Elimination Of Child Labour Research Articles

The Twin Challenges of Eliminating Child Labour and Achieving EFA: Evidence and Policy Options from Mali and Zambia

Child labour constitutes a key obstacle to achieving Education For All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals in Mali and Zambia. It not only harms the welfare of individual children, but also slows broader national poverty reduction and development efforts. Children forced out of school and into labour to help their families make ends meet are denied the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed for gainful future employment, thereby perpetuating the cycle of poverty. One out of every two Malian and Zambian children aged 7-14 years work regularly in economic activity, underscoring the scale of the challenge posed by child labour in the two countries. Understanding the interplay between educational marginalisation and child labour is critical to achieving both EFA and child labour elimination goals. This paper forms part of UCW broader efforts towards improving this understanding of education-child labour links, making use of recent empirical evidence from Mali and Zambia.

Child labour and supply chain: profitability or (mis)management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a realistic assessment, with an historical perspective, of the current practises and progress made by organisations towards elimination of child labour in global supply chains.Design/methodology/approachLiterature review in the area of use of child labour within the global supply chain was combined with additional information obtained from the company searches of the GRI database, company ranking tables, and other sources.FindingsChild labour is one of a number of areas of concern in global supply chains. Continued exploitation of child labour indicates an imbalanced state and consequently forces can be unleashed through standardization, collaboration and communication amongst all stakeholders to ensure protection of the vulnerable. This paper is part of the broader analysis informing incremental changes to supply chain management to preserve the rights and welfare of children in the present and future generations.Research/limitations/implicationsThe analysis is based on secondary data sources and further research is thus needed to verify the individual weightings of the criteria used in the primary ranking of the companies.Practical implicationsThe findings provide encouragement for policy and decision makers to implement incremental changes to global supply chains in order to protect the rights and welfare of children, according to the standards of Social Accountability (SA) 8000, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and other world trade stakeholders.Originality/valueThis paper questions the view that child labour incidences have diminished proportional to economic development. A swinging fulcrum with hidden traps for developed and developing nations in light of cross border transactions through supply chains has been proposed.

Combating Child Labour and Promoting Youth Empowerment

The author provides a brief summary of the problem of child labour, the Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on child labour and the global extent of the problem. The article emphasises the importance of deepening and strengthening the worldwide movement against child labour as a catalyst for national action. There is a growing consensus that children and young people should be viewed as active partners in the worldwide movement against child labour. For this reason, in 2002, the ILO launched the SCREAM programme. SCREAM - which stands for Supporting Children's Rights through Education, the Arts and the Media - promotes meaningful child participation and youth empowerment. It is an education and social mobilization initiative that recognises that young people have an important role to play in raising awareness and exerting their influence in their communities to bring about social change. The elimination of child labour is an achievable albeit monumental task. In order to eradicate this human rights violation, a multifaceted approach is called for in which greater political commitment and advocacy efforts, by adults and young people alike, are key factors.

Child labour in Cameroon

Objective: To review the existing literature on child labour in Cameroon in order to raise awareness and provide information for future interventions to combat child labour. Methods: Electronic search of the MEDLINE as well as reports (published and unpublished) on child labour in Cameroon. Results: Cameroon is facing some of the worst violations of children's rights with more than 600,000 child labourers involved in different activities such as family work, self-employment, wage employment (in plantations, industries, farms, etc.), child placement, child trafficking and prostitution. The main determinants child labour are poverty, parental level of education, migration, HIV infection, place of residence, socio-cultural factors, family size and the flawed registration system. The effects of child labour are dramatic and include low school enrollment rates, high drop out from schools, poor growth and development, high adult unemployment and a persistent cycle of poverty. Conclusions: The worst forms of child labour in Cameroon which constitutes serious violations of human rights include child trafficking and prostitution, and should be targeted as priority for immediate action. It is not feasible to prescribe a single magic bullet to combat child labour in Cameroon. However, for any strategy to be successful, we strongly recommend that it should take into consideration the determinants of child labour identified in this review. Future research should seek to identify optimal interventions to reduce and in possible eliminate child labour in Cameroon.

