By Jody Aked, Danny Burns and A.K.M. Maksud  

CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South‑Eastern Asia), a research programme on worst forms of child labour (WFCL), aims to identify, evidence, and promote effective multi-stakeholder action to tackle the drivers of WFCL in selected supply chains in Bangladesh and Nepal. Spanning five years, the programme’s focus in Bangladesh was on identifying the system dynamics of WFCL in Dhaka’s leather industry, and particularly the informal economy, where WFCL is prevalent. In addition to extensive participatory and qualitative research inquiry, 13 participatory action research groups of children and business owners spent 12–18 months learning about actions to reduce WFCL and its impact. The Action Research component makes the CLARISSA programme unique in the child labour space because it has learned about the dynamics of WFCL from action as well as inquiry. The CLARISSA programme has produced multiple research reports, and the Hard Labour website, which reproduces some of the stories about children’s lives, their days, the businesses they work in, and the neighbourhoods they live in. This paper synthesises this detailed evidence landscape to draw analytical conclusions about why WFCL happens in Dhaka’s leather industry and what can be done about it. This paper synthesises what the CLARISSA programme learned about child labour in the leather industry in and around Dhaka, Bangladesh. It looks at children’s pathways into child labour and their lived experience of it, alongside the small leather businesses they work in. The aim was to understand why children have to work and why the businesses employ children, looking at both the supply and demand dynamics of child labour. The CLARISSA programme has produced multiple research reports and the Hard Labour website,2 which reproduces some of the stories about children’s lives, their days, the businesses they work in, and the neighbourhoods they live in. This paper looks across this rich and detailed evidence landscape to draw analytical conclusions about why WFCL happens and what can be done about it.   

CLARISSA Research and Evidence Paper 11, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2024. 70p.  

By A.K.M. Maksud, Sayma Sayed and Khandaker Reaz Hossain

The Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) project in Bangladesh focused on the worst forms of child labour in the leather industry.1 From early in the project, it was clear that most of the children were working in small informal enterprises. As our interactions with enterprises evolved through interviews, workshops, and Action Research meetings, we learned that many of the enterprises hiring children in the worst forms of child labour were serving domestic markets. The CLARISSA team felt it was important to comprehensively test this new understanding with a survey of small enterprises in Hazaribagh, Hemayetpur, and Bhairab. Hazaribagh city is the traditional centre of leather production, with a large number of enterprises working in the informal economy; Hemayetpur is where the government relocated the tanneries, which were located in Hazaribagh until 2016; and Bhairab is a large hub for shoe manufacturers. These three locations have been central to the work of CLARISSA. 1 Each one is an important, but quite different, component of the leather industry, which contributes 4 per cent of Bangladesh’s total exports (0.5 per cent of the country’s total gross domestic product). A target has been set to increase export earnings from the sector to 425bn taka (US$5bn) by 2024, which would contribute 1 per cent to the total gross domestic product. In 2016, Bangladesh ranked eighth in the world for footwear production. More than 76 per cent of the total processed leather produced in 220 tanneries in Bangladesh was exported (Ministry of Industries 2019). Yet, the working assumption underpinning this survey was that while a significant proportion of the children will be working in informal enterprises that supply formally registered businesses, which in turn supply foreign markets, an even higher proportion will be in small enterprises serving domestic markets.

CLARISSA Research and Evidence Paper 15, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies 2024 34p.

By Shirin Zia, Jannatul Ferdous Antu, Mahfuz Al Mamun, Kausar Parvin, and Ruchira Tabassum Naved

Despite the abundance of literature, longitudinal studies evaluating the factors associated with domestic violence (DV) at different stages and over longer periods of women’s lives are rare. We evaluated factors associated with physical and sexual DV during pregnancy, at 10-year, and 18-year follow-ups after pregnancy and within a 19-year period of life using a cohort of women (n= 1,126) who participated in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Interventions, Matlab trial in rural Bangladesh. Data on women’s experience of DV, social and economic characteristics, empowerment, and family condition were recorded in a similar manner during pregnancy and at 10- and 18-year follow-ups, using standard questionnaires. Multivariate logistic regression models and generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate factors associated with women’s experience of physical and sexual violence at each discrete time point and over a period of 19 years, respectively. During pregnancy, women were more likely to experience violence if they were members of microcredit programs/non-governmental organizations (NGOs), living in an extended family and had lower wealth status. At the 10- and 18-year follow-ups, higher levels of decision-making and higher wealth status were protective against the experience of violence. At the 18-year follow-up, women with larger age differences from their husbands were less likely to experience violence, while membership in microcredit programs/NGOs was associated with higher odds of experiencing violence among women. Within a period of 19 years, a higher level of education, living in an extended family, higher decision-making level and higher wealth index were protective against the experience of violence, while membership in microcredit programs/NGOs was a risk factor. In conclusion, this study showed that correlates of violence might change at different time points in women’s life. Thus, policies and programs should consider the stage of women’s lives while planning interventions for addressing violence against women.

Stockholm, Sweden: Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2023. 22p.

By Human Rights Watch

On April 7, 2016, soon after the end of evening prayers, Sadia, 27, heard her husband calling her to come down to the street. As she got to the door, however, he stood flanked by two men, blocking the exit. On her husband’s order, his companions doused her with nitric acid. “My husband stood watching as my dress fell straight off and my necklace and earrings melted into my skin,” Sadia said. After four surgeries and almost four months at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Sadia lost both her left ear and left eye. “He was trying to kill me,” she said when Human Rights Watch met her a year later. Acid attacks are one particularly extreme form of violence in a pattern of widespread gender-based violence targeting women and girls in Bangladesh. In fact, many of the women interviewed for this report endured domestic violence, including beatings and other physical attacks, verbal and emotional abuse, and economic control, for months or even years leading up to an attack with acid. For instance, during the 12 years that Sadia was married before the acid attack, her husband beat her regularly and poured chemicals in her eyes three times, each time temporarily blinding her.

New York: HRW, 2020. 73p.