This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Administrator J. Brian Atwood
Oslo Conference on Child Labor
Oslo, Norway, October 23, 1997
U.S. Agency for International Development
President Kennedy once said, "A child miseducated is a
child lost." Around the world today, we have more than 100
million children between 6 and 11 who will never attend school,
in what UNICEF has accurately labeled a "silent catastrophe."
Many of these children are toiling right now in dingy sweatshops
and enduring backbreaking labor.
It is said that the future is written on the faces of children. If
so, that future is full of both hope and despair. To see the bright
eyes of a young girl attending school for the first time is to see
the prospects of an unlimited horizon. To see the world
weariness in the tired features of a twelve year old who had
already known a lifetime of work is to understand the crushing
burden poverty places on children.
It takes but a glance to understand the simple truth: child
labor is simply wrong. Child labor is wrong because it robs
children of their potential, swapping the meager wages of menial
labor for any hope they might experience a brighter future.
Child labor is wrong in the eyes of the world, because we know
that children should be in school rather than at work. Child labor
is wrong because it undermines the very core hope of securing
lasting social and economic progress in the developing world.
It our responsibility -- national governments, non-governmental organizations, and donors alike -- to act to right
these wrongs.
As the head of a development agency, I believe deeply that
development is a critical issue for the future of all the world's
citizens, rich and poor alike. Understanding that fact, it is
imperative we speak to the threat to this future posed by child
labor.
Over the long run, a nation's greatest asset is human capital.
Human capital does not simply materialize, nor can it be
conveniently purchased. It must be cultivated over the long term.
Human capital is not a commodity, but rather a distillation of our
deepest values, our hopes, our dreams. A healthy, educated,
well-trained citizenry is development.
How is human capital generated? Through education and
the intellectual growth of our children. We all recognize, and
this conference's Agenda for Action makes explicit, that child
labor and basic education are deeply related. They are opposite
sides of the same coin. Children who are at work cannot be at
school. Children whose parents see the value of education, and
who are afforded the possibility of learning in a safe and
appropriate school, will not forced to make the devil's bargain of
sending their children to work before their time. But in too many
places this remains an empty hope; far too many parents see no
option but to try and generate enough income to keep the wolf
away from the door for another day.
This year, toward the goal of combatting child labor, the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
formally adopted basic education as one of our five fundamental
goals in support of sustainable development. We have now made
explicit what has been implicit in United States policy for many
years: our fundamental principle that no person should reach
adulthood without the basic skills that come from a decent
education.
This is more than just rhetoric: this year, we plan to invest
more than one hundred million dollars in basic education in
developing countries around the world. And we expect to
maintain this commitment over the years to come.
We will focus our education resources on those countries,
particularly the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa, in which
a high proportion of the children who will be entering adulthood
early in the next century do not currently have effective access to
primary education. And under a commitment made at the Social
Summit by the First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton,
we will invest heavily in assuring that girls receive full and equal
benefit from educational opportunities in their countries. I urge
our partners, both in the donor community and among national
governments, to do the same.
When child labor is replaced with universal basic education,
when intellectual growth and curiosity replace the closed box of
repetitive drudgery in countries throughout the world, we will see
a flowering of the human potential and the human spirit that will
lift even today's poorest countries. And if we fail to act, and
allow labor rather than learning to continue to be the norm among
poor children, we will sow the seeds of generation after
generation of dispossessed with little recourse but desperation and
violence. As our First Lady Hillary Clinton recently said, "No
nation can hope to succeed in our global economy if half of its
people lack the opportunity and the right to make the most of
their God-given promise."
Let me be clear: we can never end child labor without
offering in its place universal and high quality education. But
education alone will not be enough to end this scourge.
Throughout much of the world we see children at work
within a stone's throw of a public school. If education is
available to them, why do they not take advantage of it?
Two words alone answer that question: poverty and
exploitation.
We know that many families believe their children must
work. They live at the margins of the economy, barely able to
generate enough income or grow enough food to survive. Many,
especially the youngest children, do not survive.
The answer to this problem is solid and sustained economic
growth which is also broad-based, so that the fruits of the
economy are widely shared among the poor. Without this
growth, grinding poverty and the attendant need to act for today
rather than plan for tomorrow will remain the reality for millions.
And children will remain at work and without a viable future.
This is why the United States invests heavily in support of
economic growth in our development assistance programs. It is
why we have made global food security a basic issue of both
foreign and domestic policy. And it is why we believe that the
growth of fair and open global trade offers the best opportunities
for all the world's people to prosper.
By reducing poverty around the world, we will reduce the
pressures that drive parents to send their children to work. But
that in itself will not end exploitation.
We hear transparent arguments that children are employed
because they have such nimble fingers, or other unique capacities
that come from their size and agility. This is a lame excuse for
an inexcusable truth: children are employed because they are
more easily controlled, more readily exploited, and more handily
discarded than adults who may be coming to understand the
concept of their human rights.
The most egregious forms of exploitation -- child
prostitution, slavery, work in life-threatening activities -- demand
and have received universal condemnation. The United States
government applauds efforts to bring these dark practices into the
light of day where they can be seen by the international
community for they are: a denial of everything that civilization
values.
The truth is devastating: in many cases, children are
exploited because some adult can strip-mine these children's inner
resources for wealth or for pleasure, until there is nothing left of
value. The shell of that child can then just be discarded.
This is not hyperbole; we know first- hand it is true.
Organizations funded by my agency work with young prostitutes,
boys and girls, some as young as ten, to get them off the streets,
away from their pimps, and into schools. We have sponsored
programs to get children out of bonded labor and, again, into
schools. We have worked with street children to provide them
with alternatives to begging and stealing.
In numerous meetings, the international community has
spoken out against the most intolerable forms of child labor. The
United States believes that we have an obligation to do more than
speak. This is why we support the programs I have described,
why we fund the International Labor Organization's International
Program for the Elimination of Child Labor, and why USAID is
supporting programs totalling more than six million dollars that
work directly on issues of child labor.
It is also why the United States moved this year to enact into
law a provision that bans the importation into our country of
products made by forced or indentured child labor. This issue
unifies the American public like few others: we will not make
use of such tainted goods, at whatever price.
We are not naive about this. We recognize that only a small
percentage of the world's child labor goes into products imported
into the United States. But this is at heart a moral issue, and
while we cannot speak for other countries, we have the right and
the obligation to speak forcefully for ourselves.
All of us are here because we share the belief that child
labor is wrong, and that we must all do our share to end it. We
have before us an Agenda for Action that speaks to this belief,
and that provides us with a common road map. Let us travel that
route. And again, to quote First Lady Hillary Clinton, let us
"work together to provide the tools of opportunity so that every
girl and boy ... can look with confidence toward the future. That
should be our promise to our children for the next century."
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 18, 2001
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