Grassroots Activist Made Ending Child Labour Global Cause

Kailash Satyarthi credited with freeing 75,000 bonded and child labourers

Washington -- Kailash Satyarthi has freed more than 75,000 bonded and child labourers since 1980.
Using children for cheap labour was commonly accepted in India when Satyarthi began his campaign against it in the 1980s. Children often are treated like slaves, abused and sometimes not paid for long hours of work. Satyarthi and a handful of dedicated people raided employers to rescue children from bondage. They protested in the streets. They built rehabilitation centers to give former child labourers a chance.

For that work and his activism in focusing attention on forced labour, Satyarthi, a 53-year-old former electrical engineer in India, is among the recipients of the 2007 State Department’s Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery award.

Satyarthi’s activism started a movement that today has millions of supporters. The International Labour Organization adopted Convention No. 182 on the worst forms of child labour, now a principal guideline for governments around the world, largely because of his work.

Satyarthi, an electrical engineer from Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, began his drive against child servitude in 1980, with the founding of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement). Initially, he organized workers in the quarries and brick kilns of northern India.  Satyarthi, who puts grassroots involvement at the center of his work, networked with advocacy groups in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and founded the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude in 1989.

Raiding factories that employ forced labourers and organizing protest marches to advocate laws against child labour and trafficking have characterized his work from the start. The 1998 Global March against Child labour, which Satyarthi organized, drew 7.2 million participants across 103 countries. In 1999, he began the Global Campaign for Education, which links national and international nongovernmental organizations to promote universal education.

“Now people realize education is key to their liberation; education is key to their human rights and key to their poverty eradication programs,” Satyarthi told USINFO in April, while in Washington on a tour promoting universal education. “Education is a fundamental human right,” he said. (See related article.)

Concerned about the increased number of children trafficked for forced labour, Satyarthi led the South Asian March Against Child Trafficking in March 2007, a monthlong march across the Indian, Nepal and Bangladesh borders to raise awareness and call for regional commitment to counter a practice that deprives children of education, normal childhood and often places them in dangerous environments, including the sex trade.

Bachpan Bachao Andolan runs three “transit” rehabilitation centers for rescued boys and girls in India to help them enter the mainstream and lead constructive lives. Younger children are enrolled in school and adolescents are given informal literacy and vocational training. Once they acquire confidence and skills, former child labourers are reintegrated into society. Legal aid is also provided for victims.

Satyarthi also pioneered bringing social consciousness to the marketplace when he founded RugMark, an organization that offers voluntary “child-labour-free” certification of carpets and runs facilities that rehabilitate children rescued from servitude and keeps them out of the workplace. Now internationally recognized, the label appears in many upscale retail establishments.

“Mr. Satyarthi has worked relentlessly to free bonded children, to rehabilitate them with vocational training and education, and tilted the force of public opinion against child labour,” the State Department citation said.
The 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report is scheduled to be released on June 12.

For additional information, see 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)