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Today the Ministry of Labor and other partners celebrated the closing of the CLEAR II Project. CLEAR II is an initiative aimed at combating child labor in Belize by strengthening the country's legislative framework and improving monitoring and enforcement methods. We attended today's closing ceremony and spoke to a few of the project's key stakeholders about their work... 

Leidi Urbina - Country Coordinator, CLEAR II
"When we looked at the revision of these existing pieces of legislation we tried to align a lot of these pieces with several international obligations and commitments that Belize has ratified. A couple of these are the ILO Conventions 138 and the minimum age for employment. And also the ILO convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor. And so a couple of the recommendations or some of the key recommendations that have been submitted includes looking at the age of a child under the labor act. Presently the age of a child is 14, under the Labor Act. Now if we look at what is the internationally recognized standard for a child it is a person, anybody under the age of 18. And so that is one of the recommendations to change the definition of a child under the labor act."

"The second one is to also align the minimum age for employment and as it is right now, and this is specific to full it employment. So it's very, very important to understand that it's minimum age for full time employment as is it is 14. So, the recommendation submitted by the LRC is to increase it to 16. And so that also has to be aligned with the compulsory of education. So it was also proposed to increase the compulsory age of education to 16."

We also spoke to Labor Commissioner, Anne-Marie Thompson, about the project's specifics. She told us that there is currently around 20 recommendations being reviewed by the Ministry's Child Labor Review Board. Thompson also spoke to us about where in the country child labor is most prevalent and the strategies being used to overcome the problem...

Anne-Marie Thompson - Labour Commissioner
"There is a National Child Labor Committee, and that committee had a sub-committee, legislation review committee. And that committee looked at 20 pieces of legislation in context of child lab. For example, it looked at the labor act, it looked at the education and training act. So that committee went through all those legislation and then they made recommendations for instance "what's the definition of a child", "how many hours should a child work?" yes. Those recommendations have been sent to the labor advisory board. The Labor Advisory Board advises the Ministry on labor matters. So as we speak, those recommendations are at the Board. And they are reviewing them. When they're finished then they will advise the Ministry on how to go forward, but the ultimate objective is to pass or improve existing legislation."

Reporter
"Is there any one district that child labor is prevalent in?"

Anne-Marie Thompson
"Well that's an interesting question because a study have been done and the North, that was a problem. And so the CLEAR II project basically focused on the agriculture industry. Specifically the North. And we have been working very closely with the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association. They have been doing a tremendous job in treating with those. So we go out in the fields and we do inspections. We also meet with families. We try to offer assistance. We try to rehabilitate with other Ministries, like the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Human Development. We work as a team and we try to implement solutions."

The CLEAR II Project fittingly wraps on World Day Against Child Labor.