Lalitpur, December 16:

Despite ratification of numerous international conventions and promulgation of legal provisions to prevent children’s involvement in the labour market, almost no progress has been made so far in Nepal and the South Asian region.

To discuss about the problem, to address it more effectively, experts from the South Asian region are meeting in Kathmandu to formulate strategic plan for child labour.

Addressing the inaugural programme of a two-day-long South Asia Regional Strategic Planning Meeting on child labour, Subas Nembang, Speaker of House of Representatives, said: “Even though we are party to many international conventions and successive governments enacted laws related to the children, they are still exploited, sexually abused and new forms of abuses like adoption, child pornography are coming up against them.”

Nembang added that the commitment of the regional meet would ensure in improving the status of children within the region.

Dr Sudhanshu Joshi, executive director of International Centre for Child Labour and Education, said the meeting would focus on finding out where the South Asian Regions stand on the Global March Against Child Labour (GMACL) and its challenges in the region.

He added that as child labour perpetuates poverty, it is important to invest in education for children and bring them out of the labour market. “In the past five years, the governments have become conscious about the existence of child labour in their respective countries,” he said.

According to CWIN, there are 127,000 children trapped in the ‘worst forms of child labour’ in Nepal such as bonded labourers, porters, mine and carpet factory workers, domestic workers, rag pickers and trafficked children.

The GMACL has estimated that there are 246 million children working as full-time workers, which is a mass phenomenon especially rampant in South Asia. The region alone holds more than 80 million children in servitude.