BACK	NORWAY: Child Labour Issue Locked In A 'Chicken And Egg' Debate

''Poverty is both the cause and the consequence of child labour,'' opined Norwegian minister for development and human rights, Hilde Frafjord Johnson, host of the Conference on Child Labour. Others had varied views.

''If we are cut off from working, then what should we eat?'' asked 17 year old Franklin Blandón from Nicaragua, brought to Oslo to put the alternative case to the four-day conference. ''If I hadn't worked, I would have lived in deep misery, I would have starved to death.''

''Children are poor because their parents send them to work,'' said United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) assistant resident representative in India, Neera Burra. ''This perpetuates poverty,''

An estimated 250 million children under age 15 work worldwide, in sometimes dangerous or demeaning conditions, nearly half of them full time.

''We can't just abolish child labour and not do anything else,'' Johnson noted. ''But neither can poverty be an excuse for exploitation.''

The Conference, organised by the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Norwegian government, produced an action plan agreed by consensus between the 300 conference delegates, including ministers from 40 countries.

The action plan urged developed countries to provide aid to help poor nations tackle the issue. It also pressed nations to make education compulsory, remove children from dangerous or demeaning jobs and replace child workers with jobless adults. One hundred NGOs also contributed to the debate.

The agenda is not legally binding, and delegates can only ask the 41 adopting nations to follow it. But Norway has pledged 28 million dollars to remedial work and Britain has offered 1.1 million dollars to find alternatives for 7,000 children working for football manufacturers in Pakistan.

''Child labour is both a consequence and a cause of poverty,'' the agenda said, echoing Johnson. ''Use of child labour slows down economic growth and economic development and it is a severe violation of basic human rights.''

The conference, which ended Thursday, defined 'child labour' as ''economic exploitation and any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with their education, to be harmful to their health or physical, mental, spiritual or social development''.

According to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by 192 nations, children have a right to be protected from this kind of labour. But though there was general agreement about Johnson's description of the causes and consequence of child labour, the place and purpose of intervention was still disputed.

Burra, an anthropologist, argued forcefully that child labour itself is a major cause of poverty and should be fought directly. She reject's the theory that children denied work will merely turn to begging or crime. ''That's a general misunderstanding. India has around 200 million school children between five and fourteen. Half of these, 100 million, don't attend school,'' she told IPS.

''The interesting question is not 'why do poor parents send their children to school', but rather 'why do poor people send their children to school instead of work?' And they still live!''

People didn't realise that many people in the world choose between sending their children to work or school, knowing that if they choose the latter, there will be less food for all. But also long as education remains the only legal way out of the poverty trap, the sacrifice is worth it.

''When I've asked them how they manage, they say that it's better to eat only one meal a day and have the children in school, than depriving the children of education and perhaps being able to eat a little bit more. They are coping because they have made a decision. But those who decide differently have different motives. ''Those who send their children to work do so because it's tradition, that's what poor people have always done. Not necessarily because they won't survive if they send their children to school,'' she said.

She disputed the thinking of some who argue that child labour is no more than a fact of life. '' Those who are concerned about the harmful effects of taking children out of work, have they asked themselves how many children day in child labour, how many are maimed, etc.

''The argument of children and their families having to starve if the minors are not working, also applies to child prostitution. If the girls don't 'work', what should they eat? But nobody suggests that girls should stay in the prostitution business, since it is obvious how harmful it is. There are always options!

Burra also turns down the argument that the families are being helped by the children working: ''If people knew how little they earn... The working children's contribution hardly makes a difference at all. In fact, the families often end up losing money.

''What happens is often that intermediaries come to the village, offer the father of the family a thousand rupees for a contract of three, four, five years. This amount seems astronomic to a poor man, but in many cases it's just meant as a loan!

''So the children end up working full time just to pay the interest on this 'loan'.'' A family may spend a whole lifetime paying back the loan and the interest, and in some cases the debt passes on to the children of the family, she says.

''As long as there is a market for child labour, it will continue. And it will keep the parents unemployed since children are preferred for being cheaper and with less negotiating power. Child labour reduces the negotiation power of the adults, and in the next round leads to lower wages.

Burra argued that a straight ban on child labour would harm more children than it helped. He represented one of three working children's associations at the Oslo conference, and was one of 21 young workers who participated in a parallel conference run by the British based NGO Save The Children.

Save The Children argue that -- among several points, including ensuring primary education for everybody -- the world's efforts should be put into helping working children get better working conditions and wages. They also advocate effective action to ban the most dangerous kinds of child labour first.

As the ministers agreed the action plan by consensus, four Latin American child workers stood outside the conference hall with their mouths taped shut in protest. They claimed that the views of working children were not given enough attention.

''Yes,'' said Carol Bellamy, director of Unicef, ''child labour is an important cause of poverty, so we have to fight poverty. But to wait until poverty is eradicated is not good enough. We have to fight it in the fields of education, social mobilisation, etc.

''We can't let the children down by 'leaving them alone' until poverty doesn't exist anymore. Then we might have to wait a long time.'' (END/IPS/MH/RJ/97)