| dc.description.abstract | As early as 1919, the International Community was addressing the problem of Child
Labour - one of the first International concerns. At both national and international levels,
laws have been passed and ratified, safeguarding the interest and welfare of the child.
Several conventions have been held, recommendations of which are almost universally
ratified today. Child welfare institutions at international level like UNICEF and at national
level have come up as strategies for containing the problem. In Kenya African Network
for the Protection and Prevention of Children Against Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAAN),
(Kenya Chapter), Child Welfare Society of Kenya and several church - based organizations
have been set up to address child welfare yet child labour, todate, remains a major
threat to the development and welfare of the child and a major concern.
Even though drawing such a magnitude of attention, the escalating rate of child involvement
in labour is mind boggling. Efforts have been focussed on child employment in the
industrial and plantation agricultural sectors, and in the urban centres, yet it is the rural
and particularly in the family and household sector in which majority of children are
involved in detrimental child labour.
Containing and erradicating the problem calls for a conceptualization of child labour
within a cultural context and understanding the cultural forces attendant to it. The approach
then has to be holistic and multifaceted.
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This study is a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of the cultural understanding of Child
Labour in Lower Nyakach in Kisumu District (Kenya). The study focuses on cultural definition
ofthe child, work, and the cultural understanding of child welfare. It also focuses attention
on the socialization process which children of this society go through and its role in child
labour, socio-demographic determinants of child labour, exploitative nature of child labour and
its implications on the development and welfare of the child.
Making its analysis in a socio-cultural context and framework, this study finally makes recommendations
on how to contain and erradicate child labour in all sectors of society - rural,
urban, industrial and domestic. | en |
