HONDURAS: WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 TEGUCIGALPA 000039 SIPDIS STATE FOR DRL/IL (MMITTLEHAUSER),DOL FOR ILA (TINA MCCARTER),DRL/ILCSR (TU DANG),AND INFO GENEVA E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EAGR EIND ELAB ETRD PGOV PHUM SOCI HO SUBJECT: HONDURAS: WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR REF: SECSTATE 127448 ¶1. SUMMARY: This report is a response to the U.S. Department of Labor action cable (Reftel) regarding the worst forms of child labor in Honduras. The Government of Honduras (GOH) has made clear progress addressing the worst forms of child labor with a new more effective eradication plan, a national commission, greater information dissemination, new legislation and increased resources allocated for the enforcement of child labor laws. However, with 74 percent of child labor taking place in rural areas, too many of these resources are anchored in the bureaucracy of Tegucigalpa including six of the seven child labor investigators. Also, the deterrent factor of the child labor law and efficacy of the Ministry of Labor (MOL) are called into question given that 903 child labor inspections in 2008 resulted in zero convictions or penalties levied. In response, the current Minister of Labor has stated her goal to increase the amount of child labor inspectors thus expanding coverage across the country and create benchmarks to monitor the performance of the new eradication plan. END SUMMARY. -------------- Laws and Regulations Proscribing the Worst Forms of Child Labor -------------- ¶2. Honduras is a signatory to ILO Convention 182 regarding the worst forms of child labor and its Child Labor Code precludes participation by minors in unhealthy or dangerous conditions. Honduran law regulates child labor and provides that minors between the ages of 14 and 18 cannot work unless authorities determine that the work is indispensable for the family,s income and will not conflict with schooling. The constitution and the law establish the maximum work hours for children under age 18 as six hours daily and 30 hours weekly. Parents or a legal guardian can request special permission from the Ministry of Labor (MOL) to allow children between the ages of 14 and 15 to work, so long as the MOL performs a home study to ensure that the child demonstrates economic necessity to work and that the child will not work outside of the country or in hazardous conditions, including offshore fishing. ¶3. The law prohibits night work and overtime for minors under the age 16 and requires that employers in areas with more than 20 school-age children working at their business facility provide a location for a school. In practice, the vast majority of children worked without MOL permits. ¶4. On May 12, 2008, the government of Honduras (GOH) reformed Article Eight of the Child Labor Code, which now includes a list of tasks considered too dangerous for children under 18 years old. The act also bans minors from engaging in activities such as forestry, fishery, hunting, mining, quarrying, manufacturing, construction, transportation, morgue activities and street cleaning. Despite these limitations, minors aged 16 or 17 years may receive authorization from the Office of Labor and Social Security to perform dangerous labor under certain conditions. ¶5. The law prohibits forced or bonded labor but there is no provision for children &trafficked8 into exploitive labor situations. The Intra-Institutional Commission on Trafficking has prioritized for 2009 the creation of new legislation which would make it illegal to traffic a child into an exploitive labor situation. Honduran law requires recruits to be 18 years old in order to enlist voluntarily into the Armed Forces. There is no compulsory conscription. -------------- Implementation and Enforcement of Proscriptions Against the Worst Forms of Child Labor -------------- ¶6. By law, individuals who violate child labor laws in traditional work sectors may receive prison sentences of three to five years along with a fine. According to the MOL, the monetary amount of the fine for those responsible for violating the child labor code is 5,000 Lempira ($260 USD). Being such a low monetary amount, the fine does not adequately deter child labor violations. The MOL has stated TEGUCIGALP 00000039 002 OF 004 its intentions to raise the level of the fine in order to increase its efficacy. In practice, upon discovery of a child labor violation the MOL does not levy fines but rather give violators a probationary period of two months to correct the violation upon which further investigations are made to verify compliance. ¶7. Child labor violations are investigated mostly in areas where the MOL has an established presence such as the larger cities of Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, El Progresso, and Choluteca. There are seven investigators who exclusively work on child labor violations in Honduras. Six are located in Tegucigalpa and one is located in San Pedro Sula. Outside of these two metropolitan areas child labor inspections are carried out by the 77 ®ular8 labor inspectors employed by the MOL. When requested to do so, the police are required to accompany child labor inspectors while they perform inspections. There are no police specifically assigned to support the enforcement of the Child Labor Code. ¶8. According to the MOL, 903 inspections of child labor violations were conducted in 2008. Of those 903 inspections, 165 were inspections instigated by a formally reported abuse, 44 were re-inspections to enforce compliance after a previous violation, and the rest were random. Nearly 20 percent (170) of the inspections were conducted inside the capital of Tegucigalpa with the rest scattered throughout the country. All except for three of the 903 inspections were instigated by the report of a minor aged 14 to 18 years old working. The three other investigations were instigated by a report of a child younger than 14 years old working. ¶9. According to the MOL, there were neither reports of incidences nor any investigations into the worst forms of child labor. Seventy percent of investigations had to do with child laborers working more hours than permitted by the Labor law. Approximately five percent (44) of the cases investigated are followed up on to ensure compliance. The MOL states that all of these cases have ended up in compliance and has levied no fines nor begun criminal proceedings against any child labor law violators. ¶10. The Office of the Special Prosecutor for