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Accepted Paper:
Beyond Conventions: Exploring community participatory tools in tackling child labour
Gift Mauluka
(University of Bayreuth)
Child labour is a complex problem that requires non-traditional approaches to overcome. It requires a blend of approaches from different perspectives. The Theatre for Development approach blends the application and implementation of laws with other non-normative approaches for effective solutions.
Paper long abstract:
Child labour is a global problem. The International Labour Organization (ILO) forecasts that these numbers will possibly increase due to COVID-19, while the Food and Agriculture Organisation indicates that adverse effects of climate change are mostly likely to push more children to be exploited through child labour in Sub-Saharan Africa. To overcome this problem, the international community promised children protection from child labour through international conventions such as Conventions 138, 182 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Despite these conventions and other programmes, children are still engaged in child labour, which is affecting their wellbeing. While the promise offered through the legal frameworks seems to be limited in achieving efficacy in protecting children from child labour, limited scholarly attention lies on how participatory theatre can be used as an approach to find alternative solutions to the persistent occurrence of child labour. This approach is characterized by the active participation of the community where they identify their problem, reflect on why and how the problem affects them, and, with insights gained through the engagement of the performers, explore solutions-characteristic which are mostly absent in the formalistic application and implementation of legal frameworks. It is, therefore, against this background that this paper argues that the efficacy of the law in addressing child labour can be achieved through the use of participatory approaches. This exploration is drawn from fieldwork and theatre performances in the central parts of Malawi, where there are higher cases of child labour due to tobacco farming.