Children's Empowerment through Education Services (CHES) Project Launch

March 12, 2008

Hotel Cambodiana

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.  It is an honor to be here with all of you to celebrate the launching of a new program to improve the lives of Cambodia's children today, and to secure a better future for all of Cambodia tomorrow.

Child labor is a critical problem in many countries, and specifically here in Cambodia.  Work, as we all know, is a very good thing.  It ennobles us and makes us more, not less, human.  But work can also be dehumanizing.  This is especially true regarding children because excessive and inappropriate work not only stunts the normal development of individual children; it has significant consequences for society as a whole.  Children who have to work to support their families rather than attend school don't acquire the knowledge and skills they need to obtain quality employment in the future, contributing to a cycle of poverty in their own families, and holding back economic growth in the entire country.

According to the latest estimates, 52% of 7-14 year olds, or more than 1.4 million Cambodian children, work.  This isn't just chores around the house and helping out a bit in the family rice field.  On average, these children spend more than 20 hours a week in economically productive work--mostly in the agriculture sector--in addition to time they spend on housework.  These children are more likely to enroll late in school and dropout early.  They have lower scores on literacy and numeracy tests, and half of them have suffered health problems due to work.  Clearly, if we value the development of these children, and the development of this nation, this is a problem we must all take seriously.

History of US Involvement in Cambodian Child Labor Issues

The U.S. Government has been working together with the Government of Cambodia to combat child labor through education since 2001.  In that year, the U.S. Department of Labor funded the International Labor Organization’s International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO-IPEC) to provide education and other services to children engaged in exploitive labor, or at-risk of becoming involved in similar activities in seven sectors.

Since then, the U.S. Department of Labor has continued to support other committed organizations, such as World Education and Winrock International, with a total investment of nearly $13 million in the fight against exploitive child labor.  In total, these projects have withdrawn and prevented over 35,000 children from exploitive labor in commercial sexual exploitation, brick-making, portering, rubber-making, domestic work, salt production, fishing, and the service sectors.

Of course, as I said earlier, this is a partnership, and the U.S. government has not been doing all this on our own.  The Cambodian government has taken many positive steps to reduce child labor since our partnership began, and we applaud these efforts.  The government ratified the ILO Conventions on the Worst Forms of Child Labor and the Minimum Age for Work.  In the last few months, Minister Vong Sauth has signed six prakas designed to combat child labor.  The Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training is also leading the process of formalizing the draft five-year National Plan of Action on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, which would make the elimination of child labor a top government priority through 2012.  And the Cambodian Government does not just ratify conventions, sign prakas, and develop plans, it also supports direct interventions—including awareness raising campaigns on child safe tourism, and workshops and training programs for labor inspectors—to help in the fight against child labor and human trafficking.

Winrock's CHES project

Today we're here to celebrate the launch of the latest U.S.-funded effort to battle child labor, the Children's Empowerment through Education Services project.  This $4.4 million project will withdraw and prevent 8,250 children in four provinces from exploitive labor in the agriculture sector.  Working with NGO partners like Wathnakpheap, Healthcare Center for Children, American Assistance for Cambodia and the Ministries of Education, Labor, and Agriculture, the project will support children learning in schools, provide income generating activities for parents, raise awareness of child labor through media and community groups, and build government capacity.

In September 2006 I traveled to Prey Veng province to visit a school during their "Open Day" when they were demonstrating everything that they had learned in school under the aegis of another US Department of Labor-funded program, this one implemented by World Education.  The children demonstrated their knowledge on topics ranging from math to how to grow vegetables to life skills like how to deal with domestic abuse.  All these efforts were designed to make their education more relevant and useful, and to keep them in school and make them less vulnerable to exploitive labor.  I was really impressed by these children, by their enthusiasm for learning and their confidence in tackling problems in their often complicated everyday lives.  They were happy, they were having fun, they were proud to be who they are.  It was clear that these students were on the path to becoming productive and capable members of Cambodian society.  I know that Winrock plans to build on the success of this earlier child labor program, and I look forward to sharing similar success stories about CHES with you in the future.

In conclusion, I think we all understand the importance of taking care of young people and investing in their development.  Cambodia's population is so young, that truly the development of Cambodia's youth is the development of Cambodia's future.

Thank you.