Eradication and prevention of the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Haiti

Within the social and cultural context of the Haitian society, girls and boys start working at an early age in order to contribute to the households. Children and adolescents accompany their parents to the work place; work with their siblings and on their own. Schools available are often in ruinous state, lacking of basic infrastructure need, from roofing to latrines. Often, the reinforcement of the educational option must begin with the rehabilitation of the infrastructure. School teachers’ preparation, wages and morale are quite low. Despite the fact that from 1994 to 2000 school attendance rose from 20% to 65%, the situation is far below the bare minimum one would expect for an education system to be attractive and effective. While these necessities are suffered by all those girls and boys whose parents can not afford private schools, working girls and boys and those in domestic labour must also face the constraints imposed on them by their daily chores and the lack of incentives from their master families. Thus, they often find their educational environment unfriendly and inadequate, not suited for the special conditions imposed on them: fatigue, hunger, arriving late at school due to other obligations, lack of sleep, uniforms or school supplies. For children who are victims of worst forms of child labour, living conditions can be extremely hard or dangerous: When thinking of girls and boys victims of commercial sexual exploitation, as is the case of many street girls and boys in Port au Prince, let us remember that Haiti has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the Western Hemisphere; there are also girls and boys in armed gangs, and also many others employed at all sorts of hazardous activities. As for girls and boys working as domestic labourers , besides their uprooting from home and family, exploitative working conditions, lack of schooling, they are often sexually abused. These children are utterly unprotected and alone, defenceless. They are the first to get up in the morning and the last ones to go to bed. When they are allowed to go to school, it is only after all their other tasks have been fulfilled. The families are often unaware of the potential dangers that these children face and the abusive and exploitative conditions of the child domestic servants, involving long work hours, heavy work loads, isolation from their biological families, lack of access to schooling and medical services, physical, psychological and potential sexual abuse, discrimination and social rejection, all without pay. The same scenario applies for street workers, where girls and boys are exposed to sexual exploitation. The International Labour Organization and its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO/IPEC) has been involved in the prevention and eradication of child labour, including child domestic work, in Haiti since 1999. IPEC´s efforts have served to bring at public discussion the need to end the worst forms of child labour in the country and to guarantee girls and boys’ rights, as well as generating and disseminating quantitative and qualitative information on certain forms child labour and other kind of exploitative activities, such as child domestic work, commercial sexual exploitation of girls and boys and hazardous work in agriculture. Project Description: By ratifying Conventions 182 on 19.07.2007, the Haitian government is making a commitment to prevent and eliminate child labour with special emphasis on the worst forms of child labour, as a matter of urgency. This Project’s fundamental aim is to assist Haiti in fulfilling their obligations in relation to the conventions. The Project will assist Haiti make tangible progress in the effective abolition of child labour by strengthening the national capacity to address the problem. The Project will also strengthen the capacity of workers and employers associations. It will provide opportunities for tripartite consultations to determinate hazardou

Project symbol

HAI/07/02/BRA

Admin unit

DWT/CO-San Jose

Start date

01/01/2008

End date

31/12/2010

Total allocation

260463

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

260463

Development Partners

Brazil, Brazilian Cooperation Agency

Country/Countries

Haiti

Outcomes

Child Labour