Ending child labor in PH
The Marcos administration has set quite an ambitious target to eradicate child labor, particularly in the fishing and aquaculture sectors, within three years.
The good news is, the number of working children aged five to 17 has decreased to 678,000 in 2023 from 828,000 in 2022, latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released last year showed. But more than half a million child laborers is still a huge number.
In addition, the agriculture sector—of which the fishing and aquaculture sectors are a part of—still accounted for the largest share of underage workers at 64.2 percent, followed by services (28.9 percent) and industry (6.9 percent). The figure for agriculture is not much of an improvement from a 2011 PSA survey on children where the sector accounted for 58 percent of child laborers who worked in farms and plantations.
There were two major factors behind this, as Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma himself acknowledged: poverty and culture, with parents preferring to have their children help them at work. “What we want to see are children in schools, not in factories, whether in aquaculture or any other form of employment,” he said.
Job opportunities
The government does have programs under the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the Department of Justice that aim to address the factors that contribute to the problem. This includes providing livelihood or employment to the parents in situations where the children are forced to work instead of study so they can contribute to the family income. The DOJ can also be tapped to intervene should the parents refuse to cooperate.
The government also has internship and other similar programs that offer young people job opportunities under conditions that are considered acceptable within international standards and monitored by the government, though it remains to be seen whether they are effective or implemented properly.
Child labor, said the International Labor Organization (ILO), deprives children of their childhood, potential, and dignity, and could be harmful to their physical and mental development.
Filial piety
The ILO also differentiates between “child labor” and “child work,” with the former emphasizing the burden and abuse placed on the child, the lack of time for school, play, or rest, as well as the absence of benefits and being “forced by circumstances or by coercive individuals to work.”
Meanwhile, child work, among others, is defined as appropriate to the child’s age and mental capabilities with the supervision of responsible and caring adults, limited hours, no hindrance to their school, play, or rest time, and must be voluntary. The work must also “serve as a vehicle for social advancement and improvement in the child’s quality of life.”
There is a thin line, however, that separates child labor from child work in the Philippine setting, especially in families engaged in farming or fishing where helping out in the “chores” is considered part of the children’s contribution to the family.
It is also quite common for the skills or the job to be passed on from the parents to their children and future generations as “legacy.” Many of these families, unfortunately, do not realize the intergenerational child labor cycle that they perpetuate because their main concern is survival. While there has been shifts in mindsets over the decades, children who choose to help out their families in the farm or at sea and sacrifice their education may not be seen as a form of abuse but as filial piety.
Worst form of child labor
This kind of mindset is not only prevalent among farming or fishing families, but in other circumstances where the child is forced to work to help out their parents, whether in the industry (mining, quarrying, construction) or in services (domestic or street work, scavenging).
But the worst form of child labor, per the ILO, is commercial sex exploitation of children. It noted that many minors between the ages of 12 and 17 have fallen victims to online sexual abuse and exploitation of children based on 2022 data. But the United Nations Children’s Fund noted in June this year that encouraging signs of progress have emerged, including a drop in cyber tip reports from the Philippines from over 2.7 million reports in 2023 to just over 1.7 million in 2024. Still, this remains to be a critical area where the government must sustain its efforts on.
But if it wants to eradicate child labor and abuse completely, it must intensify its efforts not only in a specific industry but across sectors. It’s a goal that sounds formidable and requires a holistic approach and entails radical change, especially in the mindset of poor families whose desire to survive pushes them to exploit their children.
In addressing child labor, the government must not only help the children but also their families to end the cycle of poverty for future generations.