The Fruits of Her Labor: Women, Children, and Progressive Era Reformers in the Pacific Northwest Canning Industry

GREG HALL The Fruits of Her Labor Women, Children, and Progressive Era Reformersin the Pacific NorthwestCanning Industry "GIRLS MAKE FOOD FIGHT WAS the Portland News headlineat the outset of a 1913Oregon Packing Company strike. Women at the plant had had enough of low pay, poor working conditions, and an unsympathetic cannery management. The strikers quickly garnered the attention of local socialists, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, religious lead ers, and area residents. Still, the newly formed Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission (OIWC) had themost influence in resolving the strike and addressing the concerns of women workers at the cannery and elsewhere in Oregon. The OIWC ? an institution that epitomized the Progressive Era? and its sister agency to the north in Washington dealt with a host of issues regarding women and children in theworkplace. Studying the rather underdeveloped history of the formative phase of thePacific Northwest can ning industry, itsworkforce, and the Progressives who sought to reform it offers a unique perspective on the changing role ofwomen as wageworkers in society, growing public concern about child labor, and state governments' evolving social and labor policy.1 At the end of the nineteenth century and during the first few decades of the twentieth, fruit and vegetable canneries in states on the Pacific Coast became primary employers of female workers ? adults and children. Canneries, which tended to hire females rather than males formost jobs, were major sources of employment forwomen and girls.At the same time, Progressives sought to improve working conditions, stabilize wages for women in canneries, and end child labor in the industry.2Pacific Northwest Progressives improved conditions, but, in the process, they undermined women's empowerment aswage laborers; whether they did so intentionally 226 OHQ vol. 109, no. 2 ? 2008 Oregon Historical Society IS Oregon was a battleground statefor theeight-hourdayforwomen. Here,Marie Michaels poses inan apron advertising thecauseforworkingwomen. The photographer,Franklyn Sowell,worked inPortland between 1911 and 1915. Hall, Progressive Era Reform in thePacificNorthwest Canning Industry 227 Women tookon temporaryand seasonal work inall sectorsof farm production, especiallyduring harvest.Sorting and packing apples ? such as in this photograph ofwomen and a man taken inYamhill County inabout 1902 ? was a common feature of rural life. or not isunclear in the historical record. They fostered a form of paternal istic government intervention that,on the one hand, helped eliminate child labor in canneries but, on the other hand, sought to discipline women into a compliant and domesticated workforce. Progressives generally assumed thatwomen wage workers would even tually become wives and mothers and leave theworkforce and, therefore, tended to think of them only in terms of temporary workers. They did not encourage women to organize their own unions, seemingly basing their work on the premise thatwomen and children could not defend themselves in theworkplace as well as men could. Labor laws protecting men were sporadic around the country and apparently lacked the comprehensive logic forwhich Progressives advocated regarding women's and children's labor laws. Progressive reformersworked to protect and preserve what they saw as women's femininity and maternalism. In The Wages of Motherhood, Gwendolyn Mink explores the concept of maternalism, an ideology that assumed thatmen (husbands) earning a familywage would solve the prob lem ofwomen having towork forwages. She also explains how Progressive Era reformers chose to lament, rather than to seek empowerment for, wage working women ? that is, they supported paternalistic state intervention 228 OHQ vol. 109, no. 2 rather than clear unionization. One of themost ardent groups associated with such maternalist orientation was theGeneral Federation ofWomen's Clubs, which "opposed the employment of mothers of young children." Operating under similar ideals inOregon was the Consumer's League, an organization that "lobbied for improvements" inworkplace protection forwomen and children, but not formen, in order to preserve "the future health of the race."3 In their efforts to regulate workplaces, western Progressives were follow ing national trends that have been outlined by Susan Lehrer inOrigins of Protective Labor Legislation forWomen, 1905-1925. Progressives, according to Lehrer and other scholars, thought of themselves as bringing order to industrial work life and rationalization to the labor process by demanding an end to the exploitation ? that is,underpayment and long hours ? of...

