Child Labour in Thailand: Best Practice Guide

As discussed in Chapter 3, the chief role played by parliamentarians in combating child labour has been as high-profile figures acting in individual cases. Without significant changes to the Thai political system, it is difficult to see how their role can be further developed. At present there are quite close links between individuals in NGOs and some government organisations and particular politicians which enable the groups to enlist their aid for particular causes, and as party structures are very weak in Thailand, this would appear to be the most successful and appropriate working arrangement at the present time.

(b) Government administrations

The role of various government agencies at various levels has already been defined in Chapter 3, together with the most important working arrangements within each organisation, and some of the obstacles encountered. Suggestions for optimal methods of supporting capacity-building and assisting most effective division of responsibilities are also described in Chapter 3, with further discussion in Chapter 6..

Although one major employers' organisation, ECOT, has shown interest in addressing child labour issues, employers in Thailand broadly are the most difficult group to encourage to join in the fight against child labour. As outlined above, most employers of child labour are small-scale, informal sector enterprises which are not generally members of employers' organisations or any other organised forum through which they might be reached. Many, however, operate as sub-contractors, supplying their products to larger companies for further processing, packaging or distribution. It is these companies, larger, with specialist management structures and likely to be involved in some form of formal organisation, such as ECOT, which are most likely to successfully develop and implement action against child labour. They may be a conduit for disseminating information about legal protections for child workers, and for encouraging compliance with these provisions.

To effectively enlist employers' cooperation within the Thai cultural context, it is important that child labour issues be approached in a positive, constructive manner. Major companies can be encouraged to work with their sub-contractors to ensure child workers are all employed under appropriate conditions, but any attempt to do this in too heavy-handed a manner might be counter-productive, leading to employers to defensively group together to protect all of their numbers and their general reputation, making it more rather than less difficult to identify and correct child labour abuses.

Broader advocacy efforts to address attitudes towards child labour in the general community are likely to assist in raising employers' knowledge and concern about the issue. Disseminating information about Thailand's international responsibilities, such as through CRC, and of potential negative effects of child labour on trade and international relations are also likely to be of assistance in encouraging employers to become involved in efforts to combat it.

This approach has been begun with the Garment Manufacturers' Association of Thailand, which at a meeting last July agreed to develop a code of practice, in line with the 1996 recommendations of the ILO Technical Committee on Textiles, Garments and Footwear. It suggested developing countries develop their own codes of practice and business ethics, rather than allowing them to be dictated by outside interests such as multinational companies. The Thai association agreed to develop a voluntary code which might be used as a marketing tool to promote Thai goods. A working group has been formed to work on the code. The difficult economic circumstances may prove, however, a significant barrier to its progress.

(d) Workers' organisations

As noted in Chapter 3, a small number of union-related projects focusing on awareness-raising have been developed. ILO has instituted a regional project, involving Thailand, to develop the capacity of labour unions to address child labour issues, something rarely achieved in the past. Unions may be successful in working as pressure groups, by highlighting cases of abuses, particularly where child labour may be being used as a cheap substitute for adult workers, but overall the general weakness of workers' organisations in Thailand and their fragmented nature will make it difficult for any action by them to make a significant impact in addressing child labour issues.

(e) Professional Organisations

As is the case with workers' organisations, professional organisations such as of teachers and doctors are generally quite weak in Thailand, and only interested and involved in issues closely related to their work, such as pay, conditions and entry rules. One notable exception is the Women Lawyers' Association of Thailand, which has been heavily involved in women's issues, including issues of prostitution and sexual abuse of girls. It has not yet taken any particular interest in child labour issues outside those relating to prostitution, but is one organisation which might well be enlisted in the effort against child labour.

(f) NGOs

It is difficult in Thailand to draw a clear distinction between national level NGOs and local and community NGOs, and most of those which might be described as national also operate localised rescue or assistance programmes or have other efforts which overlap with those of community NGOs. For this reason, the two groups here will be discussed together.

It can be said that current efforts to address child labour issues broadly suffer from a lack of involvement from communities, being very much "top-down" in instigation, design and operation. NGOs are involved in this process, but they, together with government agencies, also tend to approach the work from a Bangkok-based, nationally-focused perspective. More effort needs to be put into ensuring NGOs are encouraged to represent a broad range of views, and attention should be paid to ensuring provincial viewpoints are included in the work of NGOs, government organisations and international efforts.

