HIV/AIDS and Child Labour in Zambia: A Rapid Assessment on the Case of the Lusaka, Copperbelt and Eastern Provinces

Executive Summary

This rapid assessment examined correlations between the HIV/AIDS pandemic and child labour in Zambia. The report aims at:

• assessing the extent to which HIV/AIDS has had an impact on child labour, both directly and indirectly;
• analysing the impact of HIV/AIDS-related child labour on the welfare of children in terms of their health, education, etc;
• assessing gender issues related to HIV/AIDS, as well as analysing the coping or survival strategies of girls and boys, including AIDS orphans;
• assessing the child labourers' awareness and knowledge of HIV/AIDS; and
• generating data that could assist policy and intervention strategies on behalf of child labourers.

This research was conducted in three provinces: Copperbelt, Eastern, and Lusaka. The sample included 306 child labourers: 211 boys and 95 girls in the five to 16-year agegroup. The study applied a triangulatory approach involving:

• 15 focus group discussions (FGDs) – five groups per study area, each involving ten participants;
• 34 in-depth interviews (13 on the Copperbelt, 11 in the Eastern Province, and ten in Lusaka); and
• a questionnaire survey of 122 children (41 each for the Copperbelt and Eastern Provinces, and 40 for Lusaka).

About one-third of the sample were single or double orphans (i.e. with either one or both parents deceased, respectively), a sizeable proportion of whom were engaged inprostitution. Many were also involved in other forms of child labour. The non-orphaned children had parents whom they described, due to the 1970s-90s economic crisis, as being either poor or unemployed. Clearly, as parents became poor, their capacity to support their children was seriously compromised, and many children left to live on the street.

Given that the death of parents or guardians forced children out to work, the HIV/AIDS pandemic exacerbated the extent of child labour. Jobs included vending on thestreet and in markets, quarrying and stone breaking, fetching water, portering (kuzezera), household chores or domestic work, digging wells and garbage pits, carpentry, cooking nshima in the markets, cutting grass, picking bottles, and prostitution. Child labourers were found in markets, streets, bars and pubs, shopping centres, bus stops, car parks, and resthouses/hotels.

Not all child labourers were orphans. Poverty was the major factor behind working children. For some, their meagre contributions were the only income their families had. Except for a few children in prostitution who earned about 30,000 kwachas (about US$6.30) per night, over 90 per cent of the child labourers earned as little as 15,000 kwachas (US$3.00) per month, especially in the Eastern Province.

Most children worked in hazardous environments, and were exposed to a variety of health problems. Among those mentioned by children were headaches, fatigue, chest pains, injuries/bruises (job-related and from fights), painful/swollen legs, painful ribs, coughing, stomach pains and diarrhoea, sore necks, sneezing, backache, waist ache, malaria, andsexually transmitted infections (STIs). Health care was irregular. The children claimed that health services were expensive and, for them, usually inaccessible. Self-medication combined with traditional therapies was often the only recourse, while on many occasions no care or treatment whatsoever was sought.

Education is a not priority among children who have to cope with poverty. Few of these children advanced beyond grade 7. In this regard, dropping out of school to work was more common a factor than failure to pass exams. Lack of money was cited by almostevery child as the major obstacle to education. In most cases, the parents were too poor to pay for school fees, uniforms, or shoes. Among the total sample of 306, only 84 children (27 per cent) were in school. School attendance was reportedly difficult, since it required children to divide their time between work and school while struggling to find money for fees and supplies. The situation was even worse for orphans. Almost every child said that, if given an opportunity (i.e. someone to pay for them), they would return to school. Commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) among children aged 14 to 16 years was common. Half of the 34 in-depth interviews (15 girls and two boys) were conducted with CSE victims. Children engaged in prostitution organized themselves into groups for purposes of security, and services were almost exclusively performed in exchange for money, although girls sometimes slept with men for beer. Girls claimed they slept with as many as four men per night and their earnings were meagre, ranging between 3,000 and 10,000 kwachas (US$0.63 and US$2.10) per act. Condoms were rarely used, since the children lacked the capability to negotiate safe sex. The girls interviewed expressed their awareness of the dangers of STI, including HIV/AIDS. Nonetheless, these girls accepted the risk of being infected so long as they could earn money.

Boys were also involved in prostitution. Their clients tended to be rich widows who paid in dollars. All of those children engaged in prostitution, except for one girl, were out of school.

Awareness of HIV/AIDS was reasonably prevalent, with over 86 per cent of the children recognizing the dangers related to unsafe sex. Awareness was low among younger children aged 5 to 11 years, however, most of whom failed to mention the principal cause of HIV/AIDS (i.e. unprotected sex). Moreover, many children failed to report at least three symptoms of the disease. Inconsistencies in knowledge about HIV/AIDS were related togeography, gender, and age, but were due even more to sources of information – most of the information was obtained from other working children – and the educational levels of respondents. Risk of HIV/AIDS was higher among children in prostitution than among other categories of child labourers, but all were prone to health risks in general. HIV/AIDS victims in Zambia, according to most of the children, suffered stigmatization and discrimination resulting in social isolation. Infected people were commonly held responsible, since they had supposedly engaged in unprotected sex and "immoral activities". Only one child respondent reported having been discriminated against by relatives and neighbours because his parents had died of HIV/AIDS. Some of the child orphans – despite their having already described the dead parents/guardians as having suffered symptoms associated with the disease such as chronic illness, weight loss,and swollen legs – attributed the deaths of their parents or guardians to other causes. Others admitted that their parents or guardians had died of HIV/AIDS, but this fact was kept secret except from very close relatives. In the absence of HIV tests, the study could not determine how many of the children interviewed were themselves infected.

[Please note: this document no longer appears to be online. We are seeking a contact for those who would like a copy. We will update this page as soon as we find one. Any help would be appreciated!]