Yes­ter­day we pre­sented a story that had good news about child labor in Asia. Today how­ever a new report from Save The Chil­dren presents a dif­fer­ent pic­ture for the African coun­try Cote D’Ivoire.

Save The Chil­dren says that ris­ing poverty in Cote D’Iviore is forc­ing more chil­dren into labor, some­times in unsafe, or dif­fi­cult con­di­tions. The inter­na­tional NGO esti­mates that one quar­ter of all chil­dren in the coun­try are working.

From IRIN, we read more about the report and the lives of chil­dren in Cote D’Ivoire.

Sharply ris­ing poverty is caus­ing exploita­tive child labour to increase says NGO Save the Chil­dren in its report “It’s there it’s dif­fi­cult: exploita­tive child labour in Côte d’Ivoire,” launched today.

It is esti­mated that one quar­ter of all chil­dren work in Côte d’Ivoire and eight out of 10 of them are exploited accord­ing to the gov­ern­ment. Harm­ful activ­i­ties include sex work, cut­ting down trees, burn­ing fields, climb­ing trees to col­lect palm oil, car­ry­ing heavy loads, work­ing as unpaid domes­tics or mar­ket ven­dors far from their families.

With a dete­ri­o­rat­ing econ­omy and shrink­ing gov­ern­ment ser­vices, more of these chil­dren end up work­ing, says Save the Chil­dren. Country-wide the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing on less than US$1.25 a day has risen from 10 per­cent in 1985 to 49 per­cent in 2008, accord­ing to the World Bank.

Most chil­dren forced to sell sex to sur­vive in Abid­jan told local NGO Cavoe­quiva they were brought to the cap­i­tal by rel­a­tives or fam­ily friends. Côte d’Ivoire, along­side many West African coun­tries, has a long-standing prac­tice of fam­i­lies send­ing their chil­dren to rel­a­tives in towns to be schooled or find work or apprenticeships.

Save the Children’s child pro­tec­tion adviser Mark Canavera told IRIN: “The prac­tice of rel­a­tives tak­ing care of chil­dren or using chil­dren for light, legit­i­mate labour have changed and become more exploita­tive as poverty increases.”

The report stud­ies child labour prac­tices in 18 Mon­tagnes region in the west and in the Adjamé neigh­bour­hood of Abidjan.

Rural risks

In 18 Mon­tagnes – the country’s pri­mary cocoa-producing area – chil­dren have tra­di­tion­ally helped their fam­i­lies in the fields, partly as a means of learn­ing how to farm, says Save the Children.

But with rural poverty increas­ing and cocoa prices still rel­a­tively low, farm­ers have to pro­duce more to sur­vive and are forc­ing chil­dren to work longer hours, the report says.

In Doutrou vil­lage, 50km from Man, cap­i­tal of 18 Mon­tagnes region, vil­lage chief Kucsa Benoila told IRIN: “When we returned to start plant­ing we all had to work twice as hard…even now our cocoa plan­ta­tions are not yet up and run­ning again.”

Rec­om­men­da­tions

Local NGOs have called on inter­na­tional NGOS and the gov­ern­ment to set up more care cen­tres to sup­port chil­dren forced to live and work on the streets.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Chil­dren recently com­pleted a study to iden­tify the strengths and weak­nesses in Côte d’Ivoire’s pro­tec­tion infrastructure.

Some exist­ing gov­ern­ment ser­vices could be extended to work­ing chil­dren, the report sug­gests, such as the accel­er­ated learn­ing pro­gramme for chil­dren and youths whose school­ing was inter­rupted by conflict.

Build­ing up a wider child pro­tec­tive sys­tem involves improv­ing prac­ti­cal ser­vices – such as med­ical help and care cen­tres – eco­nomic sup­port, for instance giv­ing micro-credit loans to farm­ers, and build­ing up the legal sys­tem, said Save the Children’s Canavera, who points out that the Min­istry of Fam­i­lies must involve other ministries.

Thus far, he said the employ­ment and jus­tice min­istries are “show­ing some interest”.

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