André Viana Custódio

André Viana Custódio, a lawyer, is engaging businesses, families, and governments in a critical review of Brazilian culture to place new value on youth development and facilitate the implementation and enforcement of effective child labor laws.

André is building citizen participation to ensure a future for the youngest members of society. Based on the findings of an investigation into the industries where children are working in greatest numbers, André forces various sectors of the community, including businesses, parents, schools, and municipal governments, to confront the role they play in prolonging child labor and to consider the social costs of their actions. André compels a coalition of unlikely partners to form a citizen network advocating for public education policy change and overseeing alternative youth development opportunities. The network also facilitates public debate, reflection, and orientation on topics associated with child protection and development.

Child labor has grown rapidly despite legislation seeking to prevent it. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geographic Statistics, approximately 7.5 million Brazilian children under the age of 18 were working in 1990. UNICEF estimated that the number of children at work had increased to 9.3 million by 1996. This increase is an effect of the Brazilian tobacco and mining industries' emergence in global markets. These businesses have cut costs through child labor. In comparison to adult labor, child labor is cheaper, more easily controlled, and in many cases more productive.
Child labor is a problem deeply entrenched in Brazil's social and economic fabric. Although families often cite economic need for their children to work, children do not contribute significantly to household incomes. However, the practice persists because Brazilian society continues to value child labor as beneficial to the development of the child. In contexts where schooling is typically only four to five hours a day and affordable daycare or daycare alternatives are scarce, parents find it preferable to send their children to the factory or fields instead of allowing them to be idle on the streets. Furthermore, work is seen as more valuable than play, even for young children, because it teaches them responsibility at an early age. The fact that most parents have no idea what their children actually do at work, or the hazards to which they are exposed on a daily basis, only exacerbates this problem further.
Jobs given to children can have significant occupational hazards at a time when they are most vulnerable to toxins or repetitive stress injuries. In a clothespin factory that employs children because of their small hands, permanent physical damage is common among children after only a few months of work. In tobacco fields, children's levels of toxic intake from pesticides are more than double adult levels because children are not given protective gear. The toxins act as depressants, contributing to the high suicide rate among child tobacco workers.
Children's health and development are by no means the only casualties of youth labor. As more children work, Brazil's adult unemployment rate increases. Working children frequently abandon school before they can read and write. In an economic climate that requires better skilled and more flexible workers, a workforce of uneducated young people may cause lasting paralysis of Brazil's development, in terms of economics, innovation, and civil society.
While there is awareness of the need for child labor reform, there are currently no mechanisms to carry it out. The end of Brazil's military dictatorship two decades ago brought change to the central government, but citizen participation at the municipal level has changed little. For instance, the adoption of the Statute on Children and Adolescents in 1990 brought important advances in the judicial framework of child rights. However, the effective implementation of the laws and consequent respect of rights outlined in the statute have been stunted by a shortage of buy-in from families, local authorities, and companies, all of which lack the information, know-how, and will to end child labor.

In order to reform a culture that tolerates child labor, André is changing the way all sectors of society understand and address the issue. His strategy is to put in place the missing pieces to mobilize citizen organizations and make change happen at the local level. Citizen organizations can also promote alternatives for young people to contribute to society.
André began at the state level. He formed a statewide Forum to Eradicate Child Labor in Santa Catarina by bringing together 60 representatives from civil sector organizations, the government, and businesses to propose policies against child labor. The success of this initiative led to the formation of a National Forum for the Eradication of Child Labor by a coalition of organizations, led by André and comprised of representatives from Brazil's 27 states.
After facilitating this national committee, André focused on the tobacco industry, the source of the most pervasive and damaging cases of child labor. He used his training in law and social sciences to document 500,000 cases of children working in tobacco fields in 1998. André brought together various actors to consider the problems, the key players, and potential strategies to create change. Instead of threatening the powerful tobacco companies, he invited the largest, Souza Cruz, to evaluate its own role in the child labor issue, implement self-reform initiatives, and serve as a role model of corporate responsibility to the company's competitors. He convinced Souza Cruz to accept the National Forum's restrictions against child labor, resulting in the prohibition of child labor by all 13 Brazilian tobacco companies. Furthermore, the forum set up an institute to help transition children and their families from the tobacco fields to schools.
Through his work with the State Forum, André identified the 16 municipalities in the state of Santa Catarina that have allocated funds to combat child labor, leading to the establishment of citizen groups in each locality. The first group was created in Lauro Muller, a mining town in the interior of Santa Catarina with 14,000 inhabitants. He was invited to visit the town after a town clerk heard him speak on child labor. There, he brought together people from the whole community to look critically at the social expense of child labor, the environmental degradation of extractive mining, and the disproportionate lack of opportunities for youth. This mini-forum opened a dialogue among community members who had never previously come together. A mere two weeks after the forum, 7,000 participants marched in support of a municipal effort to ban child labor and provide alternatives for youth. The citizen group built alliances with the Secretary of Health, the Military Police, and the town's Council of Representatives. The alliance resulted in the creation of the Municipal Movement in Defense of Children, Adolescents, and Youth. The mayor of Lauro Muller, a former employer of child labor, is directing fundraising for the development of a youth recreational center. Child labor has become the focal point for a much larger strategy to promote participation at all levels in the improvement of the quality of life for all. Through the National Forum that he helped create, André plans to spread his strategy across the country. André is provoking communities to collectively reflect on the problem of child labor, propose solutions, and draw strength from the people's will to implement change at the local level. His method serves as a catalyst to bring community members together and help them recognize solutions through their participation in community policymaking. He gives them a sense of responsibility to solve the community's problems. As such, the mobilization around child labor becomes an important starting point for building citizen participation that links community members, government, and business.

André's grandfather ran a business that kept the family wealthy until he passed away. Because none of his children had sufficient education to take over the family business, it collapsed, and André's relatives scattered throughout Brazil to earn a living. André's mother was deeply affected by this experience and, despite lacking resources, raised André with great emphasis on the value of education.
André was a leader in his high school and president of the student body. His leadership skills earned him a job as a radio announcer and columnist for a local newspaper. André moved to southern Brazil's largest city, Porto Alegre, in order to find new opportunities. Here, he was struck by the vast social inequalities and their impact on children. André embraced law as a tool for solving social problems and returned to Santa Catarina to study law in 1995. While on vacation in the interior of the state, André came upon a town where 90 children worked in a clothespin factory in slave-like conditions earning $5 a month. Appalled by the conditions, he stayed there for seven days, interviewing the children. Some had already lost use of their hands from years of repetitive motion. Others woke with nightmares, hearing the horrifying sounds of factory machines even when they slept. He also interviewed parents who did not know what their children's day was like until André presented a video of their terrible situations. The company, one of the country's largest exporters of clothespins, remained unsympathetic. André spent 36 hours straight writing an exposé for a local newspaper. The report was subsequently published in a leading national newspaper. By the next day, the Federal Police had shut down the factory. This was an incredibly significant moment for André, propelling him along a path toward becoming a national leader in the fight against child labor and for the protection of child rights.
While at law school at the University of Santa Catarina, André was instrumental in the creation of the Center for Legal and Social Studies on Children and Adolescents. After law school, André chose to combine his personal interests and his professional experience, focusing on concerns about child labor and the rights of all children and adolescents, bringing these issues to the attention of all levels of society.