Child labour on tobacco farms
Malawi has the highest incidence of child labour in southern Africa and it exists in several sectors, including commercial farms, domestic work and the informal sector. Most children work in the informal sector with 88.9% of the children in the age group 5-14 working in the agricultural sector, where tobacco estates are highly represented. Many children are employed as unpaid family workers, helping their parents during high seasons but these children combine work with school. A significant number of children (4.7%), however, work without attending school. This is more common in boys than girls, and among children in rural areas.
Malawi is one of the world’s biggest tobacco producers and relies on tobacco as its main export product, representing 70% of the nation’s export income and the second largest source of total income following foreign aid (Davies, 2003). Most of the tobacco in Malawi is cultivated by farmers on smallholdings, by tobacco tenants and by casual farm workers. Using the tenant population of 39,000, the number of children working on tobacco farms in Malawi has been estimated at 78,000 although the actual number is thought to be much higher because of problems of estimation.
Existing research provides some information on the different activities children are engaged in on the farms and to some extent the hazards children face. It also gives some understanding of why children are involved in this work.
Apart from one consultation conducted by Save the Children (2006) it seems that very little research has been done with children themselves to find out how they experience and understand the work they do. It also seems that there has been little or no work done on finding out what children see as the best form of intervention.
For this reason Plan Malawi decided to undertake this study to find out how children experience work on the tobacco farms and their understanding of why they are involved in this work. The impact of the work on their physical and psychosocial well-being was also of concern as were their ideas about ways to make sure they are protected and can access their rights.
The research will be used to inform the work Plan and its partners in Malawi are doing to raise awareness of child labour on tobacco farms, to advocate for changed conditions and to develop interventions for the affected children.
The legislative frame work Extract from Desk Review, Child labour in Malawi, Anna Liwander, July 2008. Plan International Malawi. Malawi is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was adopted by the United Nations in 1989. The Convention includes a section on the need to protect children from work that is dangerous, or might harm their health or their education.
Malawi has also ratified the Minimum Age Convention (ILO Convention No. 138) and the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (ILO Convention No. 182). The Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (ILO Convention No. 182, 1999) adopts 15 as the minimum age of employment. In addition, Malawi has its own legislative framework that includes the Constitution, which bars employment of children below the age of 16 years while the Malawi Employment Act of 2000 raises the bar by condemning the employment of children below the age of 14 years.
The Constitution of Malawi Section 23 accords children the right of protection from any work that is of a hazardous nature or any work that may prejudice their attendance at school or inflict any harm on their health and development. Frameworks for the fight against child labour also include a National Code of Conduct developed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development together with UNICEF (Tsoka & Konyani, 2003).
However, there is no written labour policy in Malawi, let alone child labour policy. Perhaps more importantly, there is no meaningful enforcement of any of the existing provisions (Otañez et al, 2006). According to the child labour baseline survey conducted by the Centre for Social Research (Tsoka & Konyani, 2003), many of the district labour offices, which are responsible for administrating most of the labour legislation and regulations, are scarcely funded. There also seems to be a lack of writing materials for recording complaints, and labour inspections are rarely conducted.
