NEW DELHI: India on Tuesday ratified two key global agreements on eradicating child slavery, committing the country to adopting international labor standards on the employment of minors and allowing it to be subjected to scrutiny by other nations.
India’s census found there were more than four million laborers aged between five and 14 in 2011 out of 168 million globally, but activists say millions more are at risk due to poverty.
Indian Minister of Labour Bandaru Dattatreya said in statement the ratification reaffirmed the country’s “commitment to a child labor free society.”
The International Labour Organization’s Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour and the Minimum Age Convention form the bedrock of global guidelines for countries to legislate nationally.
Ratifying the conventions — which specify a minimum age of work and prohibit using minors in areas like armed conflict, prostitution or drug trafficking — means nations must adopt the standards and have their progress reviewed every four years.
Paradigm shift
Activist said successive governments had resisted ratification due to a general denial of the existence of child labor in India.
Nobel Laureate and child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi called the ratifications a paradigm shift.
“For years, India was saying we don’t have child slavery and was hesitant to admit the worst forms of child labor exist here, but now this government has agreed that this is a problem and that is why we are ratifying the conventions,” he said.
The ratifications would mean increased government spending on children, and also provide a strong legal tool for charities seeking to strengthen policy on child labor in the country’s courts, Satyarthi added.
India has one of largest populations of children in the world, with more than 40 percent of its 1.2 billion people below the age of 18, according to its 2011 census.
An economic boom in the last two decades has lifted millions out of poverty and progress has been made in curbing child labor with the introduction of social welfare schemes and laws to protect minors and ensure education.
Nonetheless, India is home to more than 30 percent of the world’s 385 million most impoverished children, according to a 2016 World Bank and UNICEF report.
These children are easy prey for traffickers, who promise a better life but often end up selling them into forced labor or debt bondage.
More than half of India’s child workers are employed in agriculture and more than a quarter in manufacturing — embroidering clothes, weaving carpets or making match sticks.
Children also work in restaurants and hotels and as domestic workers. Many girls are sold to brothels for sexual slavery.
India commits to global pacts on eradicating child slavery
India commits to global pacts on eradicating child slavery
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
