Children work to survive

Hazards of child labour in Russia, close to the Finnish EU border

(21.12.2001) A wide consensus on the need to abolish child labour has become largely established. The ILO Convention on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, which was drafted in 1999, is an example of this progress. There is at present a worldwide campaign for the ratification of the Convention. What does this Convention mean to us, in Northern Europe?

According to ILO Convention 182, dangerous child labour consists of 'all forms of slavery... the use , procuring and offering of a child for prostitution... the use of a child for illicit activities, for the production of drugs... in any work which is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children'.

About a year ago, the ILO organised a study on the street children of the St. Petersburg area. In the course of this study, which was conducted by university researchers, some 1,000 children and 50 employers were interviewed. The Finnish Government participated in the project by providing it with funds. The research results estimated that of the 40,000 to 50,000 working children, some 10,000 to 16,000 are living on the streets. As many as 30 % of these street children are forced to participate in illegal activities and from 20 % to 35 % of those under the age of 18 are working as prostitutes. One conclusion of the study was that the worst forms of child labour included forced child labour - this accounted for about 1 per cent of those who were interviewed - child prostitution and other illicit activities such as drug trafficking, and that these practices should be abolished with no further delay.

According to the research report, the situation of those street children who are compelled to work, merely in order to survive, or who work under coercion or who need to earn money for drugs, is the cause of the most concern. Children are involved in various types of seasonal casual work such as picking berries, or selling goods and collecting bottles and waste, in their struggle for survival. The causes of child labour and the problem of children who live rough on the streets are presented in this study. It also contains models for rectifying the situation and for preventing these problems from developing in the future. New systems are acutely needed, such as new initiatives for the improvement of the standard of living for the children, the provision of dormitories and service centres, and a wide ranging cooperation between the authorities and the NGOs.

Similar problems in Vyborg

'Each Member State shall designate appropriate mechanisms to monitor the implementation of the provisions giving effect to this Convention (182).'

The city of Vyborg lies in Russia, close to the Finnish border, and here too are more street children who live and earn their living in dangerous circumstances, who are involved in hazardous work or who merely undertake casual seasonal jobs in order to try to maintain themselves. Vyborg is far from the political centres of Russia, it being a small border town where life tends to follow the old unwritten laws of such border regions. People raise money for food and other necessities in a variety of often more or less illegal ways, such as by exchanging currency, or dealing in various goods. Vyborg, with its population of 276,000, is a popular shopping destination for thousands of day-tripping Finns. Contacts across the Russian border with Finland, and thus with the EU, range from cooperation between state authorities, organisations, sports associations and NGOs, to humanitarian voluntary work and meetings by ordinary people. The tourists who come from the west benefit from the differential which exists in the standard of living, and of course among the tourists are always those who have not travelled for entirely transparent reasons.

Irina Ageeva, the deputy to the assistant mayor, who is responsible for social services in Vyborg, says that there are some 2,000 families in the town who need income support. However, such support is based on voluntary funding. She regrets that the donations which are received by the fund are mainly from abroad. A lack of resources is the main reason which prevents the local authorities from providing help to those children and adults who live rough on the streets of Vyborg and who are in dire need of assistance. She says, however, that there has been some positive development in the legislation which concerns street children. Two years ago, in June 1999, a federal law was passed which states that the phenomenon of the street children must be tackled and that the children must be provided with assistance. This legislation also allocates specific areas of the problem of the street children to various authorities as being their particular responsibility. Russia, however, has not yet ratified the current ILO Convention on Child Labour.

Mikhail Bachurin, the Head of the Youth Section of the Vyborg Police Force, and his team of 24 members of the youth police, are familiar with the problem of the street children. They are aware that, in the area for which Mr Bachurin is responsible, there are currently some 88 children who do not live at home, who do not necessarily attend school and who earn their living 'through various means'. The total number of children who have left home, Mr Bachurin does not even want to attempt to estimate, because the information he receives is mainly collected by policemen on the beat. The police are obliged to help where they can. This often consists of delivering charitable donations which have been received from abroad.

- The police are powerless when it comes to facing the basic problems of poverty and of alcoholism. There has also been a recent catastrophic increase in the number of cases of drug abuse and the illicit dealing of drugs. The 36,000 young people who are under the age of 18, in Vyborg and in the surrounding areas, live in a drug danger zone, says Mikhail Bachurin making the point that drugs in particular are a youth problem.

Drugs and HIV have arrived

There has been a huge increase in the use of drugs in Vyborg, and heroin is that which is the most frequently sold and used. According to Irina Ageeva, the heroin route runs to Vyborg from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Which town will be the next stop on this route is only a matter of conjecture. The number of HIV positive people in Vyborg has recently increased with alarming speed and Irina Ageeva believes that this has been caused by the rapidly increasing number of drug abuse cases. Tatjana Tiouniaeva, a senior consultant at the Vyborg District Hospital, confirms that the number of HIV positive cases has multiplied many times, in comparison with the figures for the year 2000. In Vyborg and in the surrounding areas, 35 new HIV positive cases were found during the first four months of 2001, whilst, in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, the figure for the same period stands at 149. In the year 2000 only one HIV positive patient was registered in Vyborg. The alarming HIV statistics for the area of north-west Russia were recorded by the Pasteur Institute of St. Petersburg. During the early part of 2001 the number of HIV positive cases in some areas of north-west Russia was multiplied by factors of between 5 and 15 in comparison with the figures for the previous year.

Our children

'The Member States shall take appropriate steps to assist one another to the provisions of this Convention (182) through enhanced international cooperation and/or assistance...'

There are various estimates on the number of street children in Vyborg, and many of these are in excess of those issued by the police. A number of Finnish and international charities are actively involved in helping the street children of Vyborg. According to Lahti Diakoniasäätiö, which is a Finnish Church foundation for lay social work, there are in Vyborg some 400 street children whose circumstances are extreme. The foundation established a street children's home, named 'Dikoni', in Vyborg in 1997, and the Finnish social workers at this home confirm the above figure. Anything between 20 to 50 children, whose ages range from 7 to 17, visit the home on a daily basis. These children present a picture of Vyborg which is not shown in any travel brochure. For the majority of the children, this face of the town is too familiar for comfort, and they either will not or cannot talk about it. They have merely tried to survive and in doing so they have paid the price.

hilkka.jukarainen@sak.fi