Child Labour in Thailand: Best Practice Guide

Since the middle 1980s, from a situation where child labour as an issue had barely impacted on the agenda of government and non-government organisations, considerable progress has been made in Thailand. A core network of government officials (concentrated primarily within the MOLSW, the NCWA and the Attorney General's department) and non-government workers aware of and concerned about the issue has been developed. The initial evidence of this development was seen in the signing in 1992 by the Thai government of a Memorandum of Understanding to establish the IPEC programme in Thailand. This group will be essential to the implementation of the national policy and plan against child labour, adopted by the government last year, and the 1996 policy and plan against the commercial sexual exploitation of children, both representing a culmination of this group's major lobbying and advocacy efforts.

Through the drafting and acceptance of these policies and plans, Thailand showed its commitment to taking action to address child labour, particularly its most intolerable forms. Additionally, through the major expansion of lower secondary school enrolment (for Years 7 to 9) involving pupils from age 12 to 15, very large numbers of children have been removed from any risk of becoming child labour.

Legal protections have been strengthened, through both changes in law, and promises of changes, most notably in a government commitment to raise the minimum legal age for child workers to 15 by 2001. This improvement may occur sooner, with the necessary legislation having already been passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. At time of writing, the amendments agreed in the Senate are receiving the final consideration of the House of Representatives. Additionally, the enforcement framework has been strengthened through an increase in the number of inspectors, their training in child labour issues with IPEC support, and a massive increase in the number of labour inspections. Steps have also been taken towards increasing police and judicial support for anti-child labour measures and to raising public awareness and encouraging public activism on the issue (such as through reporting cases of child labour to the authorities).

A series of projects covering a wide range of efforts against child labour have been piloted, many of them successfully, identifying effective methods of dealing with both the pull and push factors bringing migrant child labour to Bangkok and surrounding regions, and taking children into prostitution. Broadly, there have recorded considerable successes in small-scale projects focusing on limited areas, but ways have yet to be found to produce significant changes in public attitudes across Thailand which would raise the value placed by parents on education, lead to public condemnation of child labour beyond that of the most absolutely abusive circumstances, and raise public concerns in particular about the issue of immigrant child labour. Some of these projects have been successful in targeting highly sensitive and complex issues such as children in the commercial sex industry, a very difficult task.

Much also remains to be done is in ensuring the effective implementation of government policies and plans, through action on the ground at all levels, but particularly in northern and north-eastern provinces. Some progress has been made in decentralising efforts to the provincial level and in mobilising the MOLSW at the provincial level, but much remains to be done in this area. Piloted programmes which have proved their worth need to be translated into action in all necessary areas. Most frequently these have been established largely through IPEC support and funding, but it has proved difficult to secure the government funding necessary for their expansion and establishment as sustainable, long-term programmes. Few successes have yet been recorded in ensuring this transition, and Thailand's economic circumstances may make this even more difficult in the future.

Additionally, government officials outside the MOLSW, such as in education, training and health, need to be convinced both of the seriousness of the child labour issue and the need to coordinate efforts in these and other areas to prevent child labour and protect child workers. An important mechanism which needs to be re-examined, restructured, and certainly must be re-invigorated, is the National Child Labour Protection Committee. It must be made permanent, a regular meeting schedule established and maintained, and effective sub-committees with strong representation from experts and concerned individuals should be established. The committee and its secretariat must be able develop and manage significant agendas based on critical issues and problems related to child labour, based on a long-range commitment to eradicate the problem.

NGOs need to be encouraged to develop their programmes in close coordination with the government, and to work together to ensure maximum efficiency in programme delivery, particularly in areas such as northern Thailand, where many parallel programmes addressing the issue of children in the commercial sex industry now exist. The development of provincial plans to address the child labour issue, as piloted in Chiang Rai, is obviously the best route for achieving this, but funding agencies and organisers need to recognise the difficulties involved in this process, and be prepared to provide sufficient funding, for a sufficient term, to allow the development of a sustainable plan which will actually be implemented.

In terms of overall approach, while the national policy and plan provides a broad framework, examination of the past 15 years suggested that government and non-government workers would be best advised to identify a small number of key issues and actions, focusing on incremental change, such as the raising of minimum age for legal child workers from 12 to 13, rather than attempting to produce a major series of significant changes simultaneously.

While a great deal of effort has been focused in the more obvious and directly effective areas of enforcement and rescue of child labour, a switch in emphasis towards prevention efforts would be beneficial, with international experience and consideration of the Thai situation suggesting that in the longer term these are likely to be more effective, both in terms of results and in cost-effectiveness. Development of monitoring and evaluation of these projects is particularly important, however, as they do not produce easily measurable outcomes such as numbers of children rescued or prosecutions successfully completed.

