A recent report on the status of domestic child labour in Kathmandu says that in the last 15 years, the number of children working as domestic help in the Capital has decreased from one in five households to one in 20 households. The study conducted by the Children and Women in Social Service and Human Rights attributed the decline to an increase in awareness and a shift from domestic help to other forms of labour.

However, this semblance of progress belies a harsh reality. According to data from the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, the country has 1.6 million child labourers, 20 percent of whom are involved in perilous work such as mining and construction. But the abstract numbers do not tell the whole story. There are varying estimates of the number of children forced to work in different sectors. A report by the World Education and Plan Nepal titled ‘Rapid Assessment of Children in the Brick Industry in Nepal 2012’ put the number of child labourers in the brick kiln industry at 28,000. The carpet industry employs around 10,000 children as per UN estimates.

Then there is the issue of child trafficking. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that about 12,000 Nepali children are trafficked to India every year.

The aggregate impact of child labour in its various forms has a deep and lasting effect on the psychology of children. Child labour is not a one-off episode; every day, every month and every year, children are forced into employment both because of poverty and demand for cheap labour.

The country has the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 2000, which prohibits employing children below 14 years in any kind of labour and children below 18 years in hazardous work. The Act states that persons found forcing children below 16 years in labour could face a jail term of up to one year and a fine of up to Rs50,000.

Five years ago, the government had proposed a master plan with the goal to end the worst forms of child labour by 2016 and all its forms by 2020. The ambitious plan had envisioned, among other things, identifying child labour, setting a criteria for hazardous work and offering economic assistance and scholarship to the children of the poor. It had also proposed rehabilitation programmes for rescued child labourers, while building cross-border networks to combat child trafficking.

However, laws and plans without the will to implement them are hollow and do little to protect children. It is high time that the master plan was endorsed and implemented. We have missed the 2016 timeline, but it is not too late to end all forms of child labour by 2020.