First the rural farmer lacks knowledge about any legal instrument and committment to the definition of child labour, mostly children are engaged to support the Agriculture, in cultivation, for older children, and planting for younger children. Also in harvesting and processing usually is left for women and girls. Most of the farmers that engage children in Agricuture start with their children, and in some cases, children of relatives either staying with them or visiting. It is mostly believed that this is a form of traing and grooming, since agriculture is an age long tradition, and largely transmitted through inheritance to the next generation.
Sadly, these children should be in school, except that the parents don’t seem to understand the need for education, or the children are able to support production which in-turn translates to more money and food available to avert hunger and poverty. But that is one sided in the sense that if the children acquires and education, they can improve production, using less energy and more machines to produce food.
In especially conflict contexts, where children are either separated from their parents or are orphaned by the conflict, the older children takes responsibilities for catering for the younger ones who depend of agriculture for livelihood.
Here are the following recommendations to reduce child labour in Agriculture:
1- Raise awareness on the issue of child labour are national and community level, leveraging on the traditional and religious leaders to deliver greater outreach at grassroots.
2- Support basic education, and promote school enrollment of underserved and marginalized population
3- Put in place stronger more people centered monitoring system, that not just collect data but seeks to learn real challenges and proffer solutions to support small holding farmer,
4- Design a reward system that support increase school enrollment and completion of underserved children.
5- Design bottom up programs that capture the peoples input, through focused group discussion, with traditional, religious leaders, farmers groups, women’s groups, to criminalize and bring to book violators of the enjoyment to the full right of the child.
6- Promote the domestication of the child rights act at national level. In Nigeria for instance, most of the states in the North have not domesticated the law. (Making it fluid to manage, already a challenge then exasperated by Covid-19 pandemic, it is reported that out of school enrollment jumped to around 13 Million in Nigeria, with the greater portion in the north, regrettably, the recent abduction of school children, will push that figure higher.)
7- Increase outreach to non-sates armed groups on IHL, and international law, to promote protection of children in armed conflict.
Mr. John Ede