The International Labour Organisation, ILO has extended the fight against child labour to institutions which offer credit to small holder farmers. This is part of ILO’s social finance model intended to stop factors that make children engage in labour.
Wellington Chibebe, the ILO regional representative for eastern Africa, says the model named Accelerating Action for Elimination of Child Labour in Africa (ACCEL) tackles the root causes of the child labour problem in the agricultural value chains.
“Child labour, is a salient human rights risk. It is important to track and address the root causes of the child labour. Without addressing why children are engaged in labour, we will leave them displaced from one chain to another,” said Chibebe.
JLO’s model is premised on financial institutions including the child labour elimination aspects in their transactions, starting with the Village Savings and Loan Associations. This is because ILO’s research established that micro loans and cash transfer programmes unintendedly increase child labour. It is argued that when small holder farmers receive additional capital for their economic activities, they resort to their family members including children for free or cheap labour.
In order to achieve ACCEL objectives, JLOs hopes to train field agents, incentive schemes, communication to farmers, digital solutions and creating awareness on child labour amongst services providers to sensitise them on social risks of employing children in their product design.
The 2021 national labour force survey, which was recently released by UBOS, indicted that up to 6.2 million children between 5 or 17 years, are involved in labour activities excluding home chores. The prevalence of this vice is mainly in the rural areas, and its the agricultural sector which accounts for the most numbers.
Chibebe explains that ACCEL approach provides for a long-term elimination of child labour because it popularizes use of silos, fragmentation of human and financial resources in the same local area.
Douglas Opio, who spoke for private sector and also the federation of the Uganda employers as executive director, said Uganda having moved quickly to implement this model, is a sign of commitments towards eliminating child labour, a cause his institution has fought for since 1999. Opio said his federation’s approach to end child labour is centred on ensuring that parents work and children go to school.
“The principle moral that we try to uphold at FU is providing decent work opportunities for parents, and then opportunists for children to go to school. The availability of funds is very important in order to achieve this goal,”
Poverty has always been singled out as the major causes of child labour, and to this Opio says that this model will be addressing this issue which is becoming persistent in the Ugandan society.
Bernard Amuriat the assistant commissioner in charge of labour inspection, says that when a credit institution gets involved in elimination of child labour, the fight would be expanded and simplified since people survive on such small schemes.
ILO’s ACCEL initiative has so far been tested in six districts; Kikuube, Hoima, Buikwe, Mbale, Sironko, Bulambuli and Kabarole. At least more than 2000 people including women and children have beenefited from ACCEL in the selected districts.