Comparative Approaches to Myanmar's Child Labor Epidemic: the Role of Compulsory Education

• Citation: Vol. 30 No. 4
• Publication year: 2016

Comparative Approaches to Myanmar's Child Labor Epidemic: The Role of Compulsory Education

Jack W. Roberts

COMPARATIVE APPROACHES TO MYANMAR'S CHILD LABOR EPIDEMIC: THE ROLE OF COMPULSORY EDUCATION

Abstract

Long an epicenter of child labor in Southeast Asia, Myanmar (Burma) has recently enjoyed a period of relative political stability, following decades of instability tainted with periods of military rule. However, foreign contractors have recently uncovered instances of continued child labor, which indicate that the issue may be even more prevalent than previously considered. Debate has arisen among Burmese officials over a plan to expand compulsory free education, which currently only applies through grade school—or the early teenage years—to the age of sixteen. It is the hope of many in Myanmar that these efforts will decrease the prevalence of child labor.

While predicting the effects that expansion of compulsory education will have is impossible, an observation of similar plans in China, Brazil, and India over the past half-century demonstrates that there are policies—as well as areas of caution—that Myanmar can potentially adopt to aid the implementation of such an expansion. It is well established that simply changing the law will not have the full desired effect. In observing these three nations as examples, it seems likely that Myanmar could benefit from taking efforts to combat corruption both at the local and national levels, possibly through futher decentralization combined with a centralized oversight mechanism, incorporating assistance from non-governmental organizations and trade unions through more consistent approaches, and finding creative, cultural, and gender-specific methods of incentivizing low income families to send their children to school rather than collect the modest but immediate benefits of sending their children to work.

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Introduction

Myanmar—historically known as Burma—is in the midst of a long-fought battle against child labor.¹ The Buddhist-majority² Southeast Asian country of over fifty million residents has dealt with significant child labor problems dating back at least as far as the Industrial Revolution, when the country served as a British colony.³ Since Myanmar gained independence in 1948, solutions to the problem have been scarce and ineffective.⁴ In August 2014, a Norwegian company, Telenor, which was working to help build Myanmar's first national mobile phone network, discovered that the child labor situation in Myanmar was considerably worse than earlier estimated.⁵ During unannounced health and safety inspections, Telenor discovered over a dozen cases of child labor in violation of the company's contracts with subcontractors.⁶

Some sources point to the conclusion that an outright ban on child labor is not an effective means of ending the practice, due to an economic dependence on the dividends of child labor by families and by the entire national economy.⁷ A proposed method to combat the issue of child labor in Myanmar that has seen some success elsewhere has been to increase mandatory free education.⁸ Education is currently free for all school age children, but it is only compulsory through secondary school, or the early teenage years.⁹ Some commentators, both within Myanmar and abroad, argue that extending compulsory education through age sixteen would have a profound positive

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impact on child labor.¹⁰ However, the nation faces questions as to how this change should be implemented and enforced. Critics argue that Myanmar's problems run deeper and steps must be taken to fight corruption in the country before effective education reform can take place.¹¹

Myanmar, of course, is not the first country to face issues with child labor in recent history. Similarly situated countries have used education expansion to combat child labor with mixed success. This Comment will examine three countries that have taken this route in the past half-century—namely China, Brazil, and India—in hopes of finding suggestions and reasons for caution that would best serve Myanmar in its quest to move beyond its reliance on child labor. While these three nations have experienced varying levels of success in eliminating child labor through the expansion of compulsory free education, each nation has implemented plans that could apply in some degree to Myanmar's social and economic climate. This Comment will attempt to identify the best aspects of these plans in order to search for the most effective strategies for confronting Myanmar's child labor problem.

