Within a year's time, since the inception of the office of
ICCLE in Washington, D.C., the following issues have been
addressed with a certain measure of success:
UN Financing for Development Conference
Presenting the Global March position on the 0.7% of GDP for
ODA (Official Development Assistance) in which the 0.1% for
children was put forward. Lobbying was undertaken with ICFTU,
OI, and the US based NGOs, mainly Interaction and Centre for
Concern. ICCLE had fruitful meetings with the Dutch and the
Swedish Development Cooperation ministers who were receptive
and acknowledged the Global March and at the same time extended
support to the Global March position. However they informed
of the difficulties faced because of the rigid stand of some
countries particularly USA and Japan.
Intensive lobbying was done and separate meetings were held
with the delegations of politically most strategic countries
like Norway, Canada, U.K, India, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand,
Bangladesh and Nepal. At the same time in the run up to the
Monterrey, the Global March decided to put forward a rally
in Monterrey on the day of the arrival of most of the Heads
of the Governments.
It was a riot of colors in the sky when hundreds of children
wearing Global March T-shirts and caps released thousands
of balloons. These balloons carried the slogan "Let us
dream, education for all" and "From exploitation
to education." The children held a rally at Hundido Park,
Macro Plaza in down town Monterrey, the showcase city of Mexico
where more than fifty Heads of the State and Finance Ministers
from all over the world were attending the UN Conference on
Financing for Development.
The event was organized by ICCLE together with Global Campaign
for Education and several local NGOs and schools to highlight
the importance of increased spending on elimination of child
labor and providing the children with free quality education.
The Mexican children expressed solidarity with their 246
million brothers and sisters trapped in various forms of labor
as well as those 125 million who have no access to schooling,
by releasing balloons and articulating their aspirations through
paintings. These children sent a clear message to the world
leaders that future of the human race cannot be shaped without
ensuring all the rights of all the children by proper allocation
of sufficient resources on a priority basis.
Mr. Kailash Satyarthi, the Chairperson of the Global March
Against Child Labor who led the event said, "The poverty
of global political will is again demonstrated in Monterrey
as the world community has once again failed to commit sufficient
resources and time bound mechanisms for the realization of
the Millennium Development Goals. Children from the
poor world will be the worst sufferers of the lack of political
will of the global leaders. If the industrialized world is
not prepared to invest a pittance of its income in the interest
of underprivileged children, poverty can never be alleviated
nor the scourge of global terrorism and insurgency be tackled."
Mr. Satyarthi further elaborated that, "Only an additional
sum of US $ 9 billion is required for basic education, 2 billion
dollars for vaccination and 3-4 billion dollars to protect
the lives of children from armed conflict. If the wealthy
countries are prepared to spend just 0.1% of their GDP on
ODA, an additional sum of 25 to 30 billion could be generated
annually. This is more than enough to meet the basic needs
of children in poor countries."
Caroline Wildeman, from NOVIB (Netherlands Organization for
International Development Cooperation), the Netherlands and
Member of the Steering Committee of Global Campaign for Education
(GCE) demanded from world leaders to honor the commitments
made during Jomtien in 1990, in Social Summit 1995 and in
Dakar in the year 2000 to enhance spending on education. Ironically,
the industrialized countries spend less than 2% of their ODA
on education despite all the big promises. GCE calls for at
least 6% of ODA for education, immediate formation of Global
Initiative- a mechanism agreed in Dakar to fulfill the financial
and policy gaps in Education for All goals, and for waiving
user fees in schools which includes tuition fees as well as
all other expenditures on books and stationery etc.
Speaking on the occasion, Gene Sperling, former National
Economic Adviser to the US President Bill Clinton and presently
with the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. said that
the investment in education is the prerequisite for any human
development. He also said that the world leaders cannot be
complacent as two years have already passed since Dakar.
Mr. Jorge Velencia from COMEXANI, the National Coordinating
organization from Mexico of the Global March Against Child
Labor also called for an urgent action on basic education.
Also present on the occasion were Global March Regional Coordinator
Virginia Murillo Herrera from Costa Rica, the ICCLE Director
and several delegates from Netherlands, UK and Spain. The
next day, the entire national media covered the event by devoting
substantial part of the newspapers, with several pictures
of the Global March leadership and children marching. The
event was covered by international and major electronic media
as well.
World Cup Soccer Campaign
The World Cup Soccer Campaign 2002 was initiated by Global
March, to eliminate child labor in sporting goods industries.
Through this campaign, the Global March wanted to ensure that
all promises made by the sporting goods industry and FIFA,
become a reality through the establishment of a transparent
labour monitoring system.
