’
Such statements deeply troubled certain conference delegates – not least those from trade unions. Some suggested that the children had been ‘coached’ or manipulated by adults, an allegation confounded by their conviction in arguing their cause. Others latched on to a point of apparent disunity; Lidja Pereira da Silva (15), from the National Movement of Street Children in Brazil, differed from her colleagues by supporting a ban on work below the age of 14. However, in their intensive pre-conference deliberations, the children’s delegates had already decided how to deal with this. ‘We don’t all have to think identically,’ they said. ‘Circumstances in Brazil are different and require a different response.’
Other people questioned the young delegates’ right as teenagers to speak for working children. A Tanzanian trade-union leader
who did so was sharply rebuffed. ‘You are here to speak for children,’ responded Vidal. ‘Are you five years old? I dare say
you have not even been a working child. I must tell you that we are elected by working children in our countries to come here.’
Locked into battles with bosses to protect their members’ interests in a context of privatization, downsizing and deregulation,
the unions fear any yielding on child work will be seized upon by employers to open the flood-gates, further undermining the
wages and job security of adult formal-sector workers. The children, on the other hand, need to work if they and their families
are to survive but also see work as a means of being valued by and integrated into society, instead of marginalized into more
criminal activities.
‘Through my work I felt I was part of society,’ said Vidal. ‘I felt responsible and proud that
I was contributing by paying for my education and that of my brothers and sisters.’ Work
should not be the possession of any group, he argued, but a universal right, available to both
children and adults.
‘Children raise questions which are very different from traditional trade-union concerns,’
says Nandana Reddy of the International Working Group on Child Labour, which staged
the First International Meeting of Child Workers in Karnataka last year. ‘They go beyond
issues of wages and working conditions to community concerns and beyond their own
interests to those of all children.’
The children’s delegates spoke in support of ten resolutions hammered out at preceding
local, regional and international meetings of working children (see ‘We, the working children
of the world’). In addition to the right to dignified part-time work, allowing access to leisure and appropriate education and
occupational training, they called for an end to consumer boycotts of the produce of child labour. But they also wanted access
to proper healthcare and demanded that the root causes of their difficulties – primarily poverty – be tackled.
You might think that adults, seriously bent on ending the oppression of children, would take a close interest in children present
who had so triumphed over their own oppression as to become articulate advocates for their own cause.
You would be wrong. Surprisingly few delegates really sought them out. Notable among those who did were Swedish Labour
Minister Margareta Winberg and Carol Bellamy, head of UNICEF, which has played a key role in promoting children’s
participation and organization. But the attitudes of some delegates raised fears that they might pressure the Norwegian
Government not to invite their young counterparts to the next phase of the debate – a conference in Oslo in November,
focusing on implementation. ‘Perhaps some other children should take part?’ suggested a union delegate, possibly referring to
union-organized apprentices.
What the children’s representatives had in common is that their movements are in the very vanguard of promoting the
participation and organization of children of the underclass. The adult resource people who support them – variously known as
volunteers, collaborators and street educators – start from where the children are, in the streets and other workplaces and poor
communities. They offer them what the world as it is structured systematically denies them, as well as their families and poor
communities – respect, companionship and solidarity. They encourage them to form groups to discuss, analyze and find ways to
overcome their common problems and work to reinforce family and community solidarity.
Some working children’s movements already play a vigorous part in local and even national policy-making. Lakshmi’s
movement, Bhima Sangha, has gained representation on the taskforces of five village authorities, producing some substantive
changes in children’s lives. The National Movement of Street Boys and Girls is playing a major role in negotiating the
implementation of children’s legal rights throughout Brazil. Meanwhile the National Movement of Organized Working Children
in Peru has developed a curriculum for working children, established it in a government school and is now negotiating to have
other schools take it up.
Through such interventions, organized children are already helping to produce positive changes in public attitudes and social
provision. Their deliberations are surprisingly mature and scrupulously democratic. The leadership they value is the kind that
facilitates everyone’s participation. Through their organizations children learn to conduct themselves as citizens – and challenge
the adult world to do the same. It is this process that they trust to bring about real social change.
But what is citizenship? ‘It is to be the subject of rights and know your responsibilities,’ said Vidal. ‘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.’
That is the vision that will be shut out if the doors are closed to them in Oslo.
Anthony Swift is a regular contributor to the NI. His book Children for Social Change (ISBN 1-900219-09-3) is available from bookshops or
from Educational Heretics Press, Bramcote Hills, Nottingham NG9 3FQ, England.
URLS:
http://www.oneworld.org/ni/issue292/work.htm
\'We the working children of the Third World propose...\':
http://www.oneworld.org/ni/issue292/simply.html
other youth liberation groups speak up:
www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6904/fpsbk1.html |
See also:
http://www.oneworld.org/ni/issue292/work.htm
|
