A bitter harvest: Child labour prevalence on tobacco farms

Harare, (ILO News) Various tobacco industry players that included tobacco farmers – both large and small scale, research, extension and specialists services, manufacturers, processors led by the Tobacco Industry & Marketing Board; the mining and commercial sector; domestic workers associations, trade unions, civil society and child protection and rights organizations; representatives of National Employment Councils; the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, and the ILO, came together to explore how they could align and unify their efforts to eliminate child labour in Zimbabwe.

The one day ‘Child Labour Indaba’ (meeting) also included members of the Elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco Foundation (ECLTF) – a Geneva based institution, that had met in Harare for its 56th Board meeting.

The national and global status on child labour shared by the ILO through its Senior Programme Officer, Adolphus Chinomwe alerted the meeting that if nothing was done, the number of children in child labour in Africa alone, will rise to 105 million by 2025 compared to the 2019 Africa situation where 87 million children were in child labour. He further pointed the agricultural sector as having the highest child labour prevalence. Available data from some selected countries paint a disturbing picture of child labour prevalence in agriculture with Zambia (91.8%), Uganda (94.8%), Tanzania (94.1%), Rwanda (78.9%), South Sudan (60.2%), and Kenya (46.3%).

At the workshop, representatives from the invited sectors made pledges on how they would tackle the child labour problem in their specific industry. The various proposed action plans included: mapping of players and collaboration; education and awareness campaigns; stakeholder empowerment on legislation and policy; compliance checking and enforcement; lobbying for amendments to laws and policies that are not responsive or are limited in nature; implement trace and track systems; improved and authentic records keeping, among others.

Further, there were calls to involve the Ministries of Education; Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare; Health and Child Welfare and the National Social Security Authority, in a whole of government approach to address child labour and its root causes.

What Childline shared…

At an earlier ECLT Board event, Childline – an organization that champions and provides child protection and promotes rights of victims of abuse, violence, and exploitation, made a presentation of their experiences. They shared that their centres receive an average of over 1500 calls of distress per day. Of these, 36 per cent were on sexual abuse followed by physical abuse and emotional abuse – as per illustrations below. Further analysis is required of their data to establish the extent of child labour related cases.

What the Government said at the meeting

At the same Board meeting before the day-long workshop, the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, the Ministry mandated with crafting policy and legislation on child labour and children’s welfare issues, the government position was outlined.

In its proposed responses, the Ministry has prioritised eliminating child labour in agriculture and mining; with several employment councils such as including commercial, catering, and domestic work, reiterating the same message. Civil society is also represented in the National Steering Committee, to ensure combined approaches to the problem. This can be read as a tacit acknowledgement that child labour does exist and that it is a complex phenomenon requiring multi-stakeholder and multi-dimensional approaches.

With support from the UN and ECLT Foundation, steps to progressively reduce child labour and increase child protection are underway. These include establishment of a Child Labour Unit within the Ministry; a National Steering Committee on child labour; adoption and implementation of a National Action Plan for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (NAP); instituting a process that will align national laws to international standards; raising awareness; increased sectoral capacity building on child labour; improved data collection and collation and increasing labour inspections in hot-spot sectors and regions.

Stakeholders drawn from agriculture, mining, commercial and domestic work sectors shared their sector commitments to eliminating child labour in their sectors in line with the prioritisation by the Government in the National Action Plan on Orphans and Vulnerable Children.