A day in the life of a child labourer starts early.
It’s 5a.m., and a truck is taking workers to the tobacco fields of central Moldova.
Eugenia wakes up at four and spends the whole day at work in the fields.
Eugenia is 15… this boy is only eight years old.
He and his sister are standing in for their parents, who could not come to work today.
His hands are sticky with tar from
the tobacco.
Eastern Europe has the highest incidence of child labour in Europe.
The break-up of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism
have had a profound impact on unemployment and poverty.
Fewer jobs are available, and at the same time the safety net of social security is
no longer there.
Child labour has emerged as a socially acceptable coping mechanism.
These tobacco workers get two and a half dollars for preparing 100 kilos of dried leaves.
The process of stringing out the leaves is carried out under the baking hot sun and workers
have no protective equipment.
Their growth is stunted, nutrition is poor.
(Ala Donos, senior paediatrician) Children working in the tobacco fields suffer
from health problems such as atypical dermatitis, allergenic dermatitis and other skin diseases.
(Woman in field / Mother of Child Labourer) Children from rural areas are the most miserable.
I tell you this from the bottom of my heart.
They are the most miserable.
Children from the cities go to the mountains,
to the seaside and to the lake, while our children go only to the tobacco fields.
(Second woman in field/ Mother of Child Labourer) Maybe we as parents are guilty, but what could
we do?
It’s hard for us as well…
Child labour affects not just youngsters’ health, but their education, too.
Many parents cannot afford to buy books and clothes and need the money the children earn
as part of the family income.
At harvest time especially, there are empty seats in the classroom.
But it’s not just in agriculture that children work.
In neighbouring Ukraine, the mining industry was devastated after the break-up of the Soviet
Union.
Around Donetsk, many pits closed, but illegal, open-cast, mines
sprang up in their place.
Whole families began to work them, to eke out a living.
Unscrupulous owners of illegal mines use child labour because it’s cheap.
There are also so-called “family mines” in the region dug out in back yards.
The leader of the Independent Ukrainian Miners’ Trade Union, Mykhailo
Volynets, has raised the issue and campaigned against exploitation.
(Mykhailo Volynets) Several years ago, in the town of Snezhnoe,
one large family adopted 10 children from an orphanage
and made them work in an illegal mine during the night.
We stepped in and returned these children to the orphanage.
In some countries of Eastern Europe,
the orphanages themselves have been a problem.
In Ukraine, the Minister of Youth and Family Affairs recognizes that institutions are not
always the best solution.
(Yuriy Pavlenko, minister of Youth, Family Affairs, Sport)
Our main priority is to develop family forms of upbringing and gradually eliminate the
orphanage systems of raising orphaned children.
This system requires the support of adoptive families,
foster families, family-type children’s homes,
as well as reform of the adoption system in Ukraine,
in which the priority is the national adoption system.
In Ukraine, the International Labour Organization estimates that
350.000 children are involved in child labour.
It’s concentrated in poorly paid sectors,
such as construction work, or here, in Romania, in brick-making.
It’s hazardous, heavy work and it’s sometimes done by members of the Roma minority.
The Roma suffer from discrimination, meaning it’s particularly hard for them to find
decent work.
At the same time, there’s a tradition of encouraging children to earn a living, rather
than go to school.
Nelu is 13.
(Nelu) I rarely go to school.
I stay here with my mother to help her with the bricks.
(Maria Ionescu) There is a connection between poverty and
the lack of capacity to plan ahead.
Every poor person thinks about how to survive the next day.
The National Agency for the Roma is focussed on family and the results of our work influences
also the children.
(Roma boy) What do I want to become?
A driver.
It will be tough.
I work every day and I may not go to school because I will work here carrying bricks.
(Izabella Popa) The consequences of child labour influence
also the family.
It perpetuates poverty.
If the child is not allowed to go to school, the family will not get higher incomes and
will not be able to get out of poverty.
In many countries of Eastern Europe, poor families have left the countryside for the
cities.
They may end up destitute, on the streets.
When Mihai was a baby, his father used to beg on the streets of Bucharest, holding the
child in his arms.
(Mihai) I have been begging since I was five… by
the traffic lights at the crossroads.
At ten, I learned how to wash windshields.
Begging doesn’t pay very well…
You can stay be the car for ages and no-one will give you anything.
Mihai now lives with an adoptive mother.
He gives her the money he can earn on the streets
(Mihai, Child Labourer) I give her around seven dollars every day
and if I make this money sooner, let’s say, in one hour, one hour and a half, then I give
her more so I can make less the next day.
