The paper aims to illustrate the complexity of child work issues. It is also designed to help develop strategies for action on child work by analyzing a range of causes and the ingredients of successful and less successful interventions.
Save the Children Foundation (SCF) recognizes that many children have limited options and need to work to ensure their own and family survival and deplores the conditions of poverty and inequality that give rise to this situation. Structural, gender and inter-ethnic inequalities are important specific factors influencing which children work and the occupations and condition in which they do so.
The authors believe that working children know their own situation best. Programming with children and on working children’s issues should involve their participation and that of their families.
Genuine participation may require skilled facilitation and the use of innovative methodologies to include younger children, girls, lower castes, disadvantaged ethnic groups and disabled children. SCF recognizes that the complexity of child work as an issue means that understanding and taking account of the views of other stakeholders may be critical to effective programming.
The paper presents the SCF’s position on different kinds of interventions relating to child work:
1. Interventions relating to child work should take working childrens’ perspective into account;
2. Addressing poverty and inequality means reduction of the number of children working; and,
3. Awareness raising needs to form part of a wider strategy to eradicate negative forms of child work.
