标签： Barbados

A national anti-child labour educational initiative has expanded its reach across Barbados, bringing interactive rights awareness to dozens of pre-secondary students in the island’s northern districts this week. Hosted at Daryll Jordan Secondary School, the forum marks the latest phase of a country-wide campaign led by the Ministry of Labour, Social Security and the Third Sector, timed to coincide with the upcoming World Day Against Child Labour and the International Labour Organisation’s global “Red Card to Child Labour” initiative.

Targeted at upper-level primary school pupils preparing to transition to secondary education, the event centered on protecting Barbados’ decades-long status as a territory with zero recorded cases of child labour. Eight primary schools across the northern region—including St Alban’s Primary, Ignatius Byer Primary, A. DaCosta Edwards Primary, St Lukes Academy, St Elizabeth Primary, St Joseph Primary, St Bernards and Elliot Belgrave Primary—sent hundreds of Class Three and Four students to participate, filling the venue’s auditorium. Only nearby St Lucy’s Primary was forced to withdraw after a recent local fire disrupted school operations.

Addressing the young audience, Rhonda Farley, a sitting member of Barbados’ National Child Labour Committee, opened by emphasizing that childhood must be preserved as a protected phase of growth and development. “Childhood is a time for learning, growing, playing, and dreaming, and a time when children should be in school,” Farley told attendees. “Unfortunately, that’s not the reality though for millions of children around the world.”

Farley highlighted the staggering global scale of the crisis: an estimated 138 million children between the ages of five and 17 are currently trapped in exploitative child labour across the globe. She asked the young Barbadian students to imagine starting full-time work at five years old, instead of attending classes and playing with peers, noting that many child labourers work grueling long hours just to contribute basic income to their struggling families.

Beyond long-recognized hazardous child labour in sectors like agriculture, mining and factory production, Farley drew urgent attention to a rapidly growing, underregulated threat: digital child exploitation enabled by online platforms. She explained that modern forms of hidden child labour are increasingly moving online, with children forced to create content for major platforms including TikTok and YouTube, compete in paid online gaming tournaments, sell goods directly to consumers, and complete repetitive digital microtasks for pay.

“While technology can be exciting and creative, it can also expose children to exploitation, long working hours, and online abuse,” Farley warned, citing recent UNICEF research that confirms the rising trend. She added that digital child labour is uniquely challenging to address, as it often operates underground, crosses national borders with ease, and falls outside existing regulatory frameworks designed for traditional work settings.

Farley stressed that no matter the setting—whether a physical farm, factory or an unregulated online space—excessive child labour inflicts irreversible harm: it disrupts school attendance, robs children of critical rest time, and stunts healthy social and emotional development. She went on to outline the strong protective framework Barbados has built to eliminate child labour, noting the country is a long-standing signatory to International Labour Organization Conventions 138 and 182. These global agreements set a minimum age for formal employment and ban the worst forms of child labour, including human trafficking, drug trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

Domestically, Barbadian law requires all children to remain in formal education until they reach 16 years old. To uphold this mandate, the national government allocates hundreds of millions of dollars annually to fund free education across primary, secondary and tertiary levels, alongside social welfare support including free school meals for students from low-income households.

Looking ahead, Farley revealed that the National Child Labour Committee is currently working to strengthen existing domestic legislation by developing a formal, definitive list of hazardous occupations. Once finalized, the register will explicitly ban all people under 18 from working in high-risk roles such as quarrying and work involving exposure to toxic chemicals.

This northern forum follows a similar successful event held in March for schools in and around the parish of Saint Michael, part of a coordinated national strategy to bring anti-child labour education to students across every region of the island. Unlike traditional lectures, the interactive event was designed to empower young people to become active participants in protecting children’s rights, rather than passive observers of the issue. Students who correctly answered questions about Barbadian labour history and global child labour statistics were awarded prizes, fostering a lively, engaged atmosphere throughout the day.

Farley closed by encouraging the young attendees to become advocates for children’s rights. “An advocate is someone who speaks up for others, raises awareness about important issues, and encourages positive change,” she said. “As young people, you have the power to educate others, to challenge harmful practices, and to promote the rights of every child to learn, play, and grow in a safe environment. We are going to raise our voice, we are going to speak up, and we are going to speak out.”

When the 2024 academic year kicks off this September, Barbados will roll out a groundbreaking mandatory community service programme for all secondary school students, designed to address rising youth crime and strengthen core civic values across the island nation. Education Transformation Minister Chad Blackman announced the initiative, dubbed “60 at 60,” during a parliamentary address, framing the programme as a proactive, prevention-focused complement to stricter law enforcement measures targeting gun-related offences.

