A remarkable seminar held recently recommended to the government that they ratify the ILO convention on child labour as part of a process to eliminate the evil from our country. It was remarkable because the seminar was held jointly under the auspices of the government and the ILO — which meant that the government was using the seminar to recommend to itself certain urgent measures long overdue. And it was doubly remarkable as a judge was called upon to deliver •the main and only paper and the judge chose not to mince words in pointing to the governmental failings in the serious matter of providing legally for the elimination of child labour as also in emphasising the imperative for executive mechanisms for implementing those provisions. We congratulate Judge Zinat Ara for dealing a most necessary blow and compliment the government for organising a willing taking of the same.

Child abuse through under-age employment, and employment in jobs which only stunt its growth into a human being of developed faculties, has for some time been a black spot associated with Bangladesh, thanks to some child right championing lobbies. Our state leader^ have taken pains to fight that image internationally. But on the domestic front, next to nothing has been done or even proposed to improve the child labour profile of the nation. Judge Zinat Ara very unambiguously shows the slip: The Constitution diishrines such principles as human rights, women's rights, right to education etc. but it doesn’t have anything on children's right and their proper upbringing. There is no single law enforcing the minimum age of the child entering a job. And again there isn't any law whatsoever regulating child labour in such sectors as agriculture, fishery and household aid where most of our four million serving children work.

There is no doubt that the government has wizened up to the need of effecting changes in the child labour situation and the seminar was but a token of that. Good intention and knowledge of How best to address the problem are first requirements for doing that, to be sure. But the problem involves the very socio-economic canvas and as such would not readily lend to any cut and solution. As Judge Zinat Ara has observed to abolish chiljl labour or at ledst bring it down to a tolerable limit, the country needs to alleviate poverty and increase social awareness besides enacting, amending and enforcing laws. All this would take a long time. But a beginning must be made here and now.