Global Courant 2023-05-22 23:09:33
More than 500,000 childrengirls and adolescents are forced to work in Honduras to survive, which represents 20% of the population between the ages of 5 and 17, according to the humanitarian organization World Visionwhich this Monday called for more efforts to end child labor.
“More than 500,000 boys and girls are working in Honduras” to survive, Jorge Valladares, director of the Brilliant Futures project of the World Vision organization, told EFE.
According to figures from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the number of children in child labor situation reaches 411,000 in Hondurasbut Valladares points out that the figure is higher because the State does not include in its data the number of minors who are dedicated tohidden work”, that is, an informal or domestic job.
In 2022, the child population between the ages of 5 and 17 in the country amounted to about 2.5 million, according to official figures.
MAIN OBSTACLE TO ACCESSING EDUCATION
Despite the fact that Honduras has ratified Convention 182 of the International Labor Organization (OPI) “on the worst forms of child labour”, many of the children work as garbage collectors or fishermen, are sexually exploited or are in the begging, lamented.
Other boys work as farmers, servants, merchants or miners, while girls are burdened with unpaid domestic work, according to the humanitarian organization.
“Child labor is one of the main obstacles to access to education,” emphasized Valladares, who indicated that, according to projections by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and World Vision, more than 1.5 million children “are outside the educational system” in Honduras.
Many boys and girls, according to the expert, “joined family survival activities in different work modalities” due to the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, a disease that also forced minors to leave the classroom.
Putting an end to child labor “is a challenge for the country,” stressed Valladares, who considers that one of the “epithets that this crisis has is the lost generation in terms of education.”
He also questioned that in the country “we have not yet seriously measured the impact that the pandemic has left us, in addition to the increase, which it undoubtedly had, poverty.”
CHILD LABOR IF IT CAN BE ELIMINATED
Valladares assured that child labor can be eliminated, as established by goal 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), but the Central American country requires “plans, budgets, and strategies.”
“If poverty is fought, child labor is reduced and, for example, if educational inclusion strategies are increased, child labor is reduced, but if poverty is no longer addressed, education, health, protection, and the strengthening of family economy increases,” he explained.
In his opinion, the pandemic caused “a tsunami” in Honduras because it left the country “without school infrastructure” and children who were “getting used to being outside the educational system and also left us with serious structural challenges to adequately care for children in all these dimensions”.
Valladares is confident that this year the State and civil society and humanitarian organizations can “resume a strategy centered and focused on working children.”
To find out the magnitude of the problem, the INE and World Vision, with support from the United States Department of Labor, carry out the first National Survey on Child Labor. EFE