ICCLE has provided the FIFA Director General and UNICEF an
ongoing critique from the side of the Global March on the
various positions taken by them and that run contrary to the
spirit of the movement and appeared to be weakening of the
movement on ending child labor and resultant slavery. ICCLE
openly took the position against the FIFA-UNICEF alliance
as betrayal to the cause of the children, Global March position
and against the well being of children. The fact that FIFA
approved and franchised 1700 products to be sold during the
time of the world cup soccer championship, implied that most
of these products were being made by children under duress
of the employers. It is this invisible labor that prevented
FIFA from sharing information with the world community of
the actual names of the employers, locations of the products.
FIFA could not provide any proof of established accountable
monitoring mechanism in place for the producer companies of
1700 goods franchised by them for sale during the world cup
event. ICCLE opened a front against this and asked the House
and the Senate Members and here in the US and in the European
Parliament through our partners to request the FIFA/UNICEF
to share appropriate information on the implementation of
the 1998 agreement between FIFA / ICFTU / ILO and the World
Confederation of Sporting Goods Industry on establishing fair
working conditions for the labor engaged in production of
goods for FIFA world cup championship.
The twin fold strategy of ICCLE was:
- To build a cadence on UNICEF Executive Director's decision
on the joint sponsorship of 'Say Yes for Children' without
ensuring the implementation of the agreement on fair working
conditions for the labor and total elimination of child
workers from that of the FIFA World Cup.
- To demand from FIFA urgent action for the implementation
of credible, effective and transparent industry wide mechanism
in the stitching of soccer balls and goods franchised by
FIFA for commercial sale during the world cup soccer championship.
ICCLE obtained support from the House and the Senate members
in the Soccer Caucus. This was led by the office of Congressman
George Miller and Senator Tom Harkin.
The end result of all this lobbying work was that 28 members
of the House and Senate signed the letter addressed to the
FIFA President. It resulted in UNICEF Executive Director writing
to the FIFA President to take the initiative and organize
a Round Table Conference of all the stakeholders including
the Global March, ICFTU and the ILO to take concrete steps
towards the substantive issues raised by Global March. In
addition the film made by Global March capturing the stitching
of the soccer balls in Pakistan and India was provided as
a documentary evidence to the US Department of Customs for
taking enforcement measures.
UN Special Session on Children
The outcome document on UNGASS (UN General Assembly Session
on Children), New York, has not been so exciting. It is merely
a repetition of the promises made by the international community
in the past years.
The Global March position on child labor has more or less
been supported or endorsed by other concerned parties including
ILO, trade unions, etc. This has apparently resulted in creating
more pressure even before the actual session began and also
during the deliberations. Consequently, our child labor position
in the official document is far better now than before, thus
indicating a clear victory signal for Global March. In the
build up of the special session, we organized several events
in Washington, D.C. The child slaves who came from India,
Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, Liberia, South Africa, and Cambodia
interacted with the Human Rights and Workers Rights Caucus
of the House and Senate. Apart from this, the children played
a soccer match with the children of the two WDC schools. This
event was organized jointly by ICCLE and American Federation
of Teachers.
The involvement of Global March was at the highest in the
civil society due to several reasons and one among them was:
we have successfully organized a march of over 700 children,
teachers unions and NGOs on the streets of New York which
ended in a candlelight vigil attended by a galaxy of celebrities
including Juan Somavia-Head of ILO, Sir John Daniel-Deputy
Head of UNESCO/ in-charge of EFA, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Dutch
and the Norwegian Minister for Development Cooperation, Regional
Director of UNICEF, Head of ILO/IPEC, Tim Noonan from the
ICFTU and several of our counterparts from the Dutch and the
British trade unions. The local organizers of the march were
'Kids meeting Kids', a partner of Global March.
The ICCLE Chair was one of those 5 civil society speakers
who were invited to speak at the UN General Assembly.
The Global March position was very strong when the most important
event was organized jointly by the Dutch Ministry and ILO
on child labor and education. Our children had the opportunity
to participate in this event . The other speakers were Sir
Jack Daniels, Deputy Director General from UNESCO, Carol Bellamy,
the Executive Director of UNICEF, Joan Somavia, the ILO Director
General and Evelien Herfkens, the Dutch Development Cooperation
Minister.
The launch of World Conference on Child Labor being organized
by Global March in Tuscany, Italy was also a significant event
with an active participation of children.
The erstwhile child slaves, who had been brought from the
world all over, were requisitioned through the ICCLE for the
Press conference of ILO Chief, Joan Somavia. He released the
ILO's Global Report on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.
