CHILD LABOR IN HONDURAS: INFORMATION FOR THE TRADE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 TEGUCIGALPA 002916

SIPDIS

STATE FOR DRL/IL (GWHITE),WHA/PPC, WHA/EPSC, AND WHA/CEN
DOL FOR ILAB (TFAULKNER)

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ELAB EIND ETRD PHUM SOCI HO USAID
SUBJECT: CHILD LABOR IN HONDURAS: INFORMATION FOR THE TRADE
AND DEVELOPMENT ACT (GSP) REPORTING REQUIREMENT

REF: A. STATE 168607

B. TEGUCIGALPA 944

C. 01 TEGUCIGALPA 3993

D. 01 TEGUCIGALPA 2359

E. 01 TEGUCIGALPA 2091


1. Summary. Over the past several months, Labor Attache and
other EmbOffs have spoken with government officials, private
sector, labor unions, non-governmental organizations, and
child advocates regarding the situation of child labor in
Honduras. The Embassy has been active in promoting an agenda
to support the eradication of the worst forms of child labor.
We believe that child labor is a serious issue in Honduras
and will continue to pressure government and private sector
stakeholders to eradicate the worst forms of child labor.
The Government of Honduras (GOH) and the Ministry of Labor
have demonstrated the political will necessary to implement
and uphold their obligations to eliminate the worst forms of
child labor. Answers below generally follow the subjects
specified in ref A. End Summary.

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CHILD LABOR IN HONDURAS
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2. Honduran Government officials, International Labor
Organization officials, and human rights organizations
estimate that approximately 400,000 children work illegally
in Honduras, the majority for their own families, in the
informal sector, and in rural areas. Many of these children
work out of economic necessity alongside other family
members. Bonded and/or enslaved labor is rare, but work in
hazardous conditions and for long hours is common, especially
for those children who have given up schooling. The
U.S.-funded and International Labor Organization-managed
International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor
(IPEC) identified the worst forms of child labor in Honduras
as prostitution (particularly in tourist areas along the
North Coast),fireworks industry workers in Copan, child
divers in lobster boats in the Mosquitia (Caribbean coast),
limestone quarry and lime production workers, garbage dump
pickers in the two large cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro
Sula, and coffee and melon agricultural workers. Of these
occupations, the most hazardous is diving, and the one with
the most significant incidence of child labor is in the melon
industry, where NGOs and the GOH have estimated that
approximately 2,000 children work as seasonal laborers (ref
E). Harvesting sugar cane fields is also a dangerous area of
child labor.

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PROSCRIBING WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR
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3. Honduras has adequate laws and regulations proscribing the
worst forms of child labor. The Honduran Congress ratified
ILO Convention 182 in May 2001 and Honduras became a party to
the convention in June 2001. The definition of the worst
forms of child labor are identical to that of the ILO
Convention 182. All child labor laws, including the ILO
Convention 182, are applicable in all sectors and industries.


4. Honduras regulates child labor in the Constitution and in
two codes, one relating to minors, and the other to labor.
The Constitution (Chapter 5, article 128, section 7)
establishes that minors who are under age 16 or who are
students ages 16 and older cannot work. The Constitution
also establishes the maximum hours worked for children under
17 years as six hours daily and 30 hours weekly. Under the
Child and Adolescent Code, a law passed in 1996, parents or a
legal guardian can request the Ministry of Labor for special
permission to allow children ages 14-15 to work, as long as
the Ministry of Labor performs a home study to assure that
the child both shows the need to work and will be working
under non-hazardous conditions. The work day proscribed for
children is four hours per day for 14-15 year-olds, and six
hours per day for 16-17 year-olds. No minor is allowed to
work in hazardous conditions. In law and in practice, the
Ministry of Labor carries out the home studies and limits the
number of permits that children ages 14-15 can have. The
Labor Code, passed in 1959 and subsequently revised,
prohibits night work and extra hours for minors under age 16,
and also requires that employers in areas with more than 20
school-aged children on their farm, ranch, or business must
provide a location for a school. In practice, many children
work without going to the Ministry of Labor to request a
permit, particularly those who work in the informal sector
and in rural areas.

