Plagued by child labour and other harmful industrial practices, countries in Africa have a duty to regulate business and hold companies to account for violating children's rights, experts told a conference in Lesotho this week.
The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA), which brought together lawyers, academics, development experts and human rights institutions on the sidelines of a session of the African Union's child protection committee in Maseru, is calling on African governments to examine how business impacts children's welfare.
"Millions of children on the continent are engaged in child labour – between 70 to 90 million children in Africa and particularly in the informal sector," Musa Kika, the NGO's executive director, told RFI.
"And because Africa has a huge informal sector, we actually really don't know the extent of the problem. And it's very difficult to track what children are doing, the hazards they are facing."
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, more children are in child labour than in the rest of the world combined, the International Labour Organisation estimates.
Nor is the problem limited to child labour. "When it comes to business and child rights, it's not just child labour, it also concerns how children are affected as consumers of services and products," said Kika.
Health hazards
In a report released last week, the IHDRA describes how unsafe products and harmful corporate practices affect children.
"We were recently in Zambia in a town called Kabwe, for instance," Kika said, "where lead, zinc and manganese mining has been happening for almost a century. Kabwe is now known as perhaps one of the most polluted towns in the world. The soil has been contaminated by lead."
Lawsuit demands justice for Zambians 'poisoned' by lead mine
While medical experts report that both adults and children in the area have experienced increased health problems, young children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning.
"As a result, children are suffering deformities, deformities, developmental challenges, etc," said Kika.
The problem represents not only unsafe mining practices, he noted, but the failure of the Zambian government to enforce environmental protection laws.
National and international action required
Children also suffer indirectly when their caregivers work in poor conditions, the report underlines, or without proper renumeration and rest periods.
The IHRDA recommends incorporating children's rights into both national and Africa-wide action plans on business and human rights.
"The current state of affairs is that only five out of 55 African countries have national action plans," Kika told RFI. "So 50 countries don't have any coordinated, coherent plan on how they are going to be mindful of child protection in regulating and carrying out business."
Ghana faces mounting pressure to take action over illegal mining
International coordination is also essential, he said. "We are going to need a multi-pronged approach at the African Union level, continental level.
"It's timely now because Africa has just adopted what is called the African Continental Free Trade Area, an agreement that was contracted recently trying to build a single market for Africa in terms of movement of goods and services and people.
"If that framework is fully implemented without a binding mechanism for children's protection at continental level, there are going to be massive violations."