It’s a good thing that on Sundays I only have to give her five dollars because there
is no traffic.
It’s a short step away from living on the streets to becoming involved in criminal activities.
Twelve-year-old Sandu explains how this happens.
(Sandu, Child Labourer) The first time you steal, you’re afraid.
Until you get used to it.
After that you enjoy stealing.
You earn money.
A man left his car to buy a newspaper and I got up and found a little bag with 500 Euros
in it.
That’s how I started.
Now he’s living in a re-education centre.
At least he’s off the streets.
(Adrian Vulpescu) Begging is closely related to petty crime.
It’s a first step, the first step towards crime because it’s easy to shift from begging
and depending on people’s charity to spotting a wallet, an opened car or an unlocked door.
At the re-education centre, Sandu is safe, well fed, and looking forward to catching
up with lessons.
(Sandu, Child Labourer) Do you know what I would like to learn?
How to read…
There are organised activities and a chance to socialise.
Girls are particularly vulnerable to life on the streets.
They can end up in prostitution.
A day in the life of these Romanian youngsters starts late at night.
(Florin Brezan) The risks that these people are exposed to
are related to genital injuries
that can go from simple wounds to severe tissue damage
and infections,
the most serious of which is HIV.
These youngsters are used for prostitution.
That implies multiple sexual contacts and hence, increased risk.
In Ukraine, too, the sex trade exploits young people.
Maryna is now 17.
Her parents are alcoholics who got into debt.
Her father left the family when she was 12 and from then on, men used
to come to the house to drink vodka and spend time with her mother.
One of them paid her special attention.
(Maryna, Former Child Labourer) Uncle Vova gave me candies.
He was good.
He didn’t shout.
He spoke to me.
When my mom was sleeping, drunk,
he told me that I was already grown up
and that he would buy me sneakers.
Well, and… he did this…
I didn’t tell my mom.
Then came uncle Kolya, uncle Sasha and others…
They bought me chocolate, jeans, food.
They stroked my head.
I thought they loved me…
Vulnerable children are open to exploitation that knows no borders.
The huge wage gap between Eastern and Western Europe has led to increased migration and
a rise in trafficking.
Tudor’s pictures tell a story.
His mother was offered a job abroad, and left their home in Moldova with her children, thinking
she would be working in Moscow.
But the family ended up in Poland, where they were sold to a criminal gang.
They were forced to beg and hand over the money they earned.
(Tudor, Former child labourer) They took us to the supermarket and told us
to beg…
There was another child with me,
a younger one… my feet were aching;
I was standing there without moving, without turning around.
If we had disobeyed, we would have been beaten.
However change is on its way.
This reality may be bleak but improvements have been made.
With enough time, effort, and the will to succeed these children can look forwards to
a brighter future.
In Ukraine, for example, the ILO has worked with local authorities and NGOs and in the
last two years they have withdrawn more than a thousand children from the worst forms of
child labour.
Alina started to work at the age of eight:
(Alina, Former Child Labourer) For me work started at five in the morning
and lasted until nine in the evening.
You get up and work, work, work…
When I was 11, I went to first grade.
And I wanted to go to school but my mother was against it.
With the help of a group named “Successful Woman”, Alina, now 18, and with a child,
has been undergoing rehabilitation for a year.
In the Kyiv region, the ILO project has helped rescue 50 teenagers, mostly girls, who were
being exploited in the sex trade.
(Maria Alekseyenko) One of the positive results was that, within
the framework of this programme,
they learned how to build their relations with relatives, friends, environment, family,
and persons of the opposite sex.
Our task is to provide a child with such skills that when encountering problems in the future
the child can solve them independently.
In Romania, the key has been to tackle child labour on a national level using international
resources.
(Gheorghe Barbu) We began in earnest in the year 2000, at the
same time as the launch of the International Program for the Elimination of Child Labour
(IPEC) by the International Labour Organization.
Romania signed a memorandum with the ILO for the implementation of the
program in the country, and this has been put into action through the establishment
in Romania of the national directorate committee for the combat and elimination of child labour.
In Moldova, schoolchildren were asked to write an essay entitled “My solution for the elimination
of child labour”.
I am addressing my message to both people who care about our future,
and to those who use child labour without realizing that our children are the future
of this country.
Do not forget that we need a healthy future…
Only by joining our efforts we will succeed in the elimination of child labour,
creation of a decent present for children and help them to look into the future with
positive eyes.