Dear Participants,
Thanks for all your contributions. It has been an interesting week. We have heard from policy makers (government), producer organizatoins and farmer's unions, academics researchers, NGOs, UN agencies, and those working at community level.
The word education has repeatedly come up. This includes greater access to rural [quality] education and how access to education for older children remains an issue, including school fees. The important role of producer organizations and farmer unions has been expressed on several occasion. This includes giving farmers credit opportunities, raising awareness on hazardous work and child labour, providing shared opportunities for access mechanization and much more. Several participants brought up the concept of child labour free zones, which requires community level mobilization. Moreover, the need of an integrated approach which requires coherence between different ministries and stakedhoders has been mentioned on different occasions.
Other interested points, among many, include the potential of territorial development approaches, the importance of rural consultation to child's rights organizations and how smallholder farmers could greatly benefit from various social protection mechanisn as well greater access to information related to price fluctuation. It was mentioned that policy enforcement is often an issue, while a policy to address child labour may exist at national level, limited action is done at local level which, at times, can be attributed to the lack of information on policies amongst local authories and limited knowledge capacity on concrete measures that can be taken at communtiy level.
We would like to hear more from you, as well as newcomers, on:
- Concrete measures that that have been put in place that have successfully reduced child labour in agriculture. Who have been involved in this process?
- How can we improve labour conditions for seasonal/temporarly agricultural workers and migrants.
- How can we address the hidden work on girls that interfere with schooling.
- Who are the different agriculture stakerholders that have a role to play in the fight against child labour in agriculture? What are there roles and how should they coordinate?
We look forward to a continued discussion! Among the questions just listed, we remind participants to list the number of question for which they are providing an answer. However, if the experience you would like to share does not fit into one of the questions, it is equally welcome.
Warm regards,
Jessie Rivera Fagan [Facilitator]
Mme Jessie Rivera Fagan