Hunger, public policy and child labour: case study of Malawi

In 2002, the majority of Malawians were seriously affected by famine, which was only comparable to the one that occurred in 1949. The occurrence of flooding in some areas of Malawi and incidences of prolonged dry spells in others, contributed significantly to the poor harvests that many farming families experienced in 2001. The hunger crisis of 2002 was nationwide and it is generally argued that this widespread hunger would have been averted if the government had not sold the maize reserves. As a consequence of widespread famine, some schools were closed and, for those schools which were operational, school attendance dropped tremendously as children were too weak to walk to school while some helped their parents to find food for their families.

This report, based on a field survey conducted in Kasungu and Mchinji in December 2002 and literature reviews, describes the extent to which hunger influenced the use of child labour impacted on school enrolment and attendance. The report also reviews some government policies, including the recent Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, and attempts to identify weaknesses and strengths, including how these policies have impacted on issues of food security and child labour. It further recommends some strategies that the ILO/IPEC programme can use in order to address the problem of child labour in Malawi which is especially rampant during periods of food crises.

The author concludes by proposing a number of strategies that could be pursued in order to address the problem of child labour in light of the serious hunger that Malawi experienced in 2001/2002.