Its not childs play

1
Its not childs play

• Forms of child labour in tourism

2
Meet Rajiv...

• 12 year old porter in Nepal
• carries 25kg on a trekking tour
• paid 150 rupees daily (adult wage 250)
• legal working age in Nepal 14 years
• no time to attend school
• thrilled to find an opportunity to help support
  his family

3
Meet Leandro.

• Filipino, 17 years old, waiter and bodyguard
• Left school to look for a job
• Unemployed parents, eight siblings
• Works from 600 pm to 300 am

4
what do children do in the tourist industry?

• Accommodation
• Catering / food and beverage
• Excursions, recreational activities,
  entertainment industry
• Tours and transport
• Producing souvenirs
• Selling souvenirs

5
Accommodation

• Workplaces
• hotels, holiday resorts, boarding houses,
  guesthouses, lodges, bedbreakfast places, rooms
  in private homes laundries and cleaning firms
• Occupations
• receptionist, baggage attendants, bell-boys,
  lift-boys, domestic servants, porters, garden
  hands, cleaners, helpers in laundry and ironing,
  etc

6
Catering / food and beverage

• Workplaces
• restaurants, cafes, teashops, snack bars, beer
  gardens, pubs, bars, beach shacks, street stands,
  itinerant food vending stalls
• Occupations
• kitchen and scullery helpers,
• Dishwashers, water-carriers, cleaners,
  waitresses and waiters, delivery boys, vendors of
  fruit, snacks and ice-creams

7
Excursions, recreational activities,
entertainment industry

• Workplace
• excursion sites, tourist sight-seeing spots,
  sport and beach activities, fitness centres,
  animal shows, circuses, folklore performances,
  casinos, night clubs with go-go-dancing, massage
  salons, brothels
• Occupation
• tour guides, ticket postcard vendors,
  flower-girls, photo models, shoeshine boys,
  beggars, beach cleaners, snake and crocodile
  exhibitors, acrobats, divers for pennies, golf
  caddies...

8
Tour operating and transport

• Workplaces
• travel agencies, airports, train stations, bus
  and taxi firms, excursion and transfer boats
• Occupations
• small handling agents, errand-boys, baggage
  attendants, bus attendants, car washers and
  guards, ship-boys, deck-hands, porters, etc

9
Souvenir production

• Workplaces
• Wood carving and plastic processing, textile
  industry, sewing shops, straw and palm leaf
  manufacturing, shell, coral and mother-of-pearl
  processing, carpet-weaving, tanning, leather
  production, gem industry, precious stones mining,
  etc
• Occupations
• manufacturers of all kinds, shell and pearl
  divers

10
Selling of souvenirs

• Workplaces
• shops, hotel boutiques, stands, itinerant sales
  activities on streets and beaches
• Occupations
• souvenir vendors of all kinds

11
children working in tourist areas

• are mostly behind the scenes. Invisible.
• but, 13-19 million young people are estimated to
  work in tourism (10-15) ILO 1995
• most people dont see them as child labour but
  many are WFCL
• how many?
• we dont know!

12
Child labour is.

• little children (below 12) doing any kind of work
  other than light chores
• children doing a regular job below the legal
  working age (usually 15)
• young people who are in prostitution, drug trade,
  trafficked or forced to work (UnWFCL).
• young people (under 18) who are doing work that
  will hurt them physically, psychologically, or
  morally (WFCL)
• In 2004 218 million child labourers worldwide!

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Children age 5-14 years..
186 million children labour 14 of all children
74.4 million 6.2 of all children are in
hazardous work
14


Youth ages 15-17.
51.9 million youth are in hazardous work
15
Consider the proportionsSexual exploitation is
well-known but more children in other WFCL
16
Impacts on children
17
Push-pull factors for children

• push
• no interest in attending school
• Poor schools, short day
• no sense of future

• pull
• excitement of working in the tourist sector
• possibility of meeting a benefactor
• money in the pocket

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Push-pull factors on employers

• Push
• competition is high, have to lower costs to stay
  in business
• cute children may attract customers

• Pull
• quick to learn,
• show up for work,
• obey,
• little risk few controls are done

19
Effective action at many levels

• International
• International conventions (C182, CRC)
• WTO guidelines and global code of ethics
• wise international lending by World Bank and IMF
• Tourist industry codes of conduct

• National
• ratification of the international conventions
• laws and their enforcement
• compulsory free education
• information to the tourists (Nigerian posters)

• Regional
• NGO / local projects e.g. self help groups
• Awareness raising, lobbying
• Unionization of workers

• Other
• Community monitoring of its children
• Networking, cooperation among NGOs
• Local studies to understand the local issue and
  build consensus

20
Action to eliminate child labour in tourism in
Cape Coast Elmina, Ghana

• Forms of child labour
• - tourist guides
• - sale and production of art and craft
• - entertainment of tourists (e.g. tribal
  dancers)
• - sexual exploitation

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What Ghana has tried

• programmes on local radio and TV to educate
  public that children working in tourism can be at
  risk
• Assist ministry of tourism draft regulations and
  policies on child labour in the industry then
  lobby the local government assembly to promulgate
  appropriate bylaws and adopt policies of
  prevention
• Recruit and train a special task force to provide
  guidance and counselling services to the children
• Set up guidance and counselling centres to
  provide services to children and get them into
  schools
• Select and train families of ex-child workers in
  various skills grant them loans to set up a
  business
• Support the services through contributions from
  tourist-related businesses

22
Achievements

• Indian law

23
Dilemmas

• child work in/for tourists seems innocuous
  should it be banned or monitored?
• to what extent does the work children do to help
  out after school in a tourist area lead to
  UnWFCL?
• who should be held accountable the parent, the
  child, or the client? Are children in court to
  be considered as victims or criminals?
• Is it feasible to try to take children out of
  tourism support workare there too many? too
  scattered? no alternatives for them? where will
  the money come from? How to prevent them from
  going back to work?