It is generally agreed that there are many implementing areas in which NGOs may be more effective than government organisations, because their culture may blend more easily with that of grassroots communities; they are more flexible and more able to readily change direction to address new problems or take up sudden opportunities; and, for particularly difficult target groups, such as street children, they are less threatening and likely to be far more effective.

For a division of labour to develop between the government and NGOs utilising the strengths and covering the weakness of each, the capacity of NGOs in management and administration needs to be further developed. The Thammasart University training project which has attempted to address this weakness, with some success, is discussed in chapter 3, and offers strong base for future development in this area.

Frequently workers in NGOs come from backgrounds such as political science, law or sociology, and they are thus often ill-equipped to understand or manage accounting requirements and regulations. Developing their capacity in these areas would not only aid the flow of support from international funding and technical support agencies, but would also assist efforts within the government to encourage the use of Thai government funds to support NGO work. Under the current regulatory framework this is now possible, although difficult, but few NGOs would have the capacity to absorb the funds while meeting government requirements for documentation and management.

Most NGOs working at the community level have also identified the need for their workers to be able to effectively communicate with their target groups, such as village residents, and some of the difficulties which may be encountered in building such links. NGO workers are typically young (in communities where age tends to be closely linked to status and knowledge) and tertiary-educated, from urban backgrounds, and thus initially with little in common with the people with whom they are trying to work. The most successful NGOs at the grassroots level appear to be those which have identified ways to overcome this potential gap, often through having workers offering assistance and advice in a range of areas not necessarily directly related to child labour, living in close contacts with the community and spending considerable periods of time with them.

Unfortunately, however, the priorities and urgencies of funding agencies, which often require measured outputs within relatively short periods of time, and fund programmes which extend for only a year or two, often make bridging the gaps between workers and target groups difficult. There are no easy solutions to this problem.

(g) Universities

Universities are important sources of professional expertise for efforts to tackle child labour, particularly in researching the nature of the problem and monitoring and evaluating efforts to address it. It is obvious, however, that the pool of academics with experience, skills and interest in child labour research is limited, and further encouragement, for example through the funding and other support of post-graduate research to promote the development of more professionals in the field, would be highly desirable. This is difficult, however, as academics indicate that most post-graduate students are interested in studying in areas likely to equip them for lucrative private employment, or, where they are already employed as government officers, in areas they can relate to their current work. Training in research technology would also be highly valuable, and more efforts should be made to access the Thailand Research Fund for this purpose.

Additionally, it is important that an attitude is fostered linking research to action. Research must extend beyond an academic exposition of the problem, through its promulgation through means and with terms accessible to all target groups, through assisting in project design and implementation, to monitoring and evaluation. Monitoring and evaluation of projects should not only identify problems but also propose methods of overcoming them, and for this reason links between researchers and implementing agencies must be strengthened.

(h) Media

To reach the major target groups of potential child labour and their parents in rural areas, the most useful media are television and radio. For cost reasons, radio has been particularly used, with, among other programmes, radio disc jockeys being trained in child labour issues and encouraged to disseminate it during their programmes. As discussed in Chapter 3, there are differing views in the effectiveness of this method of "making a difference" to grassroots attitudes and unfortunately no evaluation has been conducted to determine the success of this programme.

Although there has been little, if any, formal monitoring of television news and other programmes, it appears that generally these very rarely report on child labour issues. Major conferences and meetings, particularly those held by the government, may be covered, particularly by the most official Channel 11, but this is not widely watched. The only factor likely to attract significant television coverage of a child labour issue or event is the involvement of a well-known personality, such as the recent appointment of Mr. Anand Panyarachun as UNICEF Ambassador for Thailand, and his visit to Chiang Rai to view anti-child prostitution programmes.

As for entertainment programmes such as soap operas, which are very popular in Thailand, these do not traditionally explore serious social issues, and are generally set either in historical periods, or in apparently wealthy modern settings, so do not offer obvious opportunities for incorporating child labour themes. Documentaries have been produced and shown without charge to child labour campaigners, but these are generally scheduled at low-viewing times, such as mornings or late at night, and on less-watched channels, so their impact is likely to be small, and such transmissions are generally only viewed as a cost-free additional use for videos produced primarily for use in training programmes.