Viewing Myanmar through the lens of three significantly larger countries raises issues of comparison. China, Brazil, and India all have populations much larger than that of Myanmar. However, because these nations have the three largest economies that have undertaken vast efforts aimed towards expanding education and eliminating child labor in the past half-century, it seems to follow that at least some of the strategies employed in these countries should have a universal quality that can be applied to countries of a much smaller size. "[G]enuine normative universality" of international children's rights "is a somewhat paradoxical concept which is yet to be realized in real and concrete terms."¹² The specific culture of Myanmar means that no international model will perfectly apply to its own problems. Any analysis of international child labor should balance and reconcile "apparently conflicting basic needs as well as rais[e] the question of who defines those needs and for whom."¹³

Often, a society that produces child labor also produces conditions that would expose children to "excessive exploitation and abuse" in the absence of

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child labor.¹⁴ China, India, and Brazil are used in this Comment because they are three countries that have prioritized the elimination of child labor as part of an overall movement towards economic development. China is frequently cited as a developmental model for Myanmar.¹⁵ India and Myanmar share a common origin and remnants of the British colonial system.¹⁶ Brazil shares a volatile past filled with periods of military rule.¹⁷ It follows that some of the approaches taken or proposed in these other countries should at least have comparative value for the situation in Myanmar.

Ultimately, this Comment details how the expansion of compulsory education will likely improve Myanmar's child labor situation. However, it also analyzes why simply making education free and compulsory will not alone make a significant impact. To reduce child labor, Myanmar will have to combat corruption and the difficulty and cost of enforcing mandatory education laws. To do this effectively, it will have to create a system in which families view education as more valuable than the wages their children can earn in the workplace.¹⁸ This can be done by reducing the costs associated with schooling,¹⁹ providing incentives to compliant families,²⁰ and incorporating the aid of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and trade unions.²¹ Only with a combination of these efforts will any new law that makes education in Myanmar compulsory have a positive impact on Myanmar's rates of child labor.

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I. The Current Situation: Economic Realities and a Lack of Incentives

A study of 5,000 children across fourteen townships in Myanmar in 2006 found that more than one third of children between the ages of seven and sixteen are employed.²² As many as half of these underage laborers are employed in what are described as hazardous jobs, including mining, working as child soldiers, and even prostitution.²³ Due to healthcare problems in the country, children are often forced to work when a parent becomes ill, often with an illness that would be treatable with sophisticated modern medicine.²⁴ The Human Capital Theory is at play in Myanmar;²⁵ for many Burmese families, the perceived present value of the potential wages children can make in the workplace are greater than the perceived future value of an education for those children.²⁶

Myanmar's volatile political climate has presented additional barriers. Corruption siphons off much of the little funding that does make it to the local school level.²⁷ Corruption is also present in the classroom, where money and influence can often purchase good grades, leading to a loss of credibility for state-sponsored education.²⁸ The nation's frequent military clashes have further destabilized the education system, as well as increased the prevalence of child soldiers.²⁹ As recently as 2012, Maplecroft, a risk analysis firm from the United Kingdom, ranked Myanmar's child labor problem as being the worst in

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the world—worse than North Korea and Somalia.³⁰ The International Labour Organization's (ILO) negotiations with the Burma Army and rebels have reportedly had "some success," although instances of children serving as soldiers continue to be reported.³¹ The instability, combined with the effects of recent natural disasters³² and health crises,³³ has led to increased poverty in Myanmar, which has increased the demand for child labor.³⁴ In many instances, the labor is forced upon children by their parents.

A. Struggles to Find Solutions and International Mixed Signals

Myanmar has faced much public scrutiny from foreign nations and potential investors in recent years due to their inability to stop child labor, but foreign entities have inconsistently dealt with Myanmar. Strategies have included everything from withdrawing investments to prevent participation in the problem, to encouraging investment to boost industry and lessen the conditions leading to child labor.³⁵ Myanmar became a party to the United Nations (U.N.) Convention on the Rights of the Child on July 15, 1991.³⁶ The treaty guarantees the right to a formal education and protection of leisure and recreation for children.³⁷ The situation, however, did not improve. Myanmar's military, in part, made compliance with the...