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COVID-19 pandemic reversed progress made to eliminate child labour: NGO CRY

'The network NGOs prevented 4,000 kids from child labour in 2020'

child-labour-3 Representational image

As world gears up to observe the World Day Against Child Labour (WDACL) on June 12, it might be just another day for Lakshmi or Babua, though they have certainly been touched by helping hands.

Last year, both Lakshmi, 14, of a slum in Uttar Pradesh, and Babua, a 15 year-old from a tribal village in Odisha, had to discontinue their studies and been pushed to child labour as the COVID-19 pandemic raged.

Coming from families with no financial resources and many mouths to feed, these two teens had to halt their dream of continuing education and join manual work in a fallout of the pandemic-spurred crisis. While Babua started working in a brick kiln near his village, Lakshmi helped her mother earn some extra money through domestic help work.

However, timely interventions by local NGOs supported by CRY (Child Rights and You) brought both the children out of the manual work and put them back to school. Now, Babua and Lakshmi are not only focusing on completing their education, but they have also become role models for other children in their areas.

These examples might underscore the efforts made by small NGOs during the testing times, but are also grim testimonies to how the pandemic has increased chances of children slipping through the cracks and falling prey to the menace of child labour. 

“Going by the numbers from CRY-supported intervention areas across states, in 2020, close to 4000 cases of child labour were prevented or referred for rescue and support. These numbers suggest that even though our collective efforts are on the right track, there’s still a long way to go and fully address the vulnerabilities of children,” Puja Marwaha, the CEO at CRY says.

“With almost no incomes in the pandemic times, if the choice is between feeding empty stomachs and paying off school fees for adolescent children – it’s anybody’s guess what the struggling families will go for,” Marwaha said. 

“Prolonged closure of schools and lack of resources like no smart phones and internet connections, uninterrupted supply of electricity, space to take up online classes etc. to access e-learning have only exacerbated the situation by pushing marginalised children further away from education,” she adds. 

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on child labour are manifold, too, Marwaha says. Though a decade of the RTE-era significantly improved the status of enrollment of children in schools, retention remained a major challenge. Vulnerable children who have been facing long-term detachment from school (due to the pandemic) and helping family by entering the workforce or at home will significantly aggravate the drop-out issue, she says. 

The Child Labour Global Estimates 2020 report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and UNICEF reveals that in Central and Southern Asia more than one-third (35.3 per cent) of children between 5 – 14 years in child labour are not attending schools. In India, as per census 2011 data more than half (51 per cent) of total child labourers within the age of 5-14 years had not been attending educational institutions, she says.

CRY’s experiences from the grass-roots suggest that bringing the dropped out children back to school after a year or more would prove to be extremely difficult. “Over the past couple of decades, it had been a hard battle to ensure that our children are in schools and thus well-protected from being pushed into child labour – it had taken huge efforts, resources, finances as well as changing community outlooks – and we have reasons to be worried that much of the success can go to waste,” Marwaha says.

The report by ILO and UNICEF almost echoes the worry as it states that “The COVID-19 crisis threatens to further erode global progress against child labour unless urgent mitigation measures are taken. New analysis suggests a further 8.9 million children will be in child labour by the end of 2022 as a result of rising poverty driven by the pandemic.” The report further estimates that there are 26.3 millions of children within 5 – 17 years engaged in labour in the Central and Southern Asia. The report also warns that without accelerated action, globally, close to 140 million children will be in child labour in 2025, and 125 million in 2030.

WDACL this year focuses on action under ‘2021 International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour’. A ‘week of action’ will be observed from June 10 to 17 wherein organisations and agencies are expected to strengthen their efforts to address vulnerabilities of children and eliminate child labour. 

On this occasion, CRY has said that governments need to make concerted efforts to improve systems related to children’s education and protection mechanisms and strengthen social security schemes to help families sustain themselves particularly in the backdrop of the pandemic. 

“We need a robust child protection and social security system which has got seriously impacted due to COVID pushing children into labour. Stringent enforcement of the child labour law and the Integrated Child Protection Services Scheme is critical to safeguard children from the impact of the COVID-19, including the fallout of the economic slowdown,” Marwaha says.

She also underscores that the role the Civil Society Organisations (CSO) can play in eliminating child labour, by reaching out to the last mile child and families and help government to deliver the social protection schemes to children and their families. 

(Names of the children have been changed to protect their identities)

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