A further alternative for information dissemination, available mostly in fairly remote areas, is village broadcasting systems, consisting of a series of loudspeakers spread through an individual village, access to which is generally controlled by the village head. Community level NGOs which are able to establish close links with the villages, and particularly senior village officials such as the village head, may be able to access such systems for information dissemination, but in other circumstances the cost of using these systems is likely to be high.

No particular effort has been directed towards encouraging or training newspaper journalists in child labour issues, in part because grassroots workers are in general agreement that they are little read in rural areas. They are however valuable in reaching urban groups. A brief study of newspapers' reporting of child labour stories is included in Appendix III (Case K).

This brief survey of media indicates that the medium of radio, particularly in Thailand, has been developed successfully for the dissemination of information to target groups including potential child labour and their parents, through the training of radio announcers. Without a serious evaluation effort, however, it is unclear if this has had any actual impact on their actions. Television, at least in peak times on popular stations, is a very difficult medium to access, except through paid commercials, which might nonetheless be a cost-effective way of raising general community awareness of the issue of child labour if part of a carefully orchestrated campaign in a variety of media.

As the Appendix III scan indicates, newspapers, particularly English-language newspapers, have, without any significant project or plan, been successfully enlisted in efforts to raise awareness of child labour issues. As a method of reaching decisionmakers in government, NGOs and the private sector, this is likely to be an effective medium, and one which might be further utilised by government organisations and NGOs. Ties between individuals are frequently important in promoting coverage, with journalists and, in particular NGO workers, frequently coming from similar educational and social backgrounds. Experience has shown that to attract coverage of conferences and other events individually-telephoned invitations are most effective.

A small project to build and enhance these individual ties, which might be carried out at low cost, would be valuable, as it would appear at present that newspapers' appetite for stories about child labour issues is far from exhausted, and a small increase in effort by campaigners would result in a significant increase in the number and scope of stories. The situation in the Thai-language print media is probably also similar, and particular attention might be paid, particularly at conferences and meetings conducted in the English language, to ensure their needs are met by translation of relevant materials and provision of interviews and/or press conferences in Thai.

(i) The police and judiciary

To institute formal legal proceedings against employers who employ child labour, labour inspectors need the assistance of police. Long-time inspectors indicate that in the past police were frequently reluctant or even outright refused to become involved in child labour cases, possibly due to lack of knowledge of the law or the legal provisions governing it, because they did not personally see anything wrong with the children's circumstances, or because influential and powerful individuals may have been involved in or indirectly backing the enterprise. Although no research has be conducted, and would indeed be very difficult, it is believed the level of cooperation has improved, although serious problems may still be encountered due to involvement of influential people.

The IPEC project to raise police awareness of child labour issue has already been noted in Chapter 3. While this pilot is obviously offering a valuable model, for it to be implemented on a national level, in a sustained manner, and to actually affect police behaviour, high level support from within the Royal Thai Police and the Interior Ministry will be essential.

Monitoring of this effort is also essential, and best conducted by NGOs, such as is already being done by the Coalition to Fight Against Child Exploitation (FACE), which focuses on monitoring the performance of the judicial system in arresting, detaining, prosecuting and punishing foreign customers of children within the commercial sex industry. It operates chiefly on the level of individual cases, often being involved from before the arrest until (hopeful) sentencing of the offender. It relies on influential supporters and, in some cases, enlistment of the media, to encourage prosecution of cases to the full extent of the law.

(j) International organisations

A detailed discussion of the functions most successfully developed by international organisations, including United Nations bodies, bilateral partners and internationals NGOs, and the most effective working arrangements is contained in Chapter 5.

4.2. Coordination and Networking

4.2.1 National Level Coordination and Networking

As noted above, the main mechanism given responsibility for coordinating national efforts against child labour is the Committee for the Prevention of Child Labour, but it has been largely ineffective, due to weakness in its structure and management. To be fair, however, within the structure of the Thai government, in which each ministry very much operates as an independent entity, developing even very basic cooperation is difficult, with each government entity keen to guard its own concerns and areas of interest. Additionally, NGOs generally have their own agendas and concerns, and, particularly those operating at grassroots levels, may be reluctant to be seen to be too closely linked to government efforts for fear this may alienate them from their target groups.

