LAUNCH OF INITIATIVE TO ELIMINATE CHILD LABOR

Ministry of Enterprise & Employment
October 3, 2005

I am pleased to be here today to participate in the joint launch of these child labor projects, together with Minister Dlamini, senior officials of the ILO and Ministry of Enterprise and Employment, as well members of the media and concerned stakeholders.
 
According to ILO estimates, there are 250 million children between the ages of five and 14 who work.  Roughly 120 million of these work full-time and many are exploited to the detriment of their physical, moral and intellectual development.  
 
Children over the world work in unsafe conditions in mines, garment factories and agriculture, where exposure to dust and pesticides can wreck their health.  They work as domestics and prostitutes, subject to the whims of and abuse by those who control them.    
 
Not all work is harmful to children, and certainly one can argue that limited exposure to the world of work can be beneficial to young people.  However, many children who work – even in otherwise tolerable conditions -- sacrifice their education and adult career goals to the immediate need to support themselves and their families.    
 
Child labor, when it comes at the cost of a child’s well-being, development, or education, not only harms the child but impacts the economic development of its country.   The value of investment in children’s education has been documented in numerous studies.  The U.S. Department of Labor surveyed 162 research studies, covering 70 countries and all levels of development.  
 
Eighty-seven percent of these studies showed that a typical worker with a primary education earned more than sufficient funds to repay the costs of their school.  Social benefits with regard to education of children have been shown to include everything from
greater political participation, reduced criminal activity and lesser dependence on social support programs, to increased life expectancy.   
 
Economic benefits also exist, as evidence suggests that greater investments in education lead to greater economic growth, which provides financial support for yet greater investments in education.  On an individual level, increased education should result in
increased productivity, leading to better job opportunities and higher wages. 
 

USG Commitment to Eliminating Child Labor We have a joint interest in safeguarding the welfare of children, who are the future of our nations.  As the US government, we also want to ensure and assist our trading partners are making progress to reduce child labor.
 
To this end, the U.S. Department of Labor is funding projects around the world to eliminate the worst forms of child labor and to reduce the level of child labor by assisting children to remain in school.  

Child Labor and Swaziland We are here today to launch two of these projects:
one Towards Eliminating Child Labor (TECL), and another on Reducing Exploitative Child Labor in Southern Africa (RECLISA).   Both of these projects are regional, allowing lessons learned in one country to be transferred to another.  Both are funded by the U.S. Department of Labor.
 
The government of Swaziland has recently started a national process towards formulating an Action Program of the Elimination of Child labor (APEC). This process is coordinated by a national Program Advisory Committee on Child Labor (PACC), chaired by the Ministry of Enterprise and Employment as lead department. Organized business and labor as well as civil society organizations are represented on this committee, as well as various
departments.

Two conventions form the backdrop to this process: the United Nation's Convention of the Rights of the Child and the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, both which Swaziland has ratified.

The TECL project uses progress made in South Africa as its model, and has as its ultimate goal the development of a comprehensive country strategy to address child labor issues, much as has been done in the Child Labor Action Program in South Africa.  Such a comprehensive approach identifies all the factors that contribute to child labor, from
infrastructure issues that require a child to walk for hours to fetch drinking water for the family to education issues such as a family’s need for subsidized school fees.   
 
The RECLISA project focuses on keeping at risk children in school and identifies those at risk.  Working with NGO’s, the project endeavors to find places of safety for children who have lost their homes, and providing counseling and guidance to assure that children are able to remain off the streets.     
 
Conclusion 
We very much appreciate this opportunity to work with you to ensure that the children in these programs have a chance to reach their potential.    They are our future.

For your information:
Southern Africa Worst Forms of Child LaborImplementing partner: ILO-IPEC
5,000,000.00  (regional program)2003 (multi-year program)

Implementing partner: American Institutes for Research Combating Exploitive Child Labor through Education 9,000,000.00 (regional program) 2004 (multi-year program) under the Child Labor Education Initiative.