Child Labour

Exploitive child labour is increasingly being recognised as a problem in Africa, and has been identified as a priority area of intervention on the continent. Poverty and HIV/AIDS raise vulnerability in children who are forced to abandon schooling to work in exploitive and hazardous situations.

Not all forms of child labour are equally harsh. The most severe forms of child labour are referred to as worst forms of child labour (WFCL) and include slavery, sexual exploitation, crime and hazardous work.

Child work is defined as exploitive when it has harmful effects on the child’s health, well being or development, and it interferes with child basic rights such as education. In excess, acceptable types of work become child labour. Exploitive child labour is not restricted to remunerated work, but also encompasses children who are working in their own homes, at school or in family businesses without any form of remuneration.



Examples of our recent and ongoing child labour projects include:



Mid-Term Independent Evaluation of the COOPAfrica Programme

Khulisa Management Services was commissioned by the International Labour Office (ILO) to conduct a mid-term evaluation of the CoopAFRICA programme.

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Protecting Children from Exploitive Labour through Education Solutions (PROSOL) Project

This project developed concentrated pilot education initiatives to address the issue of children involved in the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL) in four comunas in the Kwanza Sul and Benguela provinces of Angola, with complimentary activities at the national and provincial level. The project also undertook a number of awareness raising activities and capacity building activities to improve local and national support systems designed to protect and care for all children.

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Reduction of Exploitative Child Labour in Southern Africa (RECLISA) Project

From 2004 to 2008, the RECLISA Project worked in the sub-region to reduce the number of children caught in the worst forms of child labour while helping them get an education. Fourteen project activities sought to raise awareness, improve educational opportunities, enhance social services, and strengthen government policies in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland. The project enrolled more than 10,000 children who were involved in, or were at risk of, child labour. Project funding was provided by the United States Department of Labor.

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Towards the Elimination of Child Labour (TECL) – Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Child Trafficking

The TECL project was a joint initiative of the South African Government and the ILO to operationalise key action steps recommended by the Child Labour Action Programme (CLAP). World Education, Inc. and Khulisa Management Services were awarded a major contract to undertake a series of research and study activities.

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Verification of Certification Activities in the West African Cocoa Sector

Following reports of children being used to work under exploitive conditions in West African cocoa farms, the Harkin-Engel Protocol called for the creation of a certification process that would ensure that no abusive child labour would be used in cocoa production. Key components of this process include public reporting by each country on the worst forms of child labour including trafficking, and adult labour practices in the cocoa sector and the external verification of these reports. Khulisa and partner organisation Fafo AIS were contracted by the International Cocoa Verification Board to conduct this external verification.

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