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A guest post by Wayne Dunn, President & Founder, CSR Training Institute

It is time for a more nuanced debate on child labour

It is time for a more nuanced debate on child labour

Child labour is a big issue. But, not all child labour is exploitive or wrong. Children have been part of the economic structure of the family for millennia.

Working children have been both an economic necessity and an integral part of education.

If, that is, you assume that education includes practical preparation for adulthood and being a productive member of society.

Children have long been expected to contribute to the collective workload of the family and be part of the economic fabric that held family and community together.

I was milking cows and doing other chores on the farm for as long as I can remember. In the early 1960s, well before I was six.

Reposted from Toby Webb’s Sustainability = Smart Business Blog

http://sustainablesmartbusiness.com/2015/09/its-time-for-a-more-nuanced-debate-on-child-labour/

A guest post by Wayne DunnPresident & Founder, CSR Training Institute

In West Africa, child labour is at it’s most complex as an issue

Page 02

When I was nine I would take a tractor and, by myself, go work the fields all day, taking a lunch and coming home at night for supper. My father spoke of taking a team of horses and doing the same thing when he was the same age.

I’d also work picking rocks to clear fields for crops, cleaning barns, building fence, milking cows, etc. The summer I was twelve I worked as a man on a logging crew cutting, peeling and piling pulpwood. It was exhausting and, at the time, I hated it. But, it taught me life lessons and prepared me for a world that didn’t always give me what I wanted on a platter.

Sometimes, but not often, it interfered with school, but I learnt more useful life lessons from the few days that I missed school than I would have learned with another day in the classroom.

Yes, times change and it is fifty years since I was nine. Standards and societal norms and expectations have shifted. Yet, I am proud of the fact that I was able to help my family and I think it helped prepare me for life as a productive adult.

My father did me a favour by requiring the work he did from me.

It was hard, it wasn’t fun at the time, but, it helped support our family and it prepared me for life, where hard work is key to success.

But this kind of work is very different from the exploitation many children face today. It’s clear that the worst forms of child labour must be addressed and stopped.

It is time for a more nuanced debate on child labour

Nestlé Cocoa Plan, tackling child labour in West Africa

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These obviously include servitude types of situations, mind-numbing factory work for young children, dangerous working conditions, and work that prevents any chance for formal education. These are all exploitive and are worthy of campaigning hard against.

But people and organizations should learn to better distinguish between exploitive child labour situations and those that are simply a normal and healthy part of family life and economics in much of the world.

Too often there is an indiscriminate lumping of all child labour into the ‘this is terrible and must be stopped’ bucket. Exploitive child labour is wrong. Period.

But normal youth participation in family economics should not be used by campaigners to advance their causes, agendas and financing.

How do I distinguish them? I try (not always successfully) to simply apply common sense. A ten-year old that is regularly kept out of school to work on the cocoa farm or palm oil, or retail shop, or whatever the family economic base might be is wrong. Period.

A ten-year old that helps on the farm, or retail shop or other business after school and might, in exceptional circumstances, miss a day or two of school for harvest or other emergencies is often simply a necessary part of the economic survival of a family.

Practices involving child that are made to work in unsafe conditions in artisanal mining or fishing are of course wrong and should be addressed. Safety is important for all workers and especially for children.

I don’t know of a bulletproof framework for distinguishing between exploitive and non-exploitive child-labour. Maybe there isn’t one.

It is time for a more nuanced debate on child labour

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But, I do know that not all child-labour is exploitive and campaigners and those of us that read and react to their reports and communications should learn to ask more questions and try to better understand the difference.

Campaigns and communications that fail to capture these nuances might capture short-term headlines for the campaigner, but they can also cause harm to families.

Legitimate youth support to precarious family economic situations can become lumped in with exploitive child-labour practices.

When we capture productive family economic practices and life lessons in all-encompassing child labour campaigns we do harm to people and families, and ultimately, over time we detract from those exploitive child labour situations that are so important to address.

My challenge to the campaigning NGOs out there is to begin producing research that makes these distinctions clearer.

Explicitly recognize that not all child labour is bad. Some is good and necessary.

This would allow us all to focus on eliminating the worst forms of child labour rather than treating the whole area in the same way.

