Exploitative child domestic work, is it a necessary evil?
Is child domestic labor a necessary evil? I didn’t expect to ask myself this question until I met Jane.
Disclaimer here, I do not condone any form of exploitative child domestic work, but I raise this question to spark dialogue on its realities. Around the table sat officials from Amka Africa Justice Initiative, lawyers, representatives from the children’s office and other law enforcement officers, and university legal aid clinic students like myself.
Why are we discussing measures to protect children in domestic work instead of ending this exploitative vice entirely? I asked myself. Children are vulnerable; for girls, the risks multiply.
Through my interaction with the university legal clinic and Amka Africa, I had interacted with stories of young girls employed in households as domestic workers, only to be sexually assaulted, defiled, impregnated and silenced. The victims would go to report the matter, only to discover perpetrators had already “sweet-talked” the police, money talks, or as we like to say nganji ndio inabonga!!
Every speaker condemned exploitative child domestic work and the negative impact it had on children. At one point, we even discussed whether childcare should be considered excessive for a child domestic worker, particularly given that it is not expressly listed as work harmful to a child’s wellbeing under the Employment (General) Regulations 2014. Then came Jane (pseudonym). Jane is a survivor of exploitative child domestic work and her experience significantly reshaped the direction of our discussion.
“Through domestic work, I fed my siblings, clothed them, paid their school fees….”
She anticipated our questions
“Even with free primary education, I could not go to school as my siblings depended on me. Our parents passed away and there was nowhere for us to go…”
Jane asked us not to pity her,
“Please do not feel sorry for me. I have accomplished things I am proud of…”
Her honesty was raw,
“There were good and bad days at work. Some employers were nice and treated me like a human being, some treated me worse than they would an animal. But at the end of the day, I got money and that’s all that mattered at that time.”
The line that you’ve been waiting for….
“If I had stopped working without an alternative, my siblings would have been sent home from school. I wouldn’t have managed to feed them. It would not have worked to just tell me to stop working without feeding us!”
Her words shattered my assumptions, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once warned of the dangers of a single story. Jane reminded me of that danger, to her, ending child labor could mean ending her family’s survival.
So, I ask: are interventions that focus solely on removing children from exploitative domestic work truly meaningful? Without a multifaceted approach that centres survivors’ voices, even well-intentioned strategies risk becoming superficial. Unless we address the underlying drivers including poverty, family breakdown, weak social and legal protection systems, and poor parenting practices that push children into exploitative domestic work; we will remain ill-equipped to confront this reality head-on.