Under the new rules, all students seeking to complete their secondary education must complete 60 hours of approved community-focused activity before graduation. Participants can choose to work with civic organizations, join uniformed youth groups, or participate in organized team sports to meet the requirement. This marks the first time Barbados has integrated a mandatory civic engagement component into its formal national secondary curriculum.

Speaking to lawmakers, Blackman emphasized that the initiative moves far beyond traditional academic benchmarks. Its core mission is to shape responsible, community-oriented citizens by instilling critical soft skills that formal classroom learning often overlooks: discipline, collaborative teamwork, empathetic communication, and constructive conflict resolution. These skills, he argued, are essential to guiding young people away from delinquent behaviour and addressing the deep-rooted social factors that push youth toward crime.

“Many young people earn strong grades and follow all the rules, but qualifications alone are not enough to build a strong nation,” Blackman told Parliament. “If young people leave school without the right mindset—without empathy, without knowing how to resolve conflict peacefully, without a sense of shared responsibility to their communities—we have failed them.”

The minister noted that criminal behaviour rarely develops overnight. Individuals facing gun-related charges do not turn to crime by random chance; instead, their paths are often shaped by underlying social gaps, including peer pressure, the absence of a stable guiding adult figure in the home, and a lack of positive extracurricular engagement. By placing young people in structured community settings early in their education, the government aims to intervene before at-risk youth turn to harmful activity.

To support the successful launch of the programme, Blackman has issued a renewed public call for volunteer mentors across Barbados. He stressed that the call is open to all community members, not just men—pointing to the decades of critical leadership women have provided through longstanding youth groups like Cub Scouts, Brownies, and Girl Guides. Retired residents and working professionals alike are invited to donate a few hours of their time to support the initiative, which forms a core part of the government’s broader national youth development strategy.

“Our goal is to give young people the tools, values and discipline they need to thrive long after they leave school, and to make our entire nation proud,” Blackman said. “When community members step up to mentor our youth, they help build a stronger, safer Barbados for everyone.”

Addressing ongoing concerns about the creeping culture of illegal gun ownership across the island, Blackman reaffirmed Barbados’ commitment to confronting the crisis head-on. He pushed back against the dangerous normalization of gun violence that has spread on social media, where some young people now brandish illegal firearms as if they are characters in a Hollywood film. There is no room for tolerance or indifference toward this harmful trend, he insisted.

The minister also called on parents, families and community leaders to work together to reframe public perception of gun-related crime: gun charges should never be viewed as a badge of honor among young people, he said, and there is nothing respectable or impressive about appearing in court on firearms offences.

A wanted Barbadian man linked to severe criminal cases has turned himself in to law enforcement, closing an intensive 24-hour search that relied on public cooperation. Dwayne Marlon Drakes, who is also known by the alias ‘Oily’, presented himself at the Holetown Police Station on Wednesday, one full day after the Barbados Police Service issued a public wanted bulletin asking citizens to share any information about his location.

TBPS confirmed that following Drakes’ voluntary surrender, the suspect is currently cooperating with detectives as they advance their investigations into the serious criminal matters he is connected to. Law enforcement officials also extended formal gratitude to both members of the general public and regional media outlets, who responded swiftly to the Tuesday appeal and supported the investigation through the sharing of information and widespread circulation of the wanted notice.

Barbados is moving forward with an ambitious, comprehensive overhaul of its national prison system, centered on shifting from a purely custodial model to one prioritized on rehabilitation, reduced recidivism and the dismantling of internal criminal networks, Home Affairs Minister Gregory Nicholls has announced. The initiative forms a core pillar of the country’s broader national crime prevention strategy, with a targeted focus on transforming Dodds Prison as the first major site of reform.

Speaking on the second day of the Barbados Probation Service’s “Modern Perspectives on Sentencing and Penal Reform” symposium held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Nicholls emphasized that failing to move beyond the outdated model of merely housing inmates would only perpetuate the cycles of crime that have long plagued the country. “Effective prison systems have to rehabilitate offenders, have to break the strength of the criminal networks inside the prisons and reinforce nonviolent norms and identities,” the minister stated.

Nicholls pointed out that crime disproportionately impacts young men across Barbadian society, and the current largely custodial system has only strengthened criminal networks while failing to cut reoffending rates. To reverse this trend, he said, national security frameworks must be reformed to reduce community violence, with the modernization of penal institutions serving as a critical first step.

A central target of the six-year transformation plan is cutting recidivism by 30 percent, reshaping traditional prisons into dynamic rehabilitation centers that improve offender reintegration, reduce in-prison violence and build stronger institutional resilience. To achieve this goal, the plan outlines multiple interconnected strategies, starting with the introduction of evidence-based programming designed to drive lasting behavioral change. These programs include structured rehabilitation courses, cognitive