The problems which the committee might encounter can be considered through brief examination of issues of data collection. IPEC partners at their meeting in August highlighted the many different government agencies which might all collect information about one child: the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the Department of Public Health, the MOLSW, the National Youth Bureau, even in some cases the police. Each of these agencies generally operates without reference to any of the others, using different classifications and categories, with no mechanisms to coordinate design of data collection or to facilitate its dissemination among different agencies. Additionally, many of the officials collecting data have no training in data collection or statistical analysis, and in many cases data is collected but never used or published in a meaningful manner.

While the ideal answer to this problem might appear to be the development of an entirely new, independent data collection, this is far beyond the role of the NCPCL, and simply not practical. Instead, as has been tried through the institution of the CLIC, the best approach is probably to encourage collection of data from as many sources as possible in an accessible place, with technical support available, so that end users are able to access it, and have assistance in interpreting and using what information is available.

Similarly, while it is obvious the NCPLC now has many weakness, even if it is strengthened its approach to coordinating child labour efforts will need to cooperative and supportive, rather than directive, operating along the model being used to develop the Chiang Mai provincial plan on child labour (discussed in the following chapter). Issues and difficulties need to be addressed through informal consultation and personal links. Establishing the committee with a more stable membership, through appointment of more individuals rather than simply holders of specific positions, is essential in allowing the development of personal links and links between small-scale operation units in various agencies, to allow exchanges which may frequently be informal and undocumented. Preliminary steps have begun in this direction, with the appointment of a sub-committee to draft rules and regulations for a permanent committee. Effectively developing such links and structures is not likely to be a short-term process, but it is certainly one that should be promoted as soon as possible, through the strengthening of NCPLC, which must include building the capacities of its secretariat.

Similarly, in terms of links between NGOs and government organisations, while meetings, conferences and formal structures may be important in informing individual agencies of each other's work and disseminating new data, approaches, funding source information and other technical information, they are chiefly important for encouraging the development of informal links between individuals and institutions. They may also be used to identify key areas of concern on which efforts, particularly in the area of advocacy and lobbying, can be concentrated.

4.2.2. Provincial Level Coordination and Networking

Many of the difficulties of coordination between different government agencies at the national level are reflected at the provincial level. As noted in Chapter 2, officials in the provinces are chiefly responsible to their head offices in Bangkok, while also, sometimes uneasily, working with the governor and other provincial officials.

An example of the difficulties of coordination and networking can be seen in the experience of attempting to establish a provincial plan for child labour in the northern province of Chiang Rai, one of four pilots supported by IPEC. In Chiang Rai this was part of a broader IPEC capacity-building programme. Attempts to develop the plan began in 1995, with the appointment by the provincial governor of a senior official from the local Rajahbaht Institute (tertiary college), the highest level academic institution in the province, to coordinate the work, and establishment of a committee to draw up a master plan, with both government and non-government representatives.

In February 1996 the plan was presented to a public meeting, but at that gathering a number of problems were identified with it, including its lack of an overall framework and approach, evidence of lack of experience with the realities of the problem of child labour in some of its proposals, and its reliance on data which was substantially out of date.

The committee was asked to continue its work in developing and refining the plan, and a researcher for this report attended a meeting in mid-1997 at which the plan was further discussed, although a further formal meeting to discuss the revised plan is still planned. At that mid-1997 meeting it was obviously that despite its long period of preparation many NGOs were unaware even of the existence of the plan, and some government officials indicated they were easily able to supply data which plan authors had previously found to be unavailable.

IPEC provided funding to develop the plan, but at present it appears unclear what sources of funds will be available to implement it. While participating agencies have their own funding sources, it may be difficult to redirect already tied funds from government agencies towards the plan's objectives and actions, and NGOs are likely to be constrained by the priorities of foreign funding sources.

An outside view of the overall situation in Chiang Rai suggests there are serious difficulties and inefficiencies in the overall efforts to tackle child labour, and particularly the entry of girls into the commercial sex industry in the province. At a conservative estimate there are 30 NGOs tackling these issues in the province, in addition to probably a similar number of government organisations and individual programmes. Many of these offer vocational training programmes, often in traditional skills such as sewing and weaving, such as the Huay Krai project outlined in Appendix III (Case B), many sharing its limitations in terms of the relatively low market value of skills imparted and likely income for graduates. Many others offer scholarship programmes to allow girls to remain in school.