More broadly, problems within Thailand's education system need to be addressed, particularly in curriculum and teaching methods, to ensure schools and colleges effectively meet the needs of children and their likely occupational futures, and develop creativity, self-confidence and other factors which enable children to make decisions for themselves. Additionally, the education system and publicity campaigns by a range of agencies need to teach and develop high-quality work ethics, to encourage workers, including parents, to rely on themselves and their own efforts, with endurance and perseverance, which should assist in reducing families' reliance on the labour of their children. Although this might seem to be far removed from child labour, issues such as drug addiction and gambling which damage families need to be addressed through provision of appropriate counselling and services.

Ultimately, however, while all of these developments would have positive impacts on the battle against child labour, broad, macro-economic changes need to be made to address fundamental imbalances in Thai development over the past several decades. A great deal more effort has to be put into promoting rural development, particularly of agriculture, and in addressing the huge regional disparities in income distribution in Thailand. Without such effort, the cities, particularly Bangkok, will continue to be a massive economic lure to children, and parents, and often grandparents, caring for children will see their migration as offering the best hope for their and their families' advancement. Until this fundamental issue is addressed, the problem of child labour in Thailand is likely to continue.

6.2 Best Practices and Lessons for the Future

(a) Policy Commitment

As discussed above, a core of committed concerned people within the MOLSW, the NCWA and associated with the National Steering Committee on Child Labour has been created over the past decade. This was achieved through education, advocacy and lobbying, with awareness being raised by exposure of high-level bureaucrats to research and information about the scope, nature and realities of child labour in Thailand, in addition to "learning through doing". Awareness of international concern about the issue, as expressed in concrete terms through organisations such as IPEC and UNICEF, and more broadly through bilateral expressions of concerns and linking to trade, has assisted in this process. Within the Thai context, this would broadly appear to be the "best practice" in achieving policy change, which has led to the adoption of policy and plans to address child labour and children in the commercial sex industry.

In the future, the same mechanisms of education and lobbying need to be extended more broadly. Research findings and information must be disseminated not only to those working in labour issues, but also to those in formal and non-formal education, in economic and social planning, in law enforcement and the judicial system, in trade promotion, and among provincial governors. Better use needs to be made of sympathetic media workers, particularly in newspapers, and consciousness of child labour issues among media workers and administrators raised.

Generally, the education and lobbying process must begin at the highest possible level of the bureaucracy, with carefully-planned seminars and individual meetings to inform these officials about child labour issues. Only after acceptance and support has been achieved among some officials at the highest level is significant on-the-ground action likely to occur, with working level officials receiving appropriate resources and support to take effective action.

(b) Key Strategies and Programmes

(i) Macro Issues

Selection of key objectives and strategies in the battle against child labour needs to be considered at a number of levels. At the broadest level, while the individuals and organisations involved in the battle against child labour cannot individually make a significant impact, they can form alliances with other organisations and individuals campaigning to correct the current imbalance of development in Thailand. Individuals with a high public profile and influence can explain, through media and official channels, the links between child labour and faults in macro-economic policies and directions, which have produced such an imbalance in rural and urban development, and increasing inequalities of income.

As yet, this has not broadly occurred, with most child labour campaigners focusing more narrowly on the problem in their public pronouncements and publications. In part this is a reflection of the fact that the development of a democratic culture has only occurred over recent years in Thailand, and in the past, and possibly still now, too close a links to groups regarded as "radical" may actually harm anti-child labour groups, and lead to changes in public and official attitudes towards them. For this reason, any campaigning alliances need to be chosen carefully and some distance maintained to reduce the risk of negative labels and judgments being applied to organisations working against child labour.

A further high priority area in terms of general societal action is strengthening families and moral values. This requires general advocacy action such as through publicity campaigns, along the model of those already instigated to attempt to discourage demand for commercial sex services focusing around the slogan "One Man, One Wife" and those highlighting the physical and emotion pain suffered by children forced into the commercial sex industry in an attempt to discourage parents selling or encouraging their children into the industry. As is the case in so many other areas, however, it is essential effective monitoring and evaluation of these programmes is conducted to determine the most effective methods and approaches.

