Hundreds of children march to protest child labour in South Asia

INDIA: Police prevented nearly 200 children demanding an end to child labor from reaching the meeting hall where leaders of South Asian nations were holding a major regional summit.

Police allowed the young protesters, who were carrying banners demanding legislation to halt child labor, to march near India’s Parliament, but later blocked them from reaching Vighya Bhawan, where the summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, was being held.

“On what moral ground do the leaders meet in this summit when more than 50,000 children from Nepal and 40,000 children from Bangladesh are bought and sold like animals every year across the borders?” the marchers said in a petition presented to an official in the Indian prime minister’s office.

Member countries have adopted a protocol against prostitution, but have not addressed child trafficking, the petition said.

Many children from Nepal and Bangladesh are brought to India by unauthorized agents for jobs requiring strenuous physical labor in mines, quarries and carpet factories, said Umesh Gupta, a spokesman for the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Children Mission), which organized Tuesday’s march.

Working children between the ages of 5 to 14 number an estimated 122 million in Asia, or 64 percent of the worldwide total, although that number is about 5 million lower than in 2000, an International Labor Organization report said recently.

New Delhi, Wednesday, AP