Working children and educational inclusion in Yemen

Abstract The Republic of Yemen has a very high number of working children, employed in a variety of occupations, ranging from street vending to guards on farms, and domestic labour. Including these children in formal education is a major challenge facing the Republic, which has one of the lowest rates of female participation in primary education in the world, and a very underdeveloped non-formal sector. In a context where poverty levels are very high, particularly in rural areas, families remain under significant financial pressure to rely on children's work to supplement, or indeed provide, their income and survival. This broader context challenges school-based efforts to include working children, particularly where initiatives aiming to improve the quality of the formal system are only just beginning to make an impact. This paper discusses key challenges of providing education to working children in Yemen, focusing on the work of the International Labour Organisation's International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and some of the issues that it faces in using schooling as a strategy to prevent child labour.

New Moves in Transnational Advocacy: Getting Labor and Economic Rights on the Agenda in Unexpected Ways

Activists involved in human advocacy across borders may share common interests in changing the status quo--but they do not always agree on the centrally at issue, nor the best strategy for promoting and protecting them. This is particularly true in campaigns in which rights claims emerge. Two mechanisms I develop in this article shed light on the complexities of transnational advocacy and norms evolution. Two case studies offer insights into the operationalization of the mechanisms: a campaign to prevent child labor in Bangladesh, and a campaign to prevent employment discrimination against pregnant workers in Mexico. KEYWORDS: economic rights, transnational advocacy, child labor, Bangladesh, Mexico. ********** New forms of communications and cheaper and faster modes of travel in the 1990s, coupled with a lessening of the Cold War-era polarization of human rights, resulted in a dramatic increase in cross-border advocacy on in general. While civil and political had traditionally been the focus of most Western human advocacy, (1) economic claims have begun to emerge through a process marked by differences of opinion among activists themselves over the nature of human and the best way to protect and promote them. In this article, I develop two mechanisms that add to the rich existing literature on transnational advocacy and norms evolution by offering insight into the bottom-up aspects of these processes. (2) The mechanisms I identify here provide poorer and less politically powerful members of such networks with a resource for influencing how norms are interpreted and how corresponding policy priorities are set in the context of transnational advocacy campaigns. (3) Empirically, I focus on two high-profile cases in the 1990s wave of advocacy: a campaign to eliminate child labor in Bangladesh's export garment industry, and a campaign to prevent discrimination against pregnant workers in Mexico. These cases are representative of the wider series of campaigns that occurred during that decade, yet each has unique policy significance. The Bangladesh campaign helped bring the issue of child labor to international prominence and resulted in the first ever Memorandum of Understanding brokered between business, government, and United Nations agencies to assist child workers who had been removed from factories. The Mexico campaign involved the first and only gender-focused complaint lodged against a government by activists using the labor side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Each case has generated considerable debate over how to prioritize and over the impact of such choices on the lives of people these campaigns were intended to help. Despite significant differences in the campaigns, both cases provide similar evidence of moves in transnational advocacy by less powerful actors in cross-border networks. From a scholarly perspective, the mechanisms identified here offer tools for theory building. From a policy perspective, these mechanisms illuminate the creative strategies some transnational activists have employed to get new human concerns (such as economic rights) on the table for negotiation. Data from more than a hundred interviews with participants and observers of both the Mexico and the Bangladesh campaigns, analysis of campaign archives, and review of secondary source data have enabled me to identify the factors that influenced how particular mechanisms emerged in each case. I relate these mechanisms, in turn, to a broader discussion of how normative understandings evolve in the context of transnational advocacy and beyond. Mechanisms in Theory Mechanisms are frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns ... which allow us to explain, but not predict events, according to Jon Elster. (4) They are the building blocks of theory, useful in constructing partial explanations. …

Corporate social responsibility and sustainable development

Abstract Given today's concerns about the impact of globalisation on the developing world, companies must demonstrate that they are operating responsibly, and work to become more accountable to stakeholders. At the same time there is continuing debate as to the proper role and responsibilities of companies in relation to that of governments when it comes to sustainable development. A cornerstone of British American Tobacco's corporate social responsibility strategy is the initiation of partnerships with non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) to address issues of mutual concern that impact on sustainable development. This paper describes in detail two such partnerships, one focused on preserving biodiversity, the other on trying to eliminate child labour in tobacco growing. it is argued that business‐NGO partnerships such as these can add an extra dimension to the contribution that companies can make themselves in terms of helping the communities and countries in which they operate meet their sustainable development needs. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Trabalho infantil em Franca: um laboratório das lutas sociais em defesa da criança e do adolescente