Also required is the provision of specific services such as counselling for dysfunctional families whose children are at risk of becoming child labour, to be included within a broader system of social welfare. Issues such as gambling and drug addiction, and parents' expectation that they can "retire" at a relatively young age and live off the earnings of their children, all need to be addressed. Efforts need to be made to enlist all influential grassroots people, such as teachers, monks and village leaders, in working to combat these problems, and a core of professional social workers and similarly-trained individuals needs to be created to assist families and communities with particular problems. To achieve this, considerable reform and improvement in university curriculum and professional training is needed.

Again, in both of these areas, anti-child labour organisations will probably not be the lead agencies. But they need to communicate and work with the lead agencies to ensure the particular perspectives and concerns about child labour issues are included in these efforts, and measurement of improvements in child labour issues included in project monitoring and evaluation.

(ii) Prevention

In terms of direct action against child labour, prevention programmes are the key priority area. Successful completion of moves by the government to make nine years of schooling compulsory would effectively eliminate a large amount of child labour, at least among Thai citizens, by ensuring children aged up to 15 remained in full-time study. Graduates from Grade Nine would also be in a better position to understand and assert their rights in terms of working conditions, and be in a position to obtain better jobs where they would be less likely to be at risk of suffering from illegal employment conditions.

There has already been considerable success in the push for nine years of compulsory education, but the children who are currently dropping out before that time represent the most vulnerable and victimised group, and programmes by both government and non-government agencies must address their particular problems and needs to ensure they remain, at best, within the school system, or at least, if this is not possible, that they are strongly encouraged to continue studying through the non-formal education system.

Successful implementation of nine years compulsory schooling, however, requires achievement of three key objectives. The first is strengthening the capacity of schools to provide high-quality, relevant education to all children in Thailand. To achieve this purpose, anti-child labour organisations need to increase and strengthen their advocacy efforts in encouraging improvement of the school system, both in terms of quantity and quality of resources, and to encourage the development of flexible, appropriate curriculum guidelines and operation.

Second, in an area in which anti-child labour organisations have particular experience and skills, parents must be informed about the importance of education and motivated to keep their children in school, and the children themselves motivated and encouraged to remain in school and educated about the risks they run and the disadvantages they suffer if they leave school early. Radio and village broadcasting have been identified as the key medium in disseminating information to these target groups, and individual counselling and information sharing are also vitally important, although obviously expensive.

At present a blend of these two approaches would appear to represent the "best practice". Experience from workers in the field suggests focusing on children, and positively using peer pressure and opinions, may be more effective than targeting parents, although a blend of these approaches is obviously needed. To support these efforts, financial support must be available to ensure the children are able to remain in school, including through the provision of textbooks, uniforms, lunches and geenral scholarships for meeting basic needs such as food.

Thirdly, a strong level of community backing and peer pressure at the village level must be created to support the continuation of schooling for nine years. It is important that key figures such as village heads, monks and teachers are enlisted in the effort, both for their positive influence and to ensure they do not act as agents for employers and thus promoters of child labour. Enlisting their support can generally only be achieved through personal contact, which requires a long time commitment for support and interaction with individuals they both respect and can communicate with, although ensuring that there is strong, high-level support within provincial administrations for the battle against child labour is also important. The "best practice" then, is a blend of "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches.

Finally, there must be recognition that, no matter how efficient and effective the above efforts are, there are likely to always be some cases in which more immediate intervention is essential to protect children. An example of how this can be effectively carried out is the Sema programme in Thailand, in which girls at high risk of entering child labour, identified through well-established and tested criteria, are provided with residential facilities and care.

(iii) Enforcement/Rescue/Reintegration

Although it is difficult to clearly establish cost-effectiveness and programme results within an environment where little evaluation and monitoring of projects has been carried out, international experience and Thai analysis would suggest that prevention efforts are likely to be more effective and long-term than efforts to rescue child labour or work at the level of individual enterprises to improve working conditions to ensure all child workers are legal child workers. Such efforts deal with individual situations, and while assisting individual children, some in great distress, which is obviously essential, it may do little to address the broader societal problem. This work must be done, but should be given a lower priority in development of programmes and projects, and in funding allocation, than prevention efforts.

Government and NGO alliances are particularly critical within this area, with over the past decade a slow development of recognition that in general, while government must take the lead role in enforcement through the MOLSW, the police and the judicial system, NGOs are generally best placed to sensitively and appropriately deal with the needs of rescued child labour. There has also been a recognition that NGOs can be effective in monitoring government enforcement, both by attracting reports from the public of abuses which might not reach official channels, and intervening in areas where official enforcement efforts are ineffective, either through the use of alternate official channels, or, in extreme circumstances, the media.