World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings
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Children's
letters
Children liberated from the worst
forms of slavery petitioning the
World Bank |
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Two ongoing consultations were organized with the World Bank.
The first one took place at the end of October with the address
of the Global March Chair to the inter-departmental teams
hosted by the Child Labor and Education Department of the
World Bank. The key focus was to address the issues of decreasing
Bank investments in the education sector and the Bank's inability
to meet the needs of the poorest countries in mobilizing resources
for education.
The second consultation was held with the five member British
Parliamentary delegation's visit to the World Bank and IMF
to review its performance and to get a view from the USA based
four NGOs. One of the participants was invited for briefing
the British Parliamentary delegation special committee from
the Department of Exchequer.
The meeting was chaired by the British Executive Director.
The address to the British parliamentary delegation focused
on particularly promoting for enhanced expenditure on education
as a key strategy to combat child labor viz. a viz. adult
unemployment and poverty. It was reiterated that it is the
most productive investment of ODA.
ICCLE explained the experience of its partners on the specific
areas of education and reiterated for the Bank's expansion
for spending on education, supporting countries in developing
country plan of action as a follow up to the Dakar
framework of action. ICCLE also stressed the need for
the Bank to provide technical assistance to the countries
in developing national plan of action to meet the Dakar commitments.
ICCLE's position was that the Bank should on one hand help
the national governments with technical skills and expertise
for strengthening their capacities and at the same time help
the civil society participation in the development of the
national strategies and being part of the mechanisms for monitoring
and assessment. ICCLE also reiterated that the process of
World Bank involvement in the development of the country poverty
alleviation strategies need to be closely monitored to ensure
that the national plans and strategies developed, essentially
involve civil society stakeholders. In the meanwhile ICCLE
positioned itself in the Bank substantially by writing lead
editorials for the Finance Ministers of India, Brazil and
South Africa prior to the spring meeting of the Development
Finance Committee of the Bank prior to the G-8 Finance Ministers
meet in Washington, D.C. This was done by ICCLE Director in
co-authorship with the Coordinator of the Global Campaign
for Education, Anne Jellema, based in South Africa.
The ICCLE initiative led to the joint letter being issued
by Global March and Global Campaign on Education to write
to the Finance Ministers of these countries and to use this
letter for the media advocacy in the three countries (India,
Brazil and South Africa), invoking the important members of
the Southern countries in the Development Committee of the
World Bank to take the leadership role in negotiating higher
resources commitment from the G-8 leadership. Indian Finance
Minister happened to be the Chair of the Development Finance
Committee and South African Finance Minister was going to
take over the Chair. In course of the discussions during the
spring meeting of the Development Finance committee, it was
agreed that education will remain a key priority area and
the establishment of the education fast track was realized.
It was also agreed that countries with credible action plans
would not be left behind for lack of resources for the implementation
support. This was followed with the announcement of the 18
plus five countries that were included in the education fast
track initiative by the Bank. Since then the effort on the
part of ICCLE has been to build political support from the
G-8 to commit enhanced financial resources for the education
fast track.
Immediately afterwards the pressure on the Bank was maintained
by seeking the office of the Indian Executive Director in
the World Bank to play as host to the slave children visiting
Washington, D.C before going to New York special session on
children.
This was done with the objective that the Bank Executive
Directors from the Northern and Southern world would listen
to the personal life experiences of the children entrapped
in slavery and at the same time bring the positive messages
on the effectiveness of development aid at the highest political
level in the Bank. The meeting was organized by the Indian
Executive Director at the World Bank on the special request
of ICCLE. ICCLE also gave the list of Executive Directors'
to be invited from all the countries of the whereabouts of
the child delegates. These were Chile, Peru, Brazil, Nicaragua,
India, Nepal, South Africa, Cambodia and Liberia. In addition
we requested the Indian Executive Director to invite the Executive
Directors from USA, Netherlands and Sweden. Some of the Advisors
of the important Executive Director's from European countries
were also invited.
ICCLE invited the following:
- Chair of Global March, Kailash Satyarthi
- Gene Sperling, Former Chief Economic Advisor to President
Clinton and now from Brookings Institution (The Center for
Universal Education, Council on Foreign Relations)
- Oxfam International, Washington, D.C.
The meeting was extremely successful and firm commitments
were made on the ED's behalf to focus efforts on mobilizing
additional resources for education and at the same time to
ensure that ending child slavery becomes an important dimension
of all the Bank led investments. The meeting was chaired by
the ICCLE Director and the only speaker other than the ED's
was the Global March Chair.
