My first Magazine | Page 20

GAPS
IN CHILD LABOR REMEDIATION

6

GAPS

IN CHILD LABOR REMEDIATION

Challenges Associated with Families
Apart from the complications of placing the child back in school, the family’ s unwillingness to cooperate is another major challenge for successful remediation. The significant differences between China and other countries in terms of families’ involvement indicate not only the different situations auditors and factories / brands deal with, but it can also shed light on the root causes of child labor in different countries. Most of the auditors from China that we talked to know that many of the children come from dysfunctional families. In such cases, children receive very little support from their parents, which makes communicating with the families much more difficult. As shown in Figure 17, while facilitating the communication with the child’ s family is the most significant challenge for securing remediation in China, the financial obstacles seems to be a more important issue in other countries, where poverty is more likely to be the root cause of child labor.
Figure 17:
Common challenges to securing family cooperation in child labor remediation
70 60
75 % 75 %
Others
China
50 40 30
45 %
38 %
38 %
20 10
65 %
63 % 57 % 56 %
37 %
0
Factory fails to facilitate the communication with the child’ s family
No contact information
Family cannot afford to send the child back to school
Family needs child’ s income
Remediation program pays less than child’ s wages
17 Best Response: Auditors’ Insights on Child Labor in Asia