The Moroccan National Institution for Solidarity with Women in Crisis, known by its French acronym INSAF, has launched a campaign against child labour, themed "Child labour kills. It kills their childhood."
The campaign, to which utilities company Lydec, the national office of electricity and many other associations have contributed, aims at sensitising as many citizens as possible all over Morocco about the dangers of this phenomenon.
"We would like to paste our posters on the M'dina buses. The Casablanca bus company has given us its assent; we are just waiting for sponsors," said Meriem Othmani, the president of the INSAF.
Set up in 1999, INSAF is a non profit association, comprising doctors, lawyers, architects, and other professionals.
So far, INSAF has circularised 70,000 posters denouncing child labour, and more than two million others will be distributed later in different cities.
The Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training expressed support for this campaign. It issued a release urging the inspectors of the CNSS, Moroccan social security fund, to report any case of child exploitation.
The Ministry of Education's delegates in Casablanca have also joined the effort to ensure the operation is a success. The first step in this cooperation has been registered in Sidi Bernoussi, Casablanca, where schools have set up vigilance cells to report any case of a child taken from school to work.
"Our campaign comes as part of our fight against child labour. But, we are aware that we have to save child by child if we want to eradicate this phenomenon," admits Othmani.
Through this campaign INSAF intends to save exploited children, especially little girls, who are being increasingly used as maid and ill-treated. The starkest example is little Halima who, as Moroccan newspapers reported, was about to throw herself from the third flour to escape torture.
"Our priority is little girls employed as maids. First, we target the regions of Taza and Marrakech, where INSAF's members are currently active," explained the president of the association.
Earlier this year, the Moroccan Ministry of employment estimated that the number of children working throughout the kingdom at about 600,000, representing 11% of the country's children.
A recent study jointly carried out by the Moroccan ministry of employment, the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (Ipec), Unicef and the World Bank indicated that the age of working children varied between 7 and 14.
The survey was part of Understanding Children's Work (UCW), a programme aimed at drawing up strategies to wipe out the child labour phenomenon.
By Bachir Niah
© Morocco Times 2005