Children (OSPC) in Tegucigalpa stated that the MOL has not submitted any child labor exploitation cases for 2008. The OSPC has four analysts who work exclusively on cases of children being sexually exploited for commercial purposes. In 2008, the OSPC investigated 60 cases, and has taken 9 traffickers to court with the remaining cases remaining in investigation. -------------- Social Programs Designed to Prevent and Withdraw children from the Worst Forms of Child Labor. -------------- ¶11. The GOH is involved in a number of activities, working with Community-based organizations, international organizations such as the International Labor Organization, and the U.S. Department of Labor, to educate Hondurans, build institutional capacity to work on the child labor, and improve access to justice for trafficking and child labor victims. ¶12. In August 2008, the Public Ministry and the NGO Plan International formalized a new two million Lempira (100,000 USD) initiative called &Combating the Abuse and Exploitation of Children.8 The project will expand the coverage of justice and legal protection to children living places without dedicated authorities or government institutions. The project will also expand coverage of the OSPC to north and southwest Honduras (Santa Barbara, Gracias, La Esperanza, La Entrada, La Paz and Choluteca). ¶13. The National Congress (CN) has formed a &Commission for Family and Childhood8 in partnership with UNICEF which produces informative materials detailing the definition of child labor, the dangers of child labor, and the legal regulations of child labor in Honduras. In San Pedro Sula, the local municipal government has worked with the Italian government,s International Assistance Agency (through a 30 million Euro project) to reintegrate 300 children back into school. TEGUCIGALP 00000039 003 OF 004 ¶14. The government conducted social and educational programs to reach at-risk children, including a school grant program to provide money for school supplies for very poor families, and an alternative schooling program using radio and distance learning for children in distant rural areas with few schools. Government measures had minimal impact on diminishing child labor in light of extreme poverty, famine conditions in rural areas, and a lack of jobs for school graduates. ¶15. The Ministry of Labor is also working with a number of foreign donors to combat child labor. The MOL works with the Spanish government to rescue children and young adults from the street or other vulnerable situations and help them find suitable employment. Two projects funded by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank provide capacity building opportunities to children and young adults on the margins of society to secure employment at large firms. The project provides a financial incentive to participating firms so that they hire at-risk youth and the youth participants receive a stipend for participating in the program. ¶16. The government of Honduras is currently participating in a number of ILO, IOM, OAS, and government of Spain sponsored projects aimed at combating commercial sexual trafficking through a variety of activities, including capacity building and legal reform. Additionally, the GOH participates in U.S. Department of Labor programs aimed at combating child labor through education, withdrawing and preventing children from exploitive labor situations, improving labor law compliance, and strengthening outreach to the agricultural sector where the problem is particularly acute. -------------- Comprehensive Policy Aimed at the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor -------------- ¶17. On May 22, 2008 a National Plan for the Eradication of Child Labor (NPECL) was unveiled at the Presidential Palace in Tegucigalpa. A number of institutions, including the MOL, the office of the First Lady, the Judiciary, the Public Ministry, and the Honduran Council for the Private Sector, launched this plan. The plan will last seven years and is meant to eradicate child labor. The NPECL is a lengthy and complicated plan incorporating the actions of many Honduran governmental agencies. However, the MOL has taken charge and held a Strategy Forum in December 2008 to assign responsibilities to each Institution and begin benchmarking progress on the Plan,s implementation. ¶18. Honduras is implementing a National Plan of Action to Eradicate Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. The Plan was introduced in 2008 and will last seven years. The government also coordinates with NGOs and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to place trafficking victims in shelters and reintegrate them into society. Public schooling is compulsory through age 15 in Honduras and free save for the large expenses incurred for pedagogical materials and other required materials. -------------- Progress Toward Eliminating the Worst Forms of Child Labor -------------- ¶19. A May 2008 census by National Institute of Statistices (INE in Spanish) reported that 13 percent of Honduran children (348,250 children ages 5 to 17) were working in Honduras of whom 76 percent were boys and 24 percent girls. Interestingly, 62 percent of the children who neither work nor study are girls and only 38 percent are boys. By far, the majority (74 percent) of child labor takes place in rural areas versus urban zones (26 percent). The average monthly wage earned by a child is 2,199 Lemipira (approximately $115 USD) in urban areas and 1471 Lempira (approx. $78 USD) in rural areas. Children who work (ages 5 to 17) average 5.4 years of schooling. ¶20. The majority of working children work in agriculture (56 percent) with others working in commercial activities or tourism (18 percent),manufacturing (9 percent) and services (8 percent). Children often work harvesting coffee, sugar TEGUCIGALP 00000039 004 OF 004 cane and melons; rummaging at garbage dumps; in the forestry, hunting and fishing sectors; and as deckhands and divers in the lobster industry. Children also work selling goods such as fruit or merchandise, begging, washing cars and hauling loads. Some work in the limeston and lime production industry. Children, predominantly girls, also work as domestic servants, where they are sometimes subject to maltreatment by third-party employers. ¶21. While the GOH has no documented cases for 2008, in Honduras, generally the worst forms of child labor have to do with the extraction of lobsters from the ocean, the harvesting of coffee and the harvesting of sugar cane. LLORENS