ICCLE has again been active in the course of the Fall Meeting
of the Development Finance committee of the World Bank this
September 2002. Apart from writing popular articles, in the
media, ICCLE mobilized the Child Labor Coalition with all
its 55 members and along with them signed the letter to the
Secretary of State and Treasury to the US Administration for
enhanced and firm commitment to the education fast track initiative.
ICCLE Chair was invited to address the Education Seminar convened
by the World Bank during the Development Finance committee
meeting. The seminar was addressed by the World Bank Head
of the Education, Ruth Kagia, Gambian Minister for Education,
Anne Therese Ndong-Jatta, Swedish Education Minister, Ruth
Jacoby, the Brazilian Education Minister Paulo Renato Souza
and the ICCLE Chair Kailash Satyarthi.
ICCLE Chair and ED also addressed a cross section of the
ethnic immigrant community print and the electronic media
during a press conference, organized to attract the awareness
on the issue of development financing to the larger community
in the US from the developing countries. The focus of the
effort was to elicit some firm commitments from the G-8 immediately
to get additional resources to the tune of $ 600-800 million
so that 8 to 10 proposals received from the Education Fast
Track Iinitiative Secretariat can be funded and to get additional
commitments of sustained aid flows for all the 44 countries
that are to implement the Dakar commitments of gender parity
by 2005 and education for all by 2015. At the end of the Fall
Meeting one can say that the position of the US changed significantly
and it is coming around to accept the Education Fast Track
initiative, at the same time the positive development was
the final communiqué issued by the G-8 in which the
Education Fast Track Initiative's report card of progress
will be reviewed at the next spring meeting of the World Bank
in April 2003. However the key issue remains in mobilizing
commitments of sustained aid flows of $ 9-10 Billion over
the coming 10-12 years annually, to accomplish the goal of
EFA.
Cocoa Initiative
On the Cocoa Initiative the current effort has been to mobilize
the partners of Global March in countries like Cote d'Ivoire,
Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon. From our side we have also made
a background note on the expansion of the protocol to all
the cocoa producing countries.
The other issues with which we are involved in are as follows:
- There is urgent need to bring bona-fide representatives
of the small farmers growing most of the cocoa beans in
Ivory Coast and elsewhere in West Africa into both the Broad
Consultative Working Group for the Protocol and especially
into Foundation Board for participation.
- To include NGOs on the ground from cocoa-producing countries
and get involved in child labor and child welfare problem-solving
concerns.
- We have repeatedly expressed to all stakeholders in the
Protocol that we are very concerned and feel that the small
farmers cooperative officials need to be fully represented
and involved both in implementation of the Protocol, alleviating
the bad economic conditions and imbalance of power in the
chain of production that lead farmers to use the worst forms
of child labor, and projects/programs designed to help children
removed from the worst forms of child labor in this industry
worldwide and their impoverished families.
- Ways to target children in need and differentiate projects
/ programs supported by the Foundation from those undertaken
by IPEC and other multilateral organizational projects/programs
that tend to be dominated or unduly influenced by host country
national governments. In other words, how can the partner
of the Global March be assured of receiving funding and
having a strong voice in at least some of the projects /
programs undertaken in each country? How to make certain
these private funds supplement and don't substitute for
ILO-IPEC or national government programs/projects? How to
build upon and improve the quality of the partially-completed
surveys to gauge the scope, magnitude, and nature of the
child labor problem in each of the four countries in West
Africa? How can the Protocol and Foundation work be most
constructively linked up with the national committee in
each target country who are responsible for developing national
action plans to come into compliance with ILO Convention
182?
- Most important, the deficiencies need to be corrected,
especially in terms of small farmers and NGOs in the Ivory
Coast and other countries having their own direct voice
in what the Foundation does, as well as implementation of
the Protocol itself in letter and spirit. The fact that
the ICCLE Chair was nominated as the Member of the Foundation,
is seen as a major space for the position of the Global
March/ICCLE to be reflected at the highest political level
of the Cocoa Initiative.
Silk Industry in India and the Call
for Ending Child Labor
The silk industry in India has been in the limelight since
the dateline story of children being exploited in the processing
of silk. It is estimated that more than hundred thousand children
are working in the silk processing in India particularly in
the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya
Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Assam. ICCLE/Global March
is trying to work with the exporters and the importers in
the US and in Europe. ICCLE is trying to develop a database
of the importers and exporters of the silk from India and
inviting them to work together with the buyers and the Indian
Federal Government and the Provincial Governments in establishing
industry wide transparent, credible and effective mechanism
to ensure that the Indian silk is not made by children. Also
that it can offer some comprehensive rehabilitation to the
children from the industry.
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