AMERICA/BRAZIL - More than one million child workers in the country

Sao Paulo (Agenzia Fides) - According to the latest figures of the population census conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), over a million children aged between 10 and 14 continue to work in the country, despite government measures against child exploitation. The study, released by the local newspaper "Folha de Sao Paulo", shows that through the efforts of the government in the last decade, the percentage of children and adolescents who try to survive by working has decreased, falling from 6.6% in 2000 to 6.2% in 2010. The problem is particularly severe in the Brazilian Amazon, where child workers are 10%. The eradication of the phenomenon by 2020 is one of the aims of Brazil, however, according to experts, more effort on behalf of the government is needed, since the current monitoring system fails to detect children who work as domestic servants or in small farms, particularly in the most difficult places to reach, where invisible child labor is most widespread. Another difficulty for the government is of a cultural nature, since it is a generally accepted practice in rural areas of Brazil. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 02/01/2012)