The scandal of child labour is driven by profit and it can be eliminated by threatening the trade of unscrupulous and exploitative profiteers, Senator Joe O'Toole told a protest rally in Dublin yesterday. He was speaking on behalf of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions at the Global March against Child Labour.
A group of young workers from Indonesia, Zambia, Nepal and India marched through Dublin as part of a series of international protests being held ahead of the International Labour Organisation conference on child labour in Geneva next month.
The world's governments, employer and trade union bodies are due to draw up a new convention to outlaw the worst forms of child labour.
About 250 million young people under 18 work for a living, half of them full time. Most of these children have little or no access to education.
One of the marchers at yesterday's rally was 11-year-old Gwen Bridget Mudende, from Zambia. She was put into domestic service at seven and has never received a penny in wages.
Fifteen-year-old Alfred worked in a mobile filling-station in the Zambian capital of Lusaka, changing tyres from 11 years of age. His hand was damaged because of a faulty car jack. Ronal, aged 14, worked as a shoeshine boy and washed cars in Medan, northern Sumatra since he was 10. He ran away from home and lived on the street because his father took his wages for drink.
Senator O'Toole said that young people were bought and sold for less than £20 to work as prostitutes and slaves and in sweat shops. People had to get away from the idea that child labour was nothing to do with them.
"It has got to do with everyone who goes into a shop to buy something", he said.
The chief executive of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Mr Cian O Tighearnaigh, said that children's rights were universal and indivisible. The trade union movement had been to the forefront of the campaign against child labour but the campaign needed to be widened. One way was by making Irish children understand their rights better.