If it were possible for the provincial plan to encourage a rationalisation of these programmes, to allow government and non-government organisations to concentrate on core competencies, this would aid capacity-building efforts and promote efficiency in the use of funds and other resources. It would also avoid the apparent situation of organisations such as the Daughters' Education Programme (See Appendix III Case C), which, in part due to differing priorities of foreign funding agencies, have stretched their administrative and structural support abilities very thinly in trying to support and maintain a wide variety of programmes, spread both geographically and in terms of target groups. DEP and many other organisations in Chiang Rai also suffer from receiving funding from, often foreign, agencies for pilot projects, but then being unable to find sustainable long-term funding, which foreign organisations are not generally prepared to supply.

That is not to say there should not be diversity of programmes. For example, the small Protective House Foundation (Ruan Rom Yen), also in Mae Sai district, offers a live-in programme for girls at high risk of entering the commercial sex industry apparently very similar to DEP's. But it has a distinctly religious/meditative focus, with plans for training in Buddhism and sustainable agriculture. As a specialist programme probably only suited to a minority of the potential target group, it still might play an important role in meeting the needs of some, and offering alternative directions and futures, which should not be discouraged.

A similar process to develop a provincial plan has begun in nearby Chiang Mai province, which it is hoped will be able to learn from the experience of Chiang Rai. It has a firm seven-month timetable and is able to draw on a strong core of academic support from the Thai Women of Tomorrow (TWT) project at Chiang Mai University. Adopted a less rigid planning approach it, while still in the early stages, would appear to be making more effective progress using a rather different working model.

Rather than developing an ideal list of programmes and projects based on detailed, academic-style quantitative and qualitative research, as has been attempted in Chiang Rai, the Chiang Mai approach has focused instead on drawing together all relevant government agencies and NGOs and encouraging them to exchange, in a fairly informal environment, information and experiences, which, very importantly, enables them to begin to see the broad framework of child labour issues of the province and where their own efforts fit within that. The approach is of a loose partnership, rather than a directing committee designing a rigid plan. It is designed to develop a partnership which can twist and change and quickly redirect efforts as new problems or situations arise.

Conclusions, which appear to have been reached by consensus rather than direction from the top, thus far, include that the primary problem of child labour is in the informal sector, an area not covered by legislative frameworks and thus one in which NGOs may be able to operate more effectively. The work thus far has concluded that the vast bulk of child labour under 15 consists of foreign children or those without Thai citizenship, and that the basic issue of their illegal/unclear status and the complications this produces must be clearly understood and projects operated within that limitation.

There are however potential or actual child labour problems in the fringe areas of the formal sector, in semi-established enterprises, an area in which government activity is likely to be particularly important, the Chiang Mai planners have concluded. They have decided work in this area should include not only-service training of workers so they are aware of their rights, but also practical and technical assistance for the businesses themselves to operate more effectively and profitably, so they do not have to rely on unreasonably exploiting their employees.

Although heavily dependent on the quality and commitment of the individuals involved, and on clear backing from the provincial governor, the Chiang Mai model would appear, although as yet incomplete, to offer a "best practice" model for the development of provincial plans to address the issue of child labour. The model offers a way of enlisting support from a wide range of agencies without threatening their boundaries or control over their own work, while allowing them to develop a greater understanding of how their efforts fit within a broader social and insitutional framework.

What is not yet clear, however, is how such a fluid, informal plan can be integrated into national models and plans. Those involved in the Chiang Mai plan appear barely aware of the existence of the 1997 National Policy and Plan, and in fact it would appear to be unconnected and largely irrelevant to their efforts, which has important negative implications for the long-term sustainability of the approach.

The development of such plans in all relevant provinces is obviously essential for the future, but the difficulties should not be underestimated, and a gradual approach to developing cooperation rather than offering direction, such as is being developed in Chiang Mai, may prove to be the most effective.

The whole area of provincial coordination is likely to become more complicated as tambon-level elected administrations (first introduced in 1995 for areas meeting financial and structural criteria) spread more widely. Funding for tambon projects is provided by the Ministry of the Interior, and that source, and the local elected members and officials, are likely to see their work as being primarily in the area of physical infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water supplies, despite the fact that the governing legislation also gives them responsibility for social issues. This may be an area to which future awareness-raising efforts may need to be directed.

Free web templates

HOME

A few useful links

Internet Women's Sourcebook

Directory of open access journals