It is time for a more nuanced debate on child labour

Indonesian child fishing in the forests of Sumatra (with parent out of shot)

Below are some recent articles and publications on Corporate Social Responsibility and stakeholder engagement that you may find interesting.

Mining Schools Hi Tech in CSR

CSR SWOT discover risk, value and more

Eleven strategiesfor maximizing value from CSR

CSR in Budget Crunch Times12 strategies for success

Multi-sector CSR PartnershipsNatural Partnerships – Unnatu-ral Partners

From Pariah to ExemplarApplying the 6 best practices

Engaging Internal StakeholdersSeven proven strategies

CSR CommunicationsEleven mistakes to avoid

Stakeholder EngagementSix best practices

Creating a CSR Programin eight self-serving steps

Let’s be honest:Internal CSR Communication Sucks!

CSR Metrics:You can’t measure temperature with a speedometer

Stakeholder EngagementFive common mistakes

CSR Value ContinuumA unique perspective on Shared Value

Smarter CSR Budgets8 steps to connect budget to value

28 Expert tipsOn stakeholder engagement

Don’t be an Altruistic AngelBe transparent about what’s in it for you

13 Mistakes that prevent & destroyMulti-sector CSR partnerships

NHL Sustainability ReportGood but incomplete.

Four Strategies forLocal Content Success

Professor Dunn brings a practical and realistic approach to CSR, blending theory and practice to develop realistic models and approaches to address real-world challenges

Dr. Ellis ArmstrongFormer CFO, BP Exploration

…coherent, thoughtful, stimulating and insightful… state of the art! The network of participants from the public, private and civil society sectors was incredible, some of the leading experts in the field.  

Kojo Busia, Ph. D.Snr. Mineral Sector Governance AdvisorUnited Nations Economic Commission for Africa/UNECA

…pragmatic blend of theory and practice, very applicable to helping organizations meet real-world challenges.

Frank McShaneManager, Corporate Responsibility Policy and Ethics, Talisman Energy

… readily available to provide support to organizations like Amref that are seeking partnerships, and looking to bring about positive change in a collaborative and concrete way. Wayne and the CSR Training Institute helped us to identify and connect with potential partners and are always available. The training, the expertise, the network and the overall support are world-class.

Onome AkoDirector of Strategic Partnerships, Amref Health Africa

“The program enhanced the CSR knowledge and strategic skills of our Kosmos Energy Ghana team, and offered the participants a platform for networking with professionals from other organizations across Africa and Ghana.” 

Reg ManhasSr VP Kosmos Energy

Very much helpful Wayne; some of the tips and questions you gave will be an extremely helpful guide in the process of developing a CSR Strategy for my company.

Emmanuel AubynnRegional Social Responsibility Manager, Newmont Africa

The CSR Program was excellent. A key aspect of my work is to encourage and support private sector development that contributes to Ghana’s overall socio-economic growth. The learning that I and my staff take away from attending this program will help us immensely with this responsibility. I highly recommend this program.

Hon. Rashid Pelpuo (MP)Minister of State for Private Sector Development and Public Private Partnerships (Ghana)

New and exciting insights into the theory and practice of CSR… great faculty and participants, very diversified. An excellent learning experience, very practical and useful. I’m very happy I was able to participate in it.

Hon InusahFuseini (MP)Minister of Lands and Natural Resources (Ghana)

WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT OUR WORK

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WAYNE DUNN, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER

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SOCIETY?IT SHOULD SERVE BOTH.

Wayne Dunn is President & Founder of the CSR Training Institute and Professor of Practice in CSR at McGill. He’s a Stanford Sloan Fellow with a M.Sc. in Management from Stanford Business School.

He is a veteran of 20+ years of award winning global CSR and sustainability work spanning the globe and covering many industries and sectors including extensive work with Indigenous Peoples in Canada and globally. His work has won major international awards

and has been used extensively as ‘best-practice’ by industry and academia.

He’s also worked oil rigs, prospecting, diamond drilling, logging, commercial fishing, heavy equipment operator, truck driver and underwater logging, done a couple of start-ups and too many other things to mention.

Wayne’s career includes big successes, and spectacular failures. He hopes he’s learned equally from both.

www.csrtraininginstitute.com