5. International treaties have a status superior to that of
the Constitution. Honduras is a party to ILO Convention 138,
which was ratified in 1980. It establishes the minimum age
of work at 14 years and specifies the age for completing
educational requirements at 15 years. The United Nations
Convention on the Rights of Children, ratified by Honduras in
1990, requires each signatory government to establish a
minimum age of work, conditions and hours of work, and
penalties to assure effective application of the law. The
above-mentioned Child and Adolescent Code was developed out
of the UN Convention, according to Ministry of Labor sources.


6. Honduran law defines hazardous work to include: standing
on scaffolding higher than three meters; use of toxic or
noxious substances; exposure to vehicular traffic; exposure
to abnormal temperatures; work in tunnels or underground
mining; exposure to noise louder than 80 decibels;
manipulation of radioactive substances; exposure to high
voltage electric currents; underground diving; exposure to
garbage or to biological or pathogenic substances; painting
with industrial or lead paint; work on dangerous machines
such as those that cut, shape, or file metal or wood;
activities related to ovens, smelters, metal-working, or
heavy presses; or high risk agroindustrial work.


7. The minimum age for employment is consistent with the age
for completing educational requirements in law, but in
practice, more than sixty percent of children do not complete
sixth grade, despite GOH increased spending on educational
budgets and improvement to school access in rural areas.

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IMPLEMENTATION AND ENFORCEMENT MECHANISMS
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8. In urban areas, these laws and regulations regarding child
labor are better implemented than in rural areas. A rural
economy in which a significant portion of employment is in
the informal sector and in which parents face high
opportunity costs to send children to school makes it
difficult to implement and enforce these measures against
child labor. In large scale manufacturing and services,
however, implementation and enforcement of these measures are
more consistent. National enforcement remedies are not
adequate to punish or deter violations, but pressure from
international agreements, such as the Generalized System of
Preferences (GSP) and Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act
(CBTPA),and awareness of the U.S. Customs Forced Child Labor
program, have sensitized employers who work in the export
sector.


9. Regarding the worst forms of child labor, the GOH has not
yet established enforcement or penalties beyond those
mentioned above and - for child labor in illicit activities -
in the criminal code. Penalties imposed on firms for
violating the Child and Adolescent Code include sanctions
between 303 and 1,515 USD (5,000-25,000 Lempiras),or twice
that if the employer is a repeat offender. For sale or
trafficking of children, the criminal code prohibits illegal
detention of minors and imposes a 14-18 year prison sentence.
Forced child labor, prostitution, and other immoral
activities are characterized as economic exploitation in the
Child and Adolescent Code and are subject to a three to five
year prison term. Furthermore, the criminal code specifies a
seven to 12 year sentence, and a 455 to 909 USD (7,500-15,000
Lempira) fine for persons found guilty of prostituting
minors. Forced recruitment and obligatory military service
were abolished under a Constitutional amendment in 1997.
Adults who use children in narcotrafficking are sanctioned
according to the Law on the Illicit Use and Trafficking of
Psychotropic Drugs.


10. In theory, if children are found to be working in illicit
conditions, either through a labor inspection or through a
police investigation, the Special Prosecutors' Office on
Children, founded in 1997, works with the investigative
police to uncover evidence and bring the perpetrators to
trial. The judicial branch has also established Children
Courts, where violations of children's rights are tried. In
practice, the Honduran police and judicial system are rife
with inefficiencies and corruption and face many difficulties
in administering justice. Nonetheless, the GOH has improved
its police force and recently implemented a new modern
criminal procedures code that is intended to improve the
Government's ability to bring cases to trial and to
administer justice.


11. For children employed in the worst forms of child labor
that are not illicit by their nature but are hazardous or
illegal for minors, the authority that would investigate such
cases is the Ministry of Labor, which has trained inspectors
to identify child labor. Labor inspectors, upon being told
of a violation or in a routine inspection, would report the
incident for administrative action. The inspection unit
cannot immediately sanction employers, and the Ministry has
less than 50 inspectors in a country of six million people.
Note: Like most government ministries, a severe lack of
resources restricts what the MOL is able to accomplish. End
Note. Despite these problems, in 2001, the MOL re-opened a
regional office and re-initiated inspections of lobster boats
in the Mosquitia region, where boat captains illegally employ
boy divers. The MOL also cooperated with the Honduran
Private Business Council (COHEP) to launch an education
campaign among private industries that increases business
awareness of the worst forms of child labor in September

2001. Early in 2001 the Minister of Labor personally
directed a special inspection of the melon industry in order
to uncover the incidence of abuse in the sector. In March
Minister German Leitzelar visited Choluteca to observe the
problems of child labor in the melon and sugar cane
industries.

