Apart from poverty, what do you see as the reasons behind child labour?
Poverty is not the only cause but it is one of the main ones. There is no getting away from the fact that Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Burkina Faso are very poor countries. What is more, these countries need a lot of labour for producing certain raw materials. That cannot be a justification for child labour, however. The problem needs to be tackled at the roots, by using international levers to help the producers get a decent income. Then children will quickly leave the system and go back to school. Child labour is also a cultural phenomenon. Can you change something that is so deeply rooted? Yes, of course we can, by using awareness-raising policies. We have noticed that attitudes are changing. In remote villages in Côte d’Ivoire some parents would like their children to go to school. In the unions, we explain the benefits of having children, villages, regions and indeed a country with proper schooling. Where children are exploited, the opposite is the case, since the country regresses an
