Coffee. The preferred drink of many people in the morning and the lifeline of the Guatemalan economy. Would you still be drinking that cup of coffee if you knew that children helped pick those coffee beans? Shouldn’t those children be at home playing with toys like normal kids? What if the children were just helping their parents on the farm so their family can get a larger income? Are the “realities of childhood” really that different in other countries? These are just some of the questions surrounding the child labor versus working children debate on coffee farms.
International Legislation vs. On the Ground Experience
In 1989, the United Nations (UN) created the Convention on the Rights of the Child which created a set of guidelines on the rights countries are obligated to give children. 194 countries ratified the Convention, including Guatemala. Here’s the catch. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is written from the perspective of how Western countries perceive childhood. That is, children ought to play with toys, attend school, and refrain from the heavy burden of providing for the family, as is seen in Article 31 of the Convention. However, the Western perception of childhood differs greatly from the realities of childhood in developing countries.
Take Guatemala for example. In rural communities, children, as young as infants strapped to their mother’s back, accompany their parents to work on the coffee farms because they cannot be left alone in the village without supervision. Families are paid based on the amount of ripe fruit they pick from the coffee tree, resulting in children assisting their parents once they are old enough to differentiate between the green and red fruits as a means to increase the income of the family. The reality of childhood for many in rural Guatemala doesn’t include playing with toys and enjoying the luxury of one parent or nannies staying home with the children while parents go to work. Children are expected to help their parents provide for the family, it’s a community effort. Children working to help their families is vastly different from the image of child labor that first comes to mind when people think of children working on farms. This idea is traced in the in the publication by UNICEF, What Works for Working Children? The authors argue that in many societies, working is an essential part of child development and helps alleviate poverty of the child and their family. Therefore, when confronting child labor, it is important to understand the differences between abusive labor and work that is contributing the development of the child.
Children’s Rights: International Stage & Domestic Realities
The definition of child labor, provided by the International Labor Organization, is “work that mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and/or interferes with their schooling.” On the other hand, there is no set definition of working children that encompasses various realities of childhood among different cultures. It comes down to parenting styles and how those parents decide to raise their children. The reality is there are no international, federal, or local guidelines for how to raise children, as long as the basic needs of the child are being met, the state can’t interfere with how parents raise their children. This right is also outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Article 18.
International law is tricky because there is no mechanism to enforce it within countries without violating the sovereignty of said country. The UN Convention on the Right of the Child is a form of international law. However, although a country may ratify the convention, that does not necessarily mean that they uphold it domestically. When researching the domestic laws in Guatemala regarding children’s rights, it uses the same language as the international organizations, that “children have the right to be protected from being exploited economically and should not participate in work that is dangerous to their health or interferes with education.” The law goes on to say, “children have the right to be protected by the state, their families, and society to ensure they have access to education, sports, culture, proper recreation for their age, in addition to being healthy physically and mentally.”
Coffee farmers in Guatemala have attempted to create daycares for young children on the property as a way to help the parents. This, however, failed drastically. Many of the workers on the farms come from cultures that reject letting people outside of their community care for their children, resulting in mothers refusing to have their children leave their side during the workday. Both the government of Guatemala and the coffee farmers work together to ensure the basic needs of the children of the worker are being met. When there are no schools in the villages surrounding the farms, it is common for the farmers to donate schools and build them on their property. The government then fills them with resources and teachers, having the schools become part of the public-school cohort.
Rural Guatemalan Childhood: Up Close
The Guatemalan labor policy in place resembles that of the western perception of childhood, that children should be playing with toys, participating in sports, and going to school. Although that may be a reality for the economic elite in Guatemala City, a population of people that have the means to be able to provide a different childhood for their children, it is not the same in the rural areas of the country. This is evident in the academic calendar for the school systems in Guatemala. For the American School of Guatemala, a private school located in Guatemala City, the school year begins in August and ends in June, much like schools in the United States. On the other hand, schools in rural Guatemala begin in January and end in October to align with the harvest period of coffee.
Unfortunately, that is not a reality for a lot of people around the globe. According to the World Bank, 59.3% of Guatemalans live below the poverty line. As mentioned before, in rural Guatemala children are expected to help their parents maintain the household. That isn’t to say that they do not have a childhood filled with love and fun. From my own experiences visiting Guatemalan coffee farms and speaking with the workers, the dynamic among the coffee farm is still fun and warm. While picking the coffee, everyone is singing to another from different parts of the mountain, and when it’s time to sort through the good and bad coffee beans, it turns into a game of who can pick out the most. They often take breaks to go play soccer with their friends and family. Just because they are working to help their parents increase the family’s income does not mean that the children miss out on the fun aspects of childhood protected by both international and Guatemalan law. As mentioned above, children working alongside their parents can have a positive impact on their development. What Works for Working Children adds to that argument by pointing out that the development of children is benefited by working because it “builds self-respect and cultivates abilities to cope.”
That leaves us with a number of questions. How do you protect children from the fine line of child labor and working alongside their families? If the workers reject daycare programs designed to care for children while they work, are there alternatives that they will accept? Are there certain guidelines and institutions that can assist coffee farmers in caring for the worker’s children? Should international law be updated to include the realities of non-Western cultures? Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer, however, by informing one another about the nuances in childhood rhetoric and how that plays into domestic and international politics, better policies can be created to protect children of all cultures.
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