Weekly Report - 30 September 2003

If there was anything designed to rile the politically correct, it was the gathering last week in Asunción of the Movimiento Latinoamericano y del Caribe de Niños y Adolescentes Trabajadores - the Latin American and Caribbean Movement of Working Children and Adolescents. They are determined to find ways around ILO Convention 138, which sets the minimum working age at 14 - just as much as they want to strengthen some of the provisions of Convention 182, which deals with various forms of exploitation of minors. Their argument is that the age limit subjects them to a double bind: on the one hand they go out to work because poverty imposes the need for extra family income, while on the other they end up being persecuted by the authorities, who confiscate their merchandise and, at best, chase them off the streets (at worst they indulge in violence that can on occasion be fatal).