The Dressember Network: Eliminating Child Labor
Archie, who is 11 years old, works 10 to 12 hour days digging for gold in a pit often flooded with water. During this time, he breathes through a hose connected to a diesel-powered air compressor. At the end of the day, he eats dinner and then goes to sleep to prepare for the next day.
Rafael, who is 12 years old, shares a watering hole with the bulls on a farm where he has worked for five years, paying down his father’s debts.
Taisha, who is 16 years old, spends her days taking care of her grandmothers around the house. Though she is the first member of her family to attend formal schooling, she receives very little support and the extent of her chores has only increased since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
160 million children like Archie, Rafael, and Taisha are working in child labor around the world today.
The reasons for which they are forced to work in child labor vary from poverty to few options for education to lack of role models. Unfortunately, though, the consequences that children like them face are consistent. Their prospects for the future dim as a result of the child labor situations that they face.
Child labor is more common among boys than among girls at every age, but impacts both boys and girls all over the world. Child labor is most prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, where 23.9% of children are involved in child labor. The prevalence of child labor has declined at the global level since 2000 but sub-Saharan Africa has not seen the same trend. More discouraging is the fact that, when efforts to reduce the prevalence of child labor began to stagnate globally in 2016, the prevalence of child labor in sub-Saharan Africa actually increased.
Child labor situations like Taisha’s are often overlooked, because work like this occurs in a private domestic environment and there is a widespread lack of understanding among both children and their employers that children have rights. As a result, even when domestic labor situations may be harmful to children, as in Taisha’s case, where she is unable to access education as a result, people may turn a blind eye simply due to a lack of understanding and a desire to respect domestic privacy.
This is where the Dressember Network comes in.
The Dressember Network has partnered with a program called Many Hands Make Light Work, which seeks to eliminate slavery in child domestic work. This program focuses on eliminating child labor in domestic work for communities in Tanzania and Ghana, both countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where child labor is a particularly prevalent issue. The goal of the program is not to abolish child domestic work altogether, but rather to challenge the idea that it is benign and without need for regulation. It is the lack of protection that leads to dangerous child domestic labor situations—in some cases, children are able to do domestic work as a means of accessing a stable home life and education, as well as support from a second family.
The goal of the Many Hands Make Light Work program is really to seek a greater number of experiences like these by providing information and awareness with regard to the ways in which child domestic work can be damaging to children. It is far more likely that employers will commit abuse against the children working for them if they believe they can do so without receiving any punishment.
The program seeks to reform the child domestic work sector, by eliminating abuse and exploitation and ensuring that children’s rights are respected.
In the program’s pilot project, which took place in Tanzania, children were for the first time given an opportunity to speak on their experiences and to gain a greater understanding of their rights as child domestic workers. With this knowledge, they were able to assert their rights and demand necessary changes in their working conditions that ultimately allowed abuse prevention.
By supporting programs like these, the Dressember Network and Dressember advocates are able to address important problems in ways best suited to the communities in which they occur and ensure that all are able to experience freedom and empowerment, particularly as they grow up. It is through programs like this one that we can ensure that children like Archie, Rafael, and Taisha can experience freer, safer childhoods. It is much bigger than a dress.
The Dressember Network is made up of 20 organizations that support programs in the following impact areas: advocacy, prevention, intervention, and survivor empowerment. The Dressember Network partners with Anti-Slavery International to support intervene in child domestic work situations and ultimately stop abuse from occurring. Anti-Slavery International is the world’s oldest human rights organization, established originally to abolish the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Today, ASI remains committed to ending slavery in all of its forms. When you support Dressember, you help dismantle trafficking holistically and in a way that prioritizes survivor needs and voices. Ready to join us? Register to become an advocate or make a donation today.
About the Author
Miranda Cecil is a second-year at Northeastern University School of Law. She graduated from the University of North Carolina in 2020 (go heels!) and shipped up to Boston. As a North Carolina transplant in New England, she loves exploring her new area on the weekends. In her free time, she enjoys cross-stitching, cycling, and reading. She hopes to use her legal degree and a passion for urban development to continue advocating for human trafficking survivors (and, despite the Boston winter, looks forward to the style challenge this December).