Este artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre o processo de conscientização e mobilização em torno do tema trabalho da criança, as lutas sociais no combate à sua eliminação e o processo de implementação de um dos programas mais atuantes na área - o IPEC (Programa Internacional de Eliminação do Trabalho Infantil). Através de um breve retrospecto histórico sobre a entrada do tema trabalho da criança na agenda nacional e internacional, descrevo a atuação dos atores sociais que fizeram parte da discussão e da criação de projetos e de programas de erradicação do trabalho infantil, discutindo a consolidação dos movimentos sociais em defesa das crianças e dos adolescentes. A análise das representações do trabalho infantil na família e no cotidiano das crianças e dos adolescentes está atravessada pela questão de gênero, observada nas falas das crianças e adolescentes, bem como de suas famílias.

Policy: Live from Dubai: A New Chemical Agreement

After late-night, last-minute negotiations, a voluntary international agreement to protect humans and the environment against harmful chemicals was adopted on 6 February 2006. Representatives from 140 countries, environmental advocacy groups, industry associations, and UN agencies attended the three-day International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The agreement establishes the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), which gives nations a framework for fulfilling the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development goal of ensuring that chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse effects. Implementation of SAICM will be supported by a new chemicals secretariat within the UN Environment Programme that will carry out the “Overarching Policy Strategy.” This strategy provides countries, especially economies in transition, with templates to begin coping with issues such as remediating contamination, using safer substitutes, and creating toxic release inventories. The agreement offers broad suggestions such as reducing exposures by improving occupational safety, developing better responses to spills and accidents, and eliminating child labor involving chemicals. Some EU countries offered modest funding for a “Quick Start Programme” to help developing countries move ahead in the near term. Many participants saw the meeting as polarized into EU and U.S. camps on some of the most contentious issues, including precaution—regulating or banning chemicals suspected of harm without complete certainty of their effects. In a February 7 statement on behalf of the EU presidency, Austrian minister Josef Proll said, “We don’t need to see a tragedy happen to put safety systems in place.” The same day, U.S. assistant secretary of state Claudia McMurray told an AP reporter, “We have a different approach to the way we regulate chemicals in our country. We may not know everything now, but let’s move forward anyhow.” The agreement incorporates wording from the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development stating that precaution “shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” The EU pushed to elaborate on this statement with a clearer connection between chemicals and human health—a push the U.S. delegation opposed. Disagreement also arose over whether the agreement should invoke specific international bodies such as the World Bank or the Global Environment Facility as potential funding sources. The United States failed to win language that would have made SAICM irrelevant to multinational regulations such as those of the World Trade Organization, a position some say was aimed at keeping environmental and human health values from challenging trade practices. In a February 27 press release McMurray said, “SAICM recognizes that while we all share the goal of minimizing the risks presented by some chemicals, there are many valid ways to achieve that goal.” But others saw the meeting as lacking political will. Daryl Ditz, senior policy adviser for chemicals at the Washington, DC–based NGO Center for International Environmental Law, says, “Regrettably, the United States was the number-one obstacle to a coordinated global response to the problems posed by chemicals.” The ICCM next revisits the Dubai agreement in 2009 to assess progress and identify problems.

Eliminating child labour in Malawi: a British American Tobacco corporate responsibility project to sidestep tobacco labour exploitation

Objectives: To examine British American Tobacco and other tobacco industry support of the Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing Foundation. Design: Analyses of internal tobacco industry documents and ethnographic data....

GARY CROSS. The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004. Pp. 259. $29.95.

Gary Cross argues that society and culture in the United States idolize children because we need them as symbols of innocence. But innocence can be a difficult and contradictory concept. Even as Americans seek to delight innocent and pure children, they cooperate in their exploitation as commercial and sexual objects. Sheltering innocent children from the vagaries and threats of modern life became possible as American society became more affluent. By the turn of the twentieth century, the idea of sheltering children and helping them develop along rational or scientific lines became the goal of emerging professionals and experts. At the same time the idea justified the efforts of advocates for playgrounds, public schools, juvenile justice, and the elimination of child labor, all of whom claimed to be working on behalf of real children who lacked a sheltered childhood. Ultimately, Cross argues, the well-meaning child protectionists were undermined if not defeated by the rise of the consumer market. Advertisers penetrated the homes of sheltered children and lured them into the world of consumption by appealing to their childish desires and the suppressed desires of their parents.

