In absolute terms, there are 200 million children working around the world. A tragic number and that it must gain relevance in the European Year against poverty and social exclusion. Anticipating the World Conference on the Child labour, in Den Haag, on the 10. and 11. of May, a public hearing took place yesterday in the European Parliament. The events have two key objectives: to obtain the global ratification of two conventions of the International Labour Organization and to act urgently to eradicate the child labour.  In 2010, we celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the UN convention 182, but the evolution in direction to the abolition of worse forms of child labour has been slow and raises questions at the level of the supervision of the application of the laws and the dismantling policies of this practical.

The ambassadress of the Ivory Coast in Belgium said that, for her country, this issue is a key point, especially in relation to the cacao industry. Marie Gosset affirmed that Ivory Coast has been developing, since September of 2007, a national strategy to fight against child labour, following the international norms, and having into account a continuous resettling of children, and focusing education as a priority and right that all the children in the world must accomplish. Ivory Coast is one of the countries where child exploitation reaches highest degrees. Children are often taken for being more “cheap”, more flexible and less apt to demand fair wages or better conditions of work. Many do it to help the families, others have to do it after losing their parents, due to war or AIDS, assuring their own survival. Some are sold or trafficked, inside and between countries. And many of them are even obliged to live in conditions comparable to slavery, working since early morning until the sunset in the plantations, with a very precarious alimentation, which consequently leads to physical and psychological weakness day by day. For being weak, they work slowlier, by working too slow, they are spanked. 

But the solution of this problem does not only pass by implementing strategies inside the countries where the infringement of human rights occurs, but also by a shared cooperation and responsibility with the European and North American companies, which are still constantly transferring its factories to underdeveloped countries, where they find cheaper workforce, and managing, consequently, to reduce the production costs. A clear example of this situation happens with Microsoft that employs children, in China, paying sixty cents per hour, during 16 hours per day to build keyboards, mices, and other objects.

Thus, there is a serious contradiction between what Europe and U.S.A. defend on the level of the protection of children rights and the fact that many of its factories are located in countries as China, where the trade unions had been banished and the liberty of speech is inexistent.