1.7m fall victim to child labour, forum told

Up to 1.7 million children in Kenya are victims of child labour despite the country being a signatory to international conventions against the practice, a forum heard on Monday.

Ms Grace Banya, an adviser to the International Labour Organisation - International Project for the Elimination of Child Labour, said the fight against the practice should be directed at child trafficking, child sex tourism and domestic labour.

She was speaking at the national children’s forum in Nairobi.

Ms Banya said child labour had mostly been attributed to poverty as surveys by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics had shown that half of the victims are in households with an income of less than Sh6,000 a month.

Statistics released early this year show that 535,197 boys and 476,987 girls are involved in child labour, with a combined 773,696 involved in “worst forms of child labour”.

The forum was held to assess the impact of a project to rescue children involved in labour, which started in 2005.