There is more than one rea­son to feel un­com­fort­able and emo­tion­al­ly queasy about some mat­ters dis­cussed at last Fri­day’s hear­ing of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Hu­man Rights, Equal­i­ty and Di­ver­si­ty with spe­cial fo­cus on the ques­tion of child labour.

Nu­mer­ous un­pleas­ant mem­o­ries, old and new, re­turned to height­en my dis­com­fort over the fram­ing of of­fi­cial po­si­tions ex­pressed, al­beit out of un­de­ni­able con­cern by state func­tionar­ies. Don’t get me wrong, there was noth­ing but good in­ten­tions on show at the hear­ing.

Our own front-page head­line on Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er, flagged the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a ‘Crack­down on Child Beg­gars’ while the sub­stan­tive sto­ry was ti­tled ‘TTPS Go­ing Af­ter Child Beg­gars.’

Eight years ago, a col­lab­o­ra­tion in­volv­ing sev­er­al in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers (ACM), UNICEF, and the Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union (CBU), pro­duced Our Chil­dren, Our Me­dia: A Guide for Caribbean Me­dia Prac­ti­tion­ers.

I was part of the team, su­per­vised by Steve Max­i­may, that worked on the pub­li­ca­tion, whose main con­trib­u­tor was Bar­ba­di­an jour­nal­ist, Julius Git­tens. It was the prod­uct of a se­ries of re­gion­al jour­nal­ism work­shops and ex­ten­sive re­search. The ma­jor thrust of the “guide” was to bring jour­nal­is­tic mean­ing and ex­pres­sion to the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child.

I had by then long been in­flu­enced, as a par­ent and jour­nal­ist, by such a man­date. In 2007, for ex­am­ple, in an ef­fort led by then UNIC Na­tion­al In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer in T&T, Eliz­a­beth Solomon (now Cari­com As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions), we looked at me­dia cov­er­age guid­ed by such rights.

Lit­er­a­ture from that event left ly­ing around at my home one day led to an ac­cu­sa­tion by my son Mikhail (then a mi­nor) that his par­ents were de­priv­ing him of the right to hold opin­ions of his own! Al­most every sin­gle friend and as­so­ciate of mine has heard that sto­ry.

Lat­er, in 2014, I cov­ered the ILO’s Re­gion­al Ini­tia­tive: Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour, which pro­duced a ‘Brasil­ia De­c­la­ra­tion’ aimed at elim­i­nat­ing “the worst forms of child labour” by 2016 and all forms by the year 2020.

Our then Labour Min­is­ter, Er­rol McLeod, de­scribed child labour as “a sin” af­ter af­fix­ing his sig­na­ture to the De­c­la­ra­tion in the Brazil­ian cap­i­tal.

Pro­ceed­ings from that very event helped nu­ance the dis­cus­sion when Pres­i­dent Lu­la da Sil­va (now back in the sad­dle) de­scribed his ear­ly life as a child ven­dor and, in the process, in­sert­ed the dilem­ma of eco­nom­ic ne­ces­si­ty ver­sus the strict ap­pli­ca­tion of law.

Last Fri­day, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John re­layed a sim­i­lar mes­sage when she spoke of her child­hood days in Char­lot­teville sell­ing fish and veg­eta­bles and the ex­is­tence of what she de­scribed as a “cul­tur­al shift”. It was a sin­gu­lar­ly im­por­tant in­ter­ven­tion.

One of the key lessons I have learned along the way (two of my close child­hood friends were gross­ly un­der­paid “ap­pren­tice” me­chan­ics at 15 and 16 earn­ing $2.50-5.00 a week), was that this is­sue of child labour re­quires broad so­cial di­a­logue based on an un­der­stand­ing of much more than what the law per­mits or pro­hibits.

Supt Claire Guy-Al­leyne’s pro­fes­sion­al brief and her quot­ed re­marks last Fri­day touched on this, but in­suf­fi­cient­ly to ex­hib­it what I con­sid­er to be her sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the nu­mer­ous com­plex­i­ties.

As a well-in­formed pre­sen­ter at more than one re­gion­al me­dia train­ing ex­er­cise, it was clear that the TTPS, through Guy-Al­leyne and her team, has with­in its com­mu­ni­ty a valu­able re­source to add the hu­man­i­tar­i­an dy­nam­ic to ap­pli­ca­tion of law.

But such is the na­ture of polic­ing here, it was well be­yond her brief to re­mind the JSC and this coun­try that ob­ser­vance of the rights of the child con­sti­tutes a vi­tal el­e­ment of so­cial, cul­tur­al, and eco­nom­ic rights.

Un­der such con­di­tions of de­nial, our bungling of mi­grant rights has im­posed an ad­di­tion­al di­men­sion we need to ne­go­ti­ate with greater care.

De­nial of the right of mi­grant chil­dren to an ed­u­ca­tion over a pro­tract­ed pe­ri­od, fol­lowed by force­ful ap­pli­ca­tion of crim­i­nal law to ad­dress its out­come, con­sti­tutes a bru­tal knee to the neck.

It is al­so sim­i­lar­ly in­ju­ri­ous that af­ter al­most one decade of the Brasil­ia pho­to-op, five years af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Steer­ing Com­mit­tee for the Pre­ven­tion and Elim­i­na­tion of Child Labour, and the ex­is­tence of “mul­ti­ple pro­grammes,” al­most noth­ing has hap­pened and the ab­sence of da­ta is be­ing cit­ed in de­fence of gross of­fi­cial neg­li­gence on this mat­ter.

Peo­ple, we are not get­ting our pri­or­i­ties right!