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WHAT DOES THE GOH DO?
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12. The Government provides free, universal, and compulsory
education through the age of 13; however, the Government
estimated that as many as 65,000 children ages 6 through 12
fail to receive schooling of any kind each year; of these,
almost 10,000 will never attend primary school. A number of
social and educational programs exist that are intended to
reach children at risk for working instead of attending
school. A school grant program run by the Ministry of
Education (MOE) provides very poor families with money for
school supplies. The MOE also provides alternative schooling
by radio and long-distance learning for children in distant
rural areas with few schools. Regional committees of "Child
Defense" volunteers try to convince parents to send their
children to school. Nonetheless, extreme poverty, recent
famine in rural areas, and lack of jobs for grade school and
high school graduates create an atmosphere where government
incentives or programs have not yet stemmed the flow of
children working.


13. The National Commission for the Gradual and Progressive
Eradication of Child Labor, established by decree by former
President Carlos Flores in 1998 and maintained by current
President Ricardo Maduro (who swore in a new commission in
May),provides a tripartite working group in which civil
society (including the ILO, unions, and non-governmental
organizations),employer groups, and a number of government
ministries have been able to discuss child labor issues over
the past several years. The Commission created a social
dialogue and forum for negotiation between the groups,
resulting in broad support for the ratification of ILO
Convention 182, the development of a National Action Plan for
the Gradual and Progressive Eradication of Child Labor, and
the Regulations on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, which were
drafted by the Commission and passed by Congress in December

2001. (Note: In Honduras, Congress passes a law, the
President signs the law, the executive branch drafts
implementing regulations, and then Congress must pass the
regulations for them to take effect. This cumbersome process
is a factor in the inability of successive administrations to
update many outdated labor regulations. End Note.)
Furthermore, the Commission spawned seven inter-institutional
sub-committees throughout the country that work in a
tripartite fashion to develop strategies to eliminate child
labor in Honduras. Maduro's impressive Minister of Labor,
German Leitzelar - a labor lawyer by profession (see ref B),
has continued to increase the ministry's work combating child
labor.


14. The MOL also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
the ILO in 1997 to support the ILO IPEC program, which
initiated program activities in the melon and coffee sectors.
The MOL also established its own office on the Gradual and
Progressive Eradication of Child Labor.


15. The Department of Labor (through ILO/IPEC) and USAID, as
well as UNICEF, support several projects to promote the
eradication of the worst forms of child labor, including by
promoting school attendance. In general these projects aim
to remove children from or prevent children from exploitative
work, and aim to provide educational opportunities and social
services for children and their families. See septel for a
list of technical assistance on labor issues from
international donors, including projects combating child
labor.
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COMMENT
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16. The GOH and the MOL have actively demonstrated the
political will and found the resources to combat the child
labor problem. The industry group, COHEP, has recently
showed renewed vigor to participate in the tripartite
commission and to educate its own members on the importance
of adhering to the ILO Convention 182. We note that this
reawakened commitment came on the heels of the July 17-18,
2001 visit of the USTR-led interagency delegation to Honduras
to discuss labor conditions. The delegation determined that
the situation in Honduras did not warrant opening a review of
CBTPA benefits (ref D). The U.S. Embassy continues to work
with the government, NGOs, and the private sector to send the
message that the worst forms of child labor are detrimental
to business with the U.S. and could subject offending sectors
to U.S. sanctions. In addition, strong Honduran interest in
a possible U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)
is clearly a motivating factor for the GOH and the private
sector to accelerate efforts to eradicate the worst forms of
child labor. In sum, Post believes that the GOH is making
continual progress toward the elimination of the worst forms
of child labor. End Comment.
PALMER