Support for the Preparation of the Mali Time-Bound Programme

Executive Summary Over two million Malian children aged 5-14 are child labourers. Even in the Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) context, these numbers are alarmingly high. Out of the 26 Sub-Saharan Africa countries where data are available, only in two do children have a greater risk of involvement in economic activity. Nearly all of these economically active 5-14 years olds work as unpaid labour for their families. Child Labour is common in all of Mali’s eight regions and in both urban and rural areas. In rural areas, most children work in family fields and pastures; a smaller number work as seasonal paid labour producing cash crops. Children also work along side their parents in rural, small scale mining enterprises and in quarries. In urban areas, children are predominately employed in domestic service, but large numbers also work in the urban informal economic sector as mobile vendors, as apprentices in garages and crafts workshops, as servers in bars and restaurants, as beggars and in prostitution. The USDOL funded project will supply strategically focused support to the GoM and other stakeholders in their efforts to develop and implement a Time Bound Program to eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL). The project will attack the widespread use of children in hazardous and degrading work at it roots by mainstreaming the elimination of child labour with the national strategic framework to reduce poverty. It will contribute to leveraging the needed human and financial resources for the nation-wide fight against the WFCL by forming strong linkages with sector based development programs and other poverty reduction interventions and in particular with interventions that aim to improve education and vocational training opportunities for children at risk. By the end of the project, the GoM will have in place a comprehensive national framework for the elimination of the WFCL designed with the participation and consensus of key stakeholders. In addition, the Republic will possess strong and sustainable institutional mechanisms staffed by trained individuals to coordinate and monitor efforts to implement the plan. The project will likewise extend the successful efforts made by the national child labour program and LUTRENA to highlight the negative consequences (for the children and the society as a whole) of the continued and massive exploitation of children in the WFCL via its support for awareness raising and social mobilization activities. It will enhance existing knowledge about the circumstances in which the children work and strengthen legal measures designed to project them. With USDOL support for model pilot interventions, the project will withdraw 9000 Malian children from the WFCL, either through prevention or direct withdrawal and reintegration activities. They will be children working or at risk of working long hours under dangerous conditions in small scale mines, agricultural fields and urban workshops, boys and especially girls suffering from social isolation and hidden risks serving as domestic workers in urban homes, and children whose labour is exchanged for personal gain by intermediaries, children used as beggars, farm labourers and in commercial sexual exploitation. The project will likewise expand opportunities for 1800 urban and rural families with few other means than their children to meet their subsistence needs. These efforts will be focused in four regions in Mali where the WFCL is most concentrated, Mopti, Kayes, Sikassou, and Segou and in the district of Bamako. Support for the development of a TBP in Mali recognizes the country’s high level of engagement in addressing child labour and in particular its ratification and progress to date implementing ILO Convention Nos. 138 and 182. It also takes note of Mali’s signing of a tripartite accord in June 2005 toward elimination of child labour in small-scale mining by 2015. The proposed TBP will likewise capitalize on the increasing availability

Project symbol

MLI/06/50/USA

Admin unit

DWT/CO-Dakar

Start date

30/09/2006

End date

30/06/2010

Total allocation

3701759

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

3662059

Development Partners

USA, United States Department of Labor, Bureau for International Labor Affairs, Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking

Country/Countries

Mali

Outcomes

Child Labour