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| Anali Reyes, child domestic worker from Peru, meeting the co-chairs of the APPG on Street Children at Parliament last year |
We’ve been gearing up for a meeting in
Parliament on bonfire night next week.
For those of you who aren’t English, Bonfire Night is when us English
celebrate the execution of a Catholic dissenter who tried to blow up Parliament
by placing effigies of him on huge bonfires, setting off fireworks and eating
burnt sausages. But we won’t be doing
that until a bit later, earlier on in the day we’ll be in the very same place
he tried to blow up – talking about what Parliamentarians can do to support
child domestic workers.
This is a big event for us – with the
support of the Consortium for
Street Children - who administer the
All Party Parliamentary Group on Street Children – I will be talking about the
link between street children and child domestic workers, our colleague from ChildHope will be explaining this on a
more practical level and Jonathan will outline the policy implications that the
new ILO Domestic Workers Convention have for those of us working on child
labour issues. I’m using quotes from
children to illustrate the various points I’m making to explain child domestic
work.
Jonathan and I have been working in this
field for 20 years each and today, when we were discussing our respective
presentations we were taken aback by a quote I will be using in my presentation
of a girl who was raped by her employer.
Even though we tend to think of ourselves as hardened to the issue, and
we try not to ‘sensationalise’ it by only talking about the most exploitative
examples, nevertheless I think we were both taken aback by the starkness of the
quote. It seemed to hang there in
silence after I’d said it, and Jonathan was particularly struck by the quote as
it wasn’t part of a ‘narrative’ so he didn’t know what happened before or after
(although I do know what happened to the child as it is from a research project
I’m finalizing into the sexual abuse of child domestic workers in Nepal). This is the quote:
After being raped I was walking on the
street without knowing what to do. I found the brother (of her employer) I told
him everything about what happened to me and he took me to the police and filed
a case over there.’ Sweta, Nepal
Every now and then in our line of work, usually
when you’re feeling low or you have a headache or something you read a story, a
quote or a fact, and it makes you want to weep.
The starkness of some children’s lives hits you – a bit like that slight
physical shock sensation you get after an enormously loud banger (firework)
goes off! Neither of us will react in
this way next week when we’re in Parliament doing our best to convince the UK
Government to take some action to protect child domestic workers from this kind
of abuse. However, it just proves, that
you never really get ‘hardened’ to this kind of thing. In its own way this is a good thing - it
motivates us to keep on trying, when we could become cynical and stop.
Note: the photo shows Anali with Baroness Miller and Russell Brown MP, two of the three Co-Chairs of the APPG on Street Children in March 2012
