Children forced to work in Bolivia

A third of Bolivia's children and teenagers work in horrific conditions in the mines, Brazil nut plantations and sugar cane fields, say aid agencies. Even though child labour is against the law in Bolivia, hundreds of thousands of children have to work to survive in what is one of Latin America’s poorest and least developed countries. Instead of going to school like children their age in richer countries, 320,000 Bolivian children aged between seven and 17 are set to work. Often they toil in sugar carne plantations hacking down cane all day, some suffering crippling back pain as a result. Some have to set the sugar cane on fire to take off the unwanted leaves before they chop down the canes.

Luis, 13, started working three years ago. “The work is hard, very hard... I don't want to do this any more, but I have no choice," he told a BBC correspondent. "The canes are heavy, cutting, chopping all day, last year I had a terrible back pain from work. I don't want to do this any more, but I have no choice." This type of work is one of the worst forms of child labour, the International Labour Organization and the UN children's agency, Unicef said this week. Until recently, many farmers in Bolivia stopped growing sugar because they could get better, prices for other crops, such as soya, rice and the local crop, coca - the raw material for cocaine. But now raw sugar is fetching the best prices in decades and farmers are switching back to sugar cane. Whole families are travelling across the country to work in the fields. They live in shacks that are little more than mud huts, or under tarpaulins on the edge of the plantations.

It is no secret that children of all ages work in different conditions, in different sectors in Bolivia, says Unicef's Gordon Jonathan Lewis. "As long as poverty exists, and the magnitude and the prevalence you have in a country like Bolivia, you will always have the need for children to contribute to households and local economies," he said. But with the sugar cane harvest, especially, the exploitation of child workers can be extreme, he said. Anastasio Rueda, a sugar cane trade union leader there agrees. "Sometimes the boss takes advantage of them because they are young, and treats them badly,” he told the broadcaster. “There are accidents. And of course there are children who do not want to come to work because the job is harsh, but some parents force them to," he says.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children