(iv) Creating Alliances

As discussed throughout this report, while a strong core group of government officials and NGO workers concerned about child labour has been created over the past decade, a great deal more needs to be done to ensure effective coordination and cooperation in their efforts. Building and strengthening individual ties, through meetings and seminars, and through the encouragement of joint programme efforts would appear to be the best approach towards achieving this goal.

The effort to develop provincial plans, particularly in the key child labour "sending" areas in the north and north-east is important, but the difficulties of the process need to be acknowledged. With little tradition of cooperation between different ministries, between government and non-government organisations, and even in cooperation between non-government agencies, difficulties must be expected, and such projects need to be medium- rather than short-term.

Additionally, mechanisms by which government agencies are able to fund or "sub-contract" particular work to NGOs with expertise, experience and more suitable structural conditions (for example in counselling, care and re-integration of child workers into society), need to be strengthened. An awareness of the effectiveness of this strategy needs to be encouraged at the highest policy levels, and simultaneously efforts need to be made to strengthen the capacity of NGOs to absorb such money, to enable them to meet reporting and accounting requirements and effectively sustain long-term programmes.

Simultaneously, more needs to be done to build links between this group and workers in fields critical to the efforts against child labour, such as education, particularly within the government sector. This is closely related to the need to educate these groups about child labour issues, and projects could be conducted to achieve such joint results, including seminars, meetings and training programmes to expose particularly high-level officials to child labour concerns. The "best practice" within Thailand is to begin this work at the highest-possible level, and once support has been enlisted there, projects such as training for operational-level officials are far more likely to have sustainable results.

IPEC, UNICEF and other international partners are vital in the battle against child labour, and they have been broadly effective in building close alliances, particularly with key government areas such as the MOLSW and the NCWA, but they need also to build links with "line" agencies such as the Ministry of Education and the Royal Thai Police, as is beginning to occur. A difficulty for these agencies is the often slow progress of such efforts and setbacks which may occur when individuals with whom close links have been built are transferred and replaced by others not yet exposed or concerned about child labour issues. Although it is difficult in view of the structure and nature of funding sources, wherever possible the "best practice" in Thailand is for these agencies to take at least a medium-term approach, recognising that developing sustainable results cannot be a short-term process. Projects conducted over a one or two-year time-frame are not enough to have significant effects.

There also must, however, from all Thai agencies, be a recognition that in view of Thailand's overall economic progress, international partners are unlikely to remain in the long-term, so best use must be made of the resources now available, and provisions made for the future. The IPEC approach of "mainstreaming" offers one clear way forward, particularly for government agencies, but NGOs also have to look towards establishing indigenous sources of support.

(vi) Capacity Building

Several areas of key priorities for capacity-building can be identified. The first is in the area of attitudes. Government workers, particularly in "line" ministries, need to be sensitised to the issues and made aware of the actions and activities their organisations can undertake to address child labour problems.

Equally important is the provision of education and training to enhance the capacity of government agencies to identify problems, produce effective strategies for intervention and to implement. Broadly, this means enhancing agencies' ability to set goals, design and manage projects and monitor and evaluate their effectiveness.

Within NGOs, there is generally a high level awareness of child labour issues, but there is frequently a need to build the capacity to design, manage and evaluate projects, and to meet reporting, accounting and data collection requirements. NGO workers frequently come from backgrounds such as political science, sociology and law, and thus lack a background in statistics, book-keeping and similar skills. To enable effective development of mechanisms by which NGOs can attract, absorb and sustain funding from the Thai government, and to aid their ability to work with international partners such as IPEC, such training is vital, as has already been recognised.

The capacity of most NGOs and government organisations could also be increased by increased adoption of new technology. Many still do not have computers for data collection, maintenance and analysis, for accounting, and for modern communication such as through email, and even facsimile machines. It is vital, however, that if such equipment is purchased or supplied, adequate training and familiarisation, followed by back-up trouble-shooting services, are provided, to ensure the equipment can be fully utilised and maintained.

(vi) Incentives and Disincentives

As discussed in Chapter 5, there have been some international efforts to create disincentives for the use of child labour by means of trade sanctions or withdrawal of trade privileges. However, the realities of the current international environment, and the extra-legal nature of many of the problems of child labour in Thailand and its location chiefly within the informal sector mean these are not unlikely to have a significant impact.

Nationally, there does not yet appear to be sufficient public interest in the issue of child labour or capacity among anti-child labour organisations to develop the type of broad campaign which would be necessary to create economic or social sanctions. Incentives such as tax breaks for employers who choose not to use child labour, or who treat legal child workers very well, have been mooted, but the requirements for policing and ensuring compliance with such schemes would be very formidable.

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