SAFELY MANAGING CHEMICALS

BRAND-NEW INTERNATIONAL guidelines have been set to chart approaches for making, transporting, using, and disposing chemicals in ways that protect people's health and the environment. Negotiators completed this plan, known as the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), earlier this month in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (C&EN, Feb. 13, page 12). The strategy is designed to help the nations of the world implement, by 2020, a comprehensive approach for managing chemicals. In addition to this noble goal, the accord may also play into future trade disputes, including possible challenges to the European Union's new legislation for regulating chemicals. The core of the Dubai plan is a menu of more than 250 actions for use by governments, industry, unions, environmental and community activists, and researchers. Recommendations include developing better methods to determine the impact of chemicals on human health, eliminating child labor that involves hazardous substances, and encouraging ...

How the West Was Won: The De-institutionalization of Child-Labor in Pakistan's Soccer Ball Industry

Organizational fields in developing countries often experience diffusion of practices that, while novel for them, are highly institutionalized in the West. Studying such instances of change, which involve both non-isomorphic and isomorphic elements, sheds new light on the role of institutional entrepreneurs and highlights the crucial importance of identifying and incorporating the unintended consequences of institutional change into our analyses. Specifically, our study of the campaign to eliminate child labour in Pakistan's soccer ball manufacturing industry reveals how institutional entrepreneurs mediated between the powerless and the powerful. It also highlights how, in the wake of this universally acknowledged success story, bigger problems were created for many weak members of the field, especially women.

Green Tobacco Sickness in Children and Adolescents

Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is cultivated in more than 100 countries, and in 2004, some 5.73 million metric tons dry weight of tobacco were grown worldwide. The top five tobacco producers forecast for 2004 are China (2.01 million metric tons; 35.1%), Brazil (757 thousand metric tons; 13.2%), India (598 thousand metric tons; 10.4%), United States (358 thousand metric tons; 6.2%), and Malawi (138 thousand metric tons; 2.4%). Together, these five countries account for two-thirds of worldwide tobacco production. Tobacco farming presents several hazards to those who cultivate and harvest the plant. Although some of these hazards, such as pesticide exposure and musculoskeletal trauma, are faced by workers in other types of agricultural production, tobacco production presents some unique hazards, most notably acute nicotine poisoning, a condition also known as green tobacco sickness (GTS). GTS is an occupational poisoning that can affect workers who cultivate and harvest tobacco. It occurs when workers absorb nicotine through the skin as they come into contact with leaves of the mature tobacco plant. GTS is characterized largely by nausea, vomiting, headache, muscle weakness, and dizziness. Historically, children have played a role in agricultural production in the United States, and they continue to do so today. This includes tobacco farming. The North American Guidelines for Children's Agricultural Tasks, a set of injury prevention guidelines prepared by the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, lists GTS as one of several hazards children face when working on tobacco farms. Children 17 years of age and younger who work on U.S. tobacco farms come from three main groups: members of farm families, migrant youth laborers (primarily Latinos), and other hired local children. All three groups are at risk for GTS. Beyond the U.S., tobacco production using child labor is an emerging topic of concern in developing nations. An international movement, advocated by the Eliminating Child Labor in Tobacco Foundation, is underway to restrict child labor in tobacco production. GTS is a unique occupational poisoning associated with tobacco farming. We suspect that many public health practitioners, clinicians, advocates, and researchers are unaware of GTS among children and adolescents. In this article, we provide an overview of GTS among young people who work in tobacco, summarize reports documenting pediatric GTS cases, explain GTS etiology, and present three case studies of pediatric GTS in Kentucky. In addition, we discuss the need for expanded surveillance and prevention of GTS, both in the United States and globally.

