This thesis aim to describe and analyze different organisations’ work with reducing child labour. In order to understand the complex matter of child labour, a case study concerning children’s situation within the mining industry in Peru has been made. The first part of the thesis has been designed to be an introduction to the matter, with a description of the mining industry in Peru and the situation of child labour. The two following parts are more analytic in character. The second and third part discusses how the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can be used as an instrument of reducing child labour. Further, top down and bottom up-theories will be discussed as different approaches and working methods for organisations. In addition to find the answers to our questions, interviews have been conducted with employees of the organisations (ILO, UNICEF and Save the Children), articles and literature have been analyzed and finally Internet have contributed with information about child labour, Peru, the organisations, theories and the MDGs. This study claims that child labour is a complex matter and one possible solution to reduce it can be through promoting education. This can only be viable if organisations work together with governments, using a combination of top down and bottom up approaches.

Learner absenteeism is one of the major precursors to poor academic performance. If learners miss school, they do not learn and ultimately they fail or drop-out. Notwithstanding, this problem does not receive the attention it deserves. A literature study, which reviewed research findings concerning absenteeism in South Africa and selected countries, provided a framework for the ensuing empirical inquiry. A qualitative study using in-depth interviews, focus group interviews, document review and observation as data gathering techniques focused on two selected primary schools with a high rate of learner absenteeism in the Acornhoek area of Mpumalanga, South Africa. Participants were purposefully selected as information rich candidates: absentee learners, parents of absentee learners, teachers and school principals. Learner absenteeism negatively impacts effective professional practice, that is, teaching and learning. The study concludes with recommendations to prevent learner absenteeism in order to improve teaching and learning in South African primary schools. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / M. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

The dissertation traces events that contributed towards a climate where the status of children changed from property to that of person status with the concomitant recognition of children's rights. Social conditions in England, America and France from late preindustrial times to the early twentieth century were investigated. The United Nations' role in establishing children rights documentation and an evaluation of these d~μrpents in terms of the educational implications thereof were described and discussed. The African perspective towards international children's rights documents events was outlined while the attempts of Africa to address the unique needs of the African child were detailed. In the light of the changing social orientation in the Republic of South Africa, children's rights advocacy in South Africa was reviewed. Criteria for evaluati-ng documents addressing the needs of children were proposed and based on the findings of the study, recommendations regarding the direction of children's rights advocacy were advanced. / M. Ed. (History of Education)

Learner absenteeism is one of the major precursors to poor academic performance. If learners miss school, they do not learn and ultimately they fail or drop-out. Notwithstanding, this problem does not receive the attention it deserves. A literature study, which reviewed research findings concerning absenteeism in South Africa and selected countries, provided a framework for the ensuing empirical inquiry. A qualitative study using in-depth interviews, focus group interviews, document review and observation as data gathering techniques focused on two selected primary schools with a high rate of learner absenteeism in the Acornhoek area of Mpumalanga, South Africa. Participants were purposefully selected as information rich candidates: absentee learners, parents of absentee learners, teachers and school principals. Learner absenteeism negatively impacts effective professional practice, that is, teaching and learning. The study concludes with recommendations to prevent learner absenteeism in order to improve teaching and learning in South African primary schools. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / M. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

