Read the video transcript here
Working on a tobacco plantation instead of going to school.
This is what everyday life looks like for 13-year-old Siti Maryam from Indonesia.
Siti Maryam
"Sometimes I feel dizzy, in pain and feel sick."
Maryam suffers from what health
experts call
"
green tobacco disease,
"
an acute nicotine poisoning that can become chronic.
From June to August she sows plants, sprays pesticides, harvests and dries tobacco leaves on a farm in the province of East Java.
Just like thousands of children in Indonesia, the fifth largest tobacco producer in the world.
The families get the money.
Waradatul Yaumi, child on the plantation
"I work here to support my parents and to help that we can look after each other."
Some of the minors earn less than a dollar a day for 7 hours of work in the fields.
It is actually forbidden in Indonesia to employ children under the age of 15.
But there are apparently hardly any controls, says the owner of the family business, who sells his tobacco to other traders.
Sudari, tobacco grower and trader
»When I bring the tobacco into the warehouse, it's all about the quality of the tobacco.
Nobody asks whether I take on children or whether there are children with me who help their parents, who cut tobacco or who work for me. "
The tobacco industry in Indonesia is just one example of what child labor can look like.
Children in poorer and less developed countries, in Africa, Asia or Latin America are particularly affected.
Rudi Tarneden, Unicef
»Child labor is a survival strategy for families in very poor countries.
It is above all the families who live on the margins of society.
Often there are families in the country, in the slums, and they have no choice but to allow the children to earn something so that the family can survive.
They have no access to education, they often have to do very hard work and this means that they are disadvantaged in their entire development. "
Many parents have no choice but to send their children to work because otherwise they will not be able to support the family.
Like this father in New Delhi who collects rubbish in a slum with his wife and children.
Saso, garbage collector
»No, I can't look after my family on my own, unless my three daughters work with me. If they're not working, where do we get the money to eat? Me, my wife and the children - we all work together, even if we only earn 400 to 500 rupees a day (7-8 dollars). "
In the past few decades, child labor had actually declined in many countries. But now, according to Unicef, the number of exploited children has risen again for the first time in two decades: to an estimated 160 million worldwide. That is an increase of 8.4 million children over the past four years. The fight against extreme poverty is not going fast enough. Wars like in Syria or Yemen have made the situation worse. Displaced children are mostly unable to go to school and often have to do auxiliary work so that their families can survive. And now also the consequences of the corona pandemic.
Rudi Tarneden, Unicef
“We have had a state of emergency worldwide for a year now, and some of the poorest countries reacted very harshly, even with lockdowns. As a result, the people in precarious circumstances - poor families - were the first to lose their jobs or were unable to pursue their informal jobs. And the schools were closed. All of this together has resulted in millions of children having to work. In Brazil, for example, some of the public schools were closed for almost a year. At the height of the crisis, we had 1.6 billion children who were no longer able to attend school. "
Schools are still closed in many countries. Children's rights organizations such as Unicef also fear that numerous children will not return to schools even after the pandemic. Because the contact between teachers and families is forever broken. Because parents who have lost their jobs have to send their children to make money. This year another nine million minors could slip into child labor worldwide. How can this be prevented? In Germany, the federal government is primarily addressing global supply chains.
Gerd Müller, Development
Minister “First of all, everyone can start with themselves. Yes, fair shopping. And we, the government, have passed the Supply Chain Act to put an end to child labor and implement minimum standards in the supply chains on the plantations, namely living wages and minimum ecological standards. "
Better working conditions are important, say children's rights organizations. Above all, however, there is a need for economic prospects for poor families. In Guatemala there are therefore special training programs for young people from rural regions, the aim of which is to lead young people into secure employment. Because many parents send their children to work on the coffee plantations as soon as they have reached the minimum age at the age of 14. There they have to do hard work that is barely profitable. Local cooperatives offer training in coffee production in cooperation with the United Nations. They provide young people with qualifications that give them better chances of well-paid employment.
Maria Cedillo Chavez, participant:
»At first I didn't know anything about coffee.
I just grew and harvested it in the field with my family, but I had no real knowledge. "
The training also creates incentives for parents to continue sending their children to school because it runs parallel to it.
Miguel Ostuma Raymundo, Maya Ixil Coffee Cooperative:
“The problem is that some parents take their children out of school and send them to the fields.
But that's not right.
Because the best thing is to give children time for school and teach them how to work in the fields in their free time. "
It is above all such local approaches that create educational and job opportunities for young people on site and thus sustainably combat child labor.
Whether or not the dangerous trend in child labor can be reversed will also depend on when schools around the world reopen and how many children return.
