Child Labour
ELIMINATING CHILD LABOUR: DO NGO INTERVENTIONS ADD UP TO A STRATEGY?
Rekha Wazir*
The involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in child labour is fairly recent but it is steadily growing in momentum. However, only a few NGOs have succeeded in achieving recognition in this field at the national level. This paper starts by reviewing a number of inter-linked background factors that circumscribe and curtail the activities of NGOs. This is followed by an analysis of the strategies that NGOs use in addressing child labour. The final section addresses the question whether NGO interventions add up to a strategy for eliminating child labour. In order to be effective, NGO strategies would have to stand up to scrutiny on three counts: the individual components of the programme would need to be integrated in a holistic manner and it would take account of the dimensions of scale and sustainability. It is argued that with a few notable exceptions the majority of NGOs would find it difficult to score on all these fronts.
I. INTRODUCTION
In developing economies, attention to the issue of child labour – whether at the level of policy, research or interventions – is fairly recent. The involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in this sector is about a decade old but it has been steadily gaining momentum, partly on account of the availability of funding for child labour programmes. However, only a handful of NGOs has achieved recognition in this field at the national level. The number of organisations that have succeeded in demonstrating a sustainable and wide scale reduction in the incidence of child labour is even smaller. Estimates of child labour in the 5-14 age group vary according to the definition of child labour used by the agency compiling the statistics. While recent statistics indicate some reduction in the overall incidence of child labour, the numbers are still alarmingly large. Given the scale of the problem, the question arises:
Rekha Wazir*
The involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in child labour is fairly recent but it is steadily growing in momentum. However, only a few NGOs have succeeded in achieving recognition in this field at the national level. This paper starts by reviewing a number of inter-linked background factors that circumscribe and curtail the activities of NGOs. This is followed by an analysis of the strategies that NGOs use in addressing child labour. The final section addresses the question whether NGO interventions add up to a strategy for eliminating child labour. In order to be effective, NGO strategies would have to stand up to scrutiny on three counts: the individual components of the programme would need to be integrated in a holistic manner and it would take account of the dimensions of scale and sustainability. It is argued that with a few notable exceptions the majority of NGOs would find it difficult to score on all these fronts.
I. INTRODUCTION
In developing economies, attention to the issue of child labour – whether at the level of policy, research or interventions – is fairly recent. The involvement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in this sector is about a decade old but it has been steadily gaining momentum, partly on account of the availability of funding for child labour programmes. However, only a handful of NGOs has achieved recognition in this field at the national level. The number of organisations that have succeeded in demonstrating a sustainable and wide scale reduction in the incidence of child labour is even smaller. Estimates of child labour in the 5-14 age group vary according to the definition of child labour used by the agency compiling the statistics. While recent statistics indicate some reduction in the overall incidence of child labour, the numbers are still alarmingly large. Given the scale of the problem, the question arises: