'Invisible chains'

Guest Blogger: Jonathan Blagbrough, Head of Technical Advice at Children Unite

Recently, the issue of domestic servitude has cropped up in the news – this time in the case of the three women allegedly held for 30 years in a south London house. It’s the first time I’ve heard the police talk about the ‘invisible chains’ of emotional and psychological pressure – something which slavery activists have long recognized is an integral part of controlling others. These invisible bonds – created through threat, fear, dependency and need – are critical to understanding why people in situations of servitude, trafficking, forced labour or any other form of slavery don’t necessarily escape, even when they seem to have ample opportunity to do so.

For me, the situation of domestic workers around the world always springs particularly to mind. While it is true that the majority are not trapped in slavery, their situation and treatment often makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. At the same time, it is becoming better understood that the best way of protecting them is to accept them as fully fledged workers who are entitled to the same standard of support and protection as any other worker. In the UK, the travesty is that while the government talks up its modern slavery bill it is still inadequately protecting domestic workers by its refusal to ratify the ILO’s Domestic Workers Convention (2011), which would ensure them basic workers rights.

What is less understood and accepted is that these standards should also extend to younger domestic workers (usually those 15-17 year olds) who are old enough to legally work, who are not in hazardous situations and who are not working at the expense of their education – but who, because they are under 18, need added protection and closer monitoring than others. This approach – articulated clearly in the 2011 Domestic Workers Convention – emphasises what international child labour laws have always said: that young people who are entitled to work and want to, should be able to do so in safety and without exploitation.

At the same time, policy on child domestic work has tended in recent years to focus on blanket bans, resulting in a ‘one size fits all’ approach to tackling situations which although having many similarities, can also differ hugely. A policy re-think is necessary to cater for these working adolescents who currently slip through social safety nets because of the ambiguity over their status as workers. This was the subject of the recent All Party Parliamentary Group on Street Children (5 November), prompted by Children Unite’s 2013 Policy Briefing and the publication of Ending child labour in domestic work and protecting young workers from abusive working conditions (ILO, 2013). The sooner we can accept that some older children can work, the better able we will be to protect them from exploitation.

Celebrating bangs that make you jump into action

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

Going to bed with a mosquito

OK I admit it I’ve been cheating on the blog posting front….since May I’ve written posts but they were all from a diary I kept during a four day trek in May in Nepal.  My excuse? Simply that I’ve been inundated with work – not all of it for Children Unite.

So I’ll do a long blog post to make up for it….I wanted to share some of the thinking I’ve been doing during this time.  Over the past year I’ve been part of an Action Learning Set – a forum where six leaders of children’s rights NGOs have been gathering for a day each month to share our leadership issues.  Action Learning seems to be about peer support and learning – all of us are running small children’s rights charities and have bumped into each other over our careers (in my youth I volunteered for two of the organisations in the set!)  We are dealing with similar issues – funding crises, management issues, dealing with partner organisations or boards of trustees so it is useful to talk through our concerns with other people who can understand and may well have been in the same place a couple of months ago. 

Children Unite is the smallest organisation in the set but one of the surprising things I’ve learned over the year is that I no longer see us as following the same trajectory as all the other organisations.  Originally I had imagined I would learn much from my fellow Action Learning Set colleagues that would help me to develop Children Unite and, essentially, follow in their footsteps.  However, late in 2012 we didn’t get a grant we were rather dependent on and this forced us to think a bit differently about how we would ‘survive’ and indeed, whether we should survive.  This situation, together with some of the issues raised by my colleagues, has made me re-think Children Unite’s development. A phrase I particularly remember from the learning sets was ‘funding treadmill’ – to be honest, it sends shivers down my spine as it conjures up dull as ditchwater work that never ends – slaves to the funders demands!  We are all doing similar work and there is very little funding out there so we end up all applying to the same funding agencies for grants to continue our work and we’re on a kind of treadmill…application deadlines, assessments, evaluations, audits…and so it goes on.

I have to admit that, being a campaigner, I don’t actually like the public image of ‘a charity’ – it makes me cringe a little bit (give money to a charity = ease your conscience = nothing actually changes).  Of course all the organisations in the learning set are doing excellent work that changes children’s lives – it’s more about the public perception of what ‘a charity’ does that makes me uncomfortable.  So, if Children Unite is to move away from this image it is OK with me…it’s just that, of course, there’s even less funding for organisations that focus on advocacy work! So, this is the challenge ahead.  How to continue doing what we set out to do (give child domestic workers a voice).  In June we launched our Technical Advice Service – which is essentially for other charities, encouraging them to work with child domestic workers.  This is definitely not in the realm of the public image of ‘a charity’ but it does recognise that, as a very small organisation, perhaps our best role is to influence bigger organisations to work with this group children that we care so passionately about.  I am reminded and will end my post with a quote that has been attributed to Anita Roddick (who set up the Body Shop and has certainly inspired me):

“If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”

Guest Blog: a fascinating and humbling day

Stuart with a fellow farmer

In May, Brenda and I joined our daughter, Helen, to visit three villages around Kathmandu to meet some of the people CWISH had been working with.  CWISH is a Nepali charity that is working with girls and families involved with child domestic labour. The villages were perched on mountainous slopes, intensively terraced, in the Kavre district just outside Kathmandu.  

We were accompanied by Sweta a young woman who works for CWISH and we met several groups of people. Firstly a group of girls and some of their dads. The girls had all been in child domestic work and CWISH had managed their return home and reintegration into their families. The fathers said how glad they were to have their girls back, and how they now realised that sending them off in the first place, had been wrong, but they just did not realise what they were letting their daughters into.  Then we met a farmer of a small holding, whose income was so low that CWISH had recognised the high risk that the family would be sending some of their girls off to work as child domestics, but that through a little investment by CWISH into the farm, buying bamboo poles to provide a sheltering structure over some of his terraces, the farmer could increase his crops and therefore his income, and could keep his children at home. 

It is amazing how just a little investment can make such a difference to a family, and in particular to a young girl’s life. Then we met a sort of village council, sitting under a large tree discussing the services CWISH were offering and hearing their pleas for even more help.  We felt a real sense of rural community sitting beneath that tree, and a deep hope that their appeal for more help can be met, they start with so little. A fascinating and a humbling day for us Europeans.  

Stuart and Brenda Veitch

A meeting with village elders in Kavre

Dark mountains fringed in pink

I got up at around five am and wandered up to a small hill on the outskirts of the village. I sat there and watched the silhouettes of the Himalayas starting to catch the sun. This was the most beautiful part of the day for me; dark mountains fringed in pink.  It became hazy afterwards and the mountains slowly disappeared.  But it was lovely to sit there meditate and listen to the village come to life.  Dad and I set off with Prem after breakfast.  Mum and Ann came with Kailash and all our luggage by jeep.  There were quite a lot of people coming up the path as it was a Saturday.  One group had a couple of young women wearing bikinis as tops which annoyed me (!) although Prem blamed the guide for not telling the women that bearing so much flesh was unacceptable in Nepal.

At a tea stop overlooking the valley we saw kites, eagles and buzzards flying quite close by, circling over the valley below.  A nice ending to our trek, although it all seemed to end too soon. 

Back in Pokhara we said goodbye to Kailash – he was getting a little microbus back to Kathmandu.  Then, because we’d not wanted to stop walking, Prem suggested we get a boat across the lake and walk to a Peace Pagoda that overlooks Pokhara.  Mum and Ann couldn’t manage the steps on the walk so they booked a ‘taximan’ they’d met during the week who spoke good English and  had befriended them while we’d been trekking.  The boat was an open canoe and we had to wear enormous life jackets, the walk was lovely but we went quite fast in order to meet mum and Ann in time, so couldn’t really appreciate it.  The Peace Pagoda was beautifully cool beneath my hot, tired feet and had a hazy view across the lake and Pokhara.

Looking back on this trek (it is now August!) it feels like it was a little window of calm in what has been a very busy and stressful time over the last five months.  The eye of a storm.  On my return to the UK I was inundated with work, trying to finish off writing the research report for the Bamboo Project (the reason I was in Nepal in the first place) and taking on another consultancy project (more writing).  It’s wonderful to remember the mountain views, and writing this post has allowed me to dip into the calm and beauty of those four days and refresh myself….

A Temple at Dawn

Dad, Mum and Ann at Breakfast

And I know it's a bit naughty but I found these photos of my day rock climbing in his youth - he hasn't changed a bit!