Costs and benefits of eliminating child labour in Brazil

The objective of this research is to calculate the economic costs and benefits of the elimination of child labor in Brazil. The framework focuses on three sources of cost: the cost of providing education to all children in lieu of work, the cost of program interventions to alter attitudes and practices, and the opportunity cost of eliminating this work, i.e. the value of children's labor. On the benefit side, it calculates economic gains from a more educated population and the economic advantages resulting from a healthier population, since both more widespread education and the elimination of hazardous or unsuitable work have prospective health benefits. The costs obtained are close to seven billion dollars PPP and the benefits is more than thirty five billion dollars PPP. It is clear from the results that benefits outweigh the costs.

Dangers, Delights, and Destiny on the Sea: Fishers along the East Coast of North Sumatra, Indonesia

This article describes a collaborative project between the International Labour Organization's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, in identifying work hazards of fishers along the east coast of North Sumatra, Indonesia, in July 2004. The study employed qualitative investigation techniques: participant observations at fishing villages and harbors; and interviews with local fishers and skippers. Fishers work long hours in life-threatening conditions, often with low pay. It would be synergistic to incorporate fishing safety and health policies and advocacy efforts into reconstruction undertakings of fisheries devastated by the 2004 tsunami.

Child Labour and Resistance to Change

We study the interaction between technological innovation, investment in human capital and child labour. In a two‐stage game, first firms decide on innovation, then households decide on education. In equilibrium the presence of inefficient child labour depends on parameters related to technology, parents' altruism and the diffusion of firms' property. Child labour is due either to firms' reluctance to innovate or to households' unwillingness to educate, or both. In some cases, compulsory schooling laws or a ban on child labour are welfare‐reducing, whereas a subsidy for innovation is the right tool to eliminate child labour and increase welfare.

Efeitos do aumento da idade mínima legal no trabalho dos brasileiros de 14 e 15 anos

O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar o efeito que o aumento da idade mínima legal para ingresso no mercado de trabalho no Brasil teve na oferta de trabalho dos adolescentes de 14 e 15 anos de idade, que em 1998 passou de 14 para 16 anos para o trabalho formal e de 12 para 14 anos na condição de aprendiz. São realizadas análises de freqüência e econométrica mais complexa dos dados das PNADs de 1995 a 2003. Por meio da análise de freqüência dos dados, nota-se um declínio na proporção de meninos e meninas de 14 e 15 anos que trabalham, tanto na área urbana quanto na área rural, mas não é possível separar o efeito em legislação e tendência. Nota-se também que neste período houve aumento na proporção de adolescentes que freqüentam a escola e diminuição nos salários dos adolescentes que trabalham e na renda per capita média das famílias com adolescentes trabalhando ou não. Como conseqüência do aumento da freqüência à escola, nota-se ainda um aumento na proporção de adolescentes trabalhando menos de 40 horas semanais e uma redução na dos que trabalham mais de 40 horas por semana. Na análise econométrica estimou-se um modelo probit agregando-se os dados das PNADs de 1995 a 2003 (pooling). O coeficiente da variável de interesse, que capta o efeito da mudança da lei, mostrou-se estatisticamente significativo nas equações de trabalho de meninos e meninas da área urbana e rural. Conclui-se então que a legislação contribuiu significativamente para uma redução na porcentagem de adolescentes no mercado de trabalho, embora não tenha eliminado completamente o trabalho infantil.

Poverty, School and Work: Children during the Economic Crisis in Indonesia

The problem of child labour in Indonesia, although generally less prevalent than in other developing countries at a similar stage of development, is significant. As in other countries, this study finds a strong link between the child labour phenomenon and poverty, with the profile of child labour largely mirroring the profile of poverty. Furthermore, poverty is found to be an important determinant of whether children work. However, working does not always completely eliminate a child's opportunity to obtain formal education: children from poor households can still go to school by undertaking part-time work to pay for their education, implying that banning these children from working may force them to drop out of school instead. Since the phenomenon of child labour is strongly associated with and determined by poverty, the most effective policy for eliminating child labour is through poverty alleviation. Other policies that can foster the rate of reduction in child labour are those which make it easier for children from poor families to access education and increase the opportunity cost of working by improving the quality of education. Such policies will increase the rate of return to education.