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The Right of Child Laborers to Participation
What is the meaning of participation?
Participation means that a person has an opinion on the issues that regulate his life. In an ideal society, every individual participates in making decisions and laws because he is the best one, who understands his conditions and problems. Children are part of the society, who have desires, needs and problems. They need to express themselves and their problems especially when they undertake responsibilities beyond the requirements of their age as workers. Hence, the children should be allowed to have a voice in determining their wages, work hours and vacations. They should enjoy social and health insurance and form special unions that express their demands in addition to the right to join trade unions.
Why should child workers participate?
Most of the problems that child laborers face result from exploitation by their employers. Child workers lose most of their life for extremely low wages, for which they are vulnerable to industrial accidents and chronic diseases, and deprived of social insurance and vacations. They have no choice but to accept working under such intensively exploitative conditions as they usually have no legal means to defend their rights or to express their grievances. Such a working environment, consequently, will result in a generation of workers who cannot grasp the meaning of participation.
How can we campaign for the children right to participation?
· The Egyptian law on trade unions specifies the legal age for joining unions at 15 years although children start working at the age of five. It means that the law deprives a huge portion of Egyptian workers of their right to participation.
· According to the law on associations, the age of forming associations is 21 years that means depriving children of their right to form associations to express their opinions. Moreover, the law treats children workers as immature although they work and contribute in the living costs of their families.
For achieving our demands, children and their parents have to understand the importance of participation in addition to their cooperation with NGOs to press the officials and different governmental institutions to change laws of associations and syndicates.