Fairtrade and Child Labour (Article 32)

In the last few weeks of Making Art, Making Me, Singachini continued working on their child rights illustrations. Each group focused on a particular Protection Right and discussed in groups what they mean, here is what the first group thought…

Article 32 (Child Labour): The Government should protect children from work that is dangerous of might harm their health or their education

• We as children should refuse to do works above our age
• We shouldn’t be asked to carry big bunches of bananas to sell when we should be going to school
• Let us refuse to work on coffee plantations for low wages
• We shouldn’t be taken away from school for work in town as house girls or boys. Parents should refuse this and stop allowing people to take us away
• Parents shouldn’t allow us to go and graze goats .

The groups, all from local villages in Kibosho, then took their ideas and turned them into storyboards. These all gave touching and personal accounts of how they, their community and the government can take responsibility for protecting them by illustrating cases where rights are neglected.

In this drawing the young girl has gone out to work on the coffee plantation. She is working a long day in the hot sun for a low wage. A boy from Standard 7 comes along to the plantation and adivces her on her rights, he tells her that children should not go to work on the (named and fairtrade) coffee estate and should be going to school instead to get a good education. The child then stops picking coffee and goes back to school.

Here is the first final print!  These were shown at the exhibition, displayed at school and will be travelling to London to help raise awareness about  childrens rights and responsibilities.

It is also interesting to note that the named coffee plantation is well know and registered as Fair Trade –

The Fairtrade standards for producer organizations prohibit child labour – work that is hazardous, exploitive or that undermines a child’s education or its emotional and physical health.  We follow the ILO Conventions, including Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, and our audits check compliance against this.  Qualified auditors inspect Fairtrade producer organizations on a regular basis to monitor for child labour

We look forward to consulting Fairtrade about this artwork and company when we return to the UK.