O objetivo dessa tese é verificar se existe impacto do trabalho infantil na saúde da criança. O entendimento dessa relação é importante, pois pode fornecer maiores subsídios para o combate ao trabalho infantil e permitir o direcionamento de políticas para restabelecer a saúde da criança em casos onde a erradicação não foi efetivada. Para a análise foram utilizadas as PNADs de 1998 e 2003, que trazem suplemento especial sobre saúde, e empregada a técnica econométrica de pseudo-painel. Os resultados obtidos foram consistentes com aqueles alcançados na literatura. Para a análise do trabalho infantil sobre a saúde foram utilizados quatro modelos, representado diferentes variáveis relacionadas ao trabalho. O primeiro utilizou a variável que indica se a criança trabalha ou não. Observa-se que o fato de a criança exercer qualquer atividade laboral impacta negativamente sua saúde. O segundo modelo analisou as horas trabalhadas pelas crianças. Os resultados mostram que quanto maior o número de horas trabalhadas, pior é o status de saúde da criança. O terceiro modelo analisou o trabalho perigoso e mostrou que esse tem impacto negativo sobre a saúde da criança, sendo esse impacto maior do que aquele obtido no primeiro modelo para os indivíduos que trabalham. O último modelo analisa os diferentes setores de atividades, mostrando que crianças que exercem suas atividades no setor de comércio e de serviço possuem maior chance de possuir pior status de saúde. No entanto, as atividades agrícolas não tiveram impactos sobre a saúde indicando que as famílias de zonas rurais têm maior capacidade de restabelecer a saúde da criança. Isso provavelmente ocorre pelo fato de as atividades rurais serem exercidas próximo aos pais. Por outro lado, as pessoas que residam no meio rural podem possuir maior capacidade de suportar ou considerar normais certas doenças. Com relação a trabalho infantil e saúde, a redução das horas trabalhadas e eliminação do trabalho perigoso possuem efeitos consideráveis sobre a saúde da criança, sendo essas duas possibilidades de atuação governamental. Além disso, a atuação do governo do governo deve ser setorial, ou seja, políticas para aliviar os impactos do trabalho infantil na saúde no meio rural devem ser distintas das ações empregadas no meio urbano. Em paralelo, melhoria no acesso ao sistema de saúde, garantia de acesso a medicamentos e promoção da educação materna em saúde devem ser incentivadas, pois são aparentemente eficazes para aumentar o estoque de saúde da criança. / The aim of this dissertation is to identify the causal relation between child labour and health. Understanding this relation can bring more resources to fight against child labour as well as to allow the responsible to readjust policies in order to recover children’s health stock where eradication of child labour was not abolished yet. The analysis utilized the PNAD, a Brazilian household survey, from 1998 and 2003. The econometric modeling was based on the pseudo-panel approach. The results of the research were reliable to those in national and international literature of child labour and health. Four models were used to access the impact of child labour on health. Each model represents a different way to analyze labour. The first model made use of the variable that indicates whether the child work or not. It was observed that any kind of labour has a negative impact on their health. The second model analysed the children working hours. The results show that the more they work, the less healthy they become. The third model takes into account the type of work a child does - hazardous or not. The impact of hazardous work on the child’s health is more negative than the impact obtained on the first model. The last model analyzed child labour in different work fields and it showed that children who work in commerce and in the service sector presented a worst health status. However, the same is not true for the ones who work in agriculture. This shows that families from rural areas have a bigger ability to recover their children’s health stock, probably due to the work environment where children, in general, work near to the parents. On the other hand, those people who live in rural areas could support or consider normal some kinds of disease. The government intervention in rural areas has to be different from the one implemented on the urban area to mitigate the impact of child labour on health. Other policies to increase children’s health stock should run in parallel with those of child labour and poor health alleviation, such as improvement of the access to the health system, drugs policies, maternal health education program etc.

Aujourd’hui, plus de deux cent millions d’enfants sont contraints de travailler dans le monde pour des raisons multiples. Leurs conditions de travail sont généralement déplorables. L’abolition effective du travail des enfants est donc l’un des plus urgents défis de notre époque. Divers instruments internationaux et européens protègent les enfants contre l’exploitation au travail. Ces instruments visent à assurer l’épanouissement physique et psychologique des enfants ainsi que le respect de leur droit à l’éducation. La présente étude a pour but d’analyser ces principaux instruments. / Today, more than two hundred million children are forced to work throughout the world for various reasons. The working conditions are in general deplorable. The effective abolition of children work is therefore one of the most urgent challenges nowadays. Many international and European instruments protect children against exploitation at work. These instruments aim at insuring physical and physiological development of children as well as respecting their right to education. This study aims at analyzing these principal instruments.

D’après la Convention n° 182 de l’OIT, toutes les formes d’esclavage ou pratiques analogues, telles que la servitude pour dettes et le servage, la traite, le travail forcé, ainsi que le recrutement obligatoire des enfants dans les conflits armés figurent parmi les pires formes de travail des enfants. Ledit instrument regroupe l’ensemble de ces notions dans une seule et même catégorie pouvant donner lieu à une possible ambiguïté. Le but de ce travail est de faire toute la lumière sur les nuances qui distinguent chacune de ces notions en droit international, européen (en particulier, le droit du Conseil de l’Europe) et iranien. Cette thèse se compose de deux parties. La première partie traite de l’évolution du cadre juridique international, européen et iranien dans la lutte contre le travail des enfants dans son ensemble. La deuxième partie, quant à elle, se penche sur les formes particulièrement graves de travail des enfants, d’ordre économique, qui nécessitent de ce fait un régime juridique spécifique. / Child Labour and Child Exploitation in International, European and Iranian law (a Comparative Legal Study): According to the ILO’s Convention No. 182, all forms of slavery or similar practices, such as debt bondage and serfdom, trafficking, forced labour and compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflicts appear among the worst forms of child labour. The aforementioned Convention classifies all these concepts into a singlecategory which may give rise to a possible ambiguity. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the nuances of each of these notions in international, European (in particular, Council of Europe) and Iranian law. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part deals with theevolution of the international, European and Iranian Legal framework in the fight against child labour in general. The second part particularly focuses on grave forms of child labour of economic nature which require a specific legal regime.

Contesting international strategies for combatting child labour that derive from modern, Western conceptions of childhood, several developing country organizations have embraced the principle of child protagonism by declaring that working children can become the leading agents in struggles to advance their interests when they are mentored in forming their own independent organizations. This thesis first explores how an African NGO, informed by its urban animation experiences, developed its own specific discourse of child protagonism and employed it as the basis for establishing an African working children’s organization designed to provide compensatory literacy and skills training and to empower members to improve their own and other children’s working conditions. The thesis considers this foundational child protagonism discourse in light of data collected in Senegal by means of participant observation and interviews in grassroots groups and associations of working children, as well as in the offices of both the local NGO and its international NGO donor. Fieldwork revealed limitations of the specific child protagonism practice pursued over the past two decades. Specifically, redirecting resources from direct pedagogical accompaniment of grassroots working child groups towards bureaucratic capacity building for the “autonomization” of higher hierarchical levels of the organization, as well as towards international meetings, has resulted in the organization’s diminished impact for vulnerable groups in Dakar, particularly migrant girl domestic workers. Deepening implication with international donors has forced shifts in the priorities of the local NGO and the working children’s organization it facilitates, yet the two have been largely successful in buffering donor probes precisely into the ground level effectiveness of their child protagonism strategy. No previous independent research has sought to confront the discourse of child protagonism with a comprehensive examination of a working children’s organization’s practice, from its most local processes to its international dimensions and donor relations.

This dissertation examines the Conventions and Recommendations to regulate the minimum age for admission to employment between the years 1919 and 1973 – the ILO minimum age campaign. The adoption process has been studied in its chronological and historical context. The dissertation has three points of departure: that childhood is a historical construction and that the legal material is part of that construction; that the minimum age campaign suffered from a ‘hang-over-from-history’, namely, the history of Western industrialisation during the 19th and early 20th centuries; and, finally, that children had a subordinate and weak position in the minimum age campaign. The study was organised around five central themes: (1) the over-all theme of predominant conceptions of children and work; (2) the relationship between industrialised and colonised and developing nations; (3) the relationship between the child, the family and the state; (4) minimum age; and (5) the importance of school. The most important results of the study are that: (1) In view of the revolutionary changes during the 20th century the continuity in the minimum age campaign was remarkable. In 1919, the ‘child labour problem’ was an issue mainly for the Western industrialised word. By the end of the campaign, in 1973, the transformations in societies during the century had made ‘the child labour problem’ an issue mainly for the developing world and with different conditions and implications in many respects. The content and ‘grammar’ of the minimum age campaign was however never really challenged. (2) The study has verified that the minimum age campaign suffered from a ‘hang-over-from history’. The campaign built directly on the Western industrial experience during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Western dominance in the ILO, the legal transplants, and the roots in the labour movement all contributed to the ‘hang-over’. (3) The minimum age campaign was modelled on the ‘norm of the Western industrialised childhood’. The norms and realities of childhood in other parts of the world were neglected of considered as provisional and inferior phases in relation to the Western ‘norm’. In this way, there were two separate childhoods in the minimum age campaign: ‘the normal’ childhood conceived for Western conditions and ‘the other’ childhood conceived for the ‘imperfect’ conditions of poor children in the colonised and developing nations.(4) In the minimum age campaign the ‘best interests of the child’ was negotiable and was subordinated in case of conflict with other interests.

Many early anthropological studies treated pastoralist populations as egalitarian, however there is considerable variation in the resources available to individual households. This thesis considers how resources influence the subsistence system of the pastoral Datoga of Lake Eyasi. The two categories of resources considered are wealth and labour. The labour available to Datoga households does not influence the herding strategies of those households. In turn, the herding strategies do not affect the dynamics of cattle herds. This is because households that are short of labour can arrange for their animals to be herded by members of different households, and there are no discernible costs associated with this. Wealth, defined by livestock holdings, can be measured either as total household wealth, or as wealth per capita. These are conceptually distinct. Among the Datoga, households that are wealthy in terms of total livestock holdings, are also wealthy in terms of wealth per capita, but not proportionally more so. Once households have about five livestock units per capita, any increase in household wealth is used to attract new people to the household, rather than to increase the wealth of existing household members. For many aspects of the production system overall household wealth and wealth per capita have a similar effect, but this is not always the case. In some instances overall household wealth can explain variation between households, whereas wealth per capita cannot. This occurs when the absolute number of animals belonging to a household is important. In terms of provisioning the household and household economics, per capita wealth explains more of the variation between households. Overall the Datoga are struggling to survive. They have been alienated from more fertile areas, and consequently they are poor, and herd productivity is low. This is due to the low reproduction rate of cattle, and the high commercial offtake rate of both cattle and small stock. The high commercial offtake rate is driven by subsistence needs and most income is used to buy grain and veterinary products. However, there is considerable variation between households, and compared to poor households, wealthy households have a comparatively low offtake rate of livestock, in terms of both mortality and sales. Consequently, they are managing to retain their livestock holdings, or in a few cases to increase the size of their herds. However, wealthy households are in the minority, and the majority of households are caught in a declining cycle of poverty, and will eventually be forced to drop out of the pastoral system.