El Salvador: Girls Working as Domestics Face Abuses
Tens of thousands of girls in El Salvador work as domestics, a form of labor that makes them particularly vulnerable to physical abuse and sexual harassment, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today.

For girls, this is the biggest child labor problem in El Salvador. The challenge is to get labor officials to see domestic employment as real work with real risks.

The 35-page report, “No Rest: Abuses Against Child Domestics in El Salvador,” called on the Salvadoran government to include domestic workers, who are almost exclusively girls and young women, in its program to address hazardous child labor.

Girls as young as nine work as domestics in El Salvador and may labor 12 hours or more, up to six days a week, for wages of $40 to $100 a month. They are particularly vulnerable to physical abuse and sexual harassment from members of the household in which they work.

“For girls, this is the biggest child labor problem in El Salvador,” said Michael Bochenek, counsel to the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. “The challenge is to get labor officials to see domestic employment as real work with real risks.”

Over 60 percent of girls reported physical or psychological mistreatment - including sexual harassment - from their employers, according to a 2002 study of El Salvador by the International Labor Organization’s International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor.

Many girls working as domestics are not able to continue their education. They typically drop out from school between the ages of 15 and 17, most commonly because their work hours conflict with the school day or because of school fees and other education-related expenses. Others are able to attend night classes, but traveling to and from school at night involves increased risks to their safety.

The Salvadoran labor code excludes domestics from many of the most basic labor rights, notably the eight-hour workday and the 44-hour work week guaranteed other workers. Domestics commonly receive wages that are lower than the minimum wages in other sectors of employment. The exclusion of all domestic workers from these rights denies them equal protection of the law and has a disproportionate impact on girls and women.

Domestic work is the largest employment category for girls under 16 worldwide, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). In El Salvador, 95 percent of the estimated 21,500 domestics aged 14 to 19 are girls and women.

The total number of child domestics—including those aged 13 or under—is probably much higher, but precise data are not available. Because domestic work takes place in private households, those who perform this labor are more difficult to track than other workers in the informal sector.

But Salvadoran government officials often deny that children, particularly those under the minimum employment age of 14, work in domestic service in large numbers.

El Salvador is the only Central American country to participate in an ILO Time-Bound Program, an initiative to eliminate the worst forms of child labor within a period of five to 10 years. The program provides children with education and training in an effort to give them realistic alternatives to working in hazardous occupations. An ILO study on work in domestic service concluded that it was among the worst forms of child labor, but the Salvadoran government has not included domestic labor in its Time-Bound Program.

Human Rights Watch called for the inclusion of domestic service in El Salvador’s Time-Bound Program and urged the Salvadoran Ministry of Labor to enforce existing labor laws limiting the hours children may work. The Ministry of Education should ensure children’s right to a free education through the ninth grade and should sanction schools that illegally levy school fees, Human Rights Watch also said.



Venezuelan government to investigate threats against embassies of US, Britain, Spain
The Venezuelan government would investigate the possible threats of attacks against the embassies of Spain, Britain and the United States in the country, Vice President Jose Rangel said Saturday.

The intelligence and security department of the government would conduct an in-depth and unbiased investigation, said Rangel in a statement.

He said his government would make efforts to guarantee the security to all the diplomatic representatives and their property in the country.

He also said when there was a conspiracy to break the constitutional order, there were terrorist attacks on some foreign embassies and public facilities to support the oppositions who blamed the government led by President Hugo Chavez

Rangel's statement came after the United States, Spain and Britain respectively put out warnings about their diplomatic missions in Venezuela.

On Saturday, an official of the Spanish Embassy said on condition of anonymity that the threats against the diplomatic missions came from an armed group named Nestor Cerpa Cartolini which is loyal to Chavez.

Also on Saturday the British embassy said in a statement "an attack using an incendiary device is being planned by a radical group in Caracas."

The State Department of United States on Friday put out warning on its official website, saying it had "received information of a possible threat against US interests in Caracas sometime between Sunday, January 18, and Tuesday morning" and "US citizens are advised to maintain security awareness."

Chavez has repeatedly accused the United States of plotting to oust him along with the Venezuelan opposition.

Chavez's opponents have been demanding a binding referendum on Chavez's rule in a further bid to remove him, after a failed coup in April 2002 and a two-month general strike ending in February 2003 which crippled crude oil exports of Venezuela, the fifth largest oil producer in the world.




Colombia is safe from bird flu
Colombia is safe from the bird flu virus, Alvaro Abisambra, Director of the Colombian Agricultural Institute, said Saturday.

The sanitary authorities have kept strict control and permanent vigilance over the poultry-producing centers of the country for years.

The Colombian poultry imports during the past year "come from bird-flu-free countries," Abisambra said.

In Colombia, the imports of products that could be contaminatedwith bird flu are banned, including those from the Netherlands andthe county of New London, the US state of Connecticut. This measure has been taken since late March, 2003.

Abisambra added that Colombia had established a registration ofthe business to authorize animal imports of any species, and the authorization was only given to those passed several tests.

Colombia has developed a plan to prevent bird flu, including the "strict control and evaluation of the risk of fowl imports, ofwhich samples are taken and analysed in our laboratories," said Abisambra.

According to the Agricultural Institute, Colombia imported in 2003 a total of 19.7 million US dollars in fowl meat and products,live animals, egg for consumption or incubation, and vaccines, especially from the United States, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Spain, Ecuador and Venezuela.

The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed Monday that at least three of the 12 Vietnamese who died of respiratory disease had contacted the human version of the virus.