Working children and young people
Child labour in the mining sector of Peru
Worst forms of child labour in Peru
Authors:
A. Ensing
Publisher:
Foundation for International Research on Working Children , 2008
In 1973, the ILO adopted its Minimum Age Convention (No. 138), which requires states to design and apply national policies to ensure the effective abolition of all forms of child labour and to set the minimum age of employment at 14. While most countries have ratified ILO Convention 182, they have not all complied with their obligation of identifying the worst forms of labour sectors and activities in their country, let alone produced statistical estimates on the number of children working in them. This document aims to bridge this lack of information using the specific example of mining in Peru. By conducting a detailed research project in certain worst forms sectors, giving special attention to the physical and emotional consequences of the activities, the authors provide several insights to this specific discussion.
A central objective of the research is to map the working and living conditions of children who are working in specific economic sectors and what the consequences of this work are for their physical and emotional well-being. The authors identify several activities and/or sectors that fall within the group “hazardous forms of child labour”. The study also investigates the reasons why children are working in these particular worst forms sectors. The research results aim to give relevant insights into the currently polarised debate between those who state child labour is above all related to cultural considerations and those who state that economical reasons are fundamental to the phenomena of child labour. The document additionally maps the different policy initiatives for child labourers in the worst forms and identifies the best practices.
The document fins that Peru has established national laws to prohibit and regulate child labour, but many of those laws are not respected in practice. Recommendations and future interventions outlined include:
- the main reason for children to work is economic. Since many working children contribute to the family income, interventions should aim to increase this income through, for example, income generating activities that provide employment opportunities for parents
- family planning also plays a role as it has been observed that larger families are more likely to have relatively more children working
- there are cases where children work to support themselves, rather than to contribute to a household budget. Interventions hoping to help these children should take their particular needs into consideration. These children need financial aid as well as personal support and advice; without this they have little choice but to work
- besides directly intervening in child labour issues, organisations could instead opt for improving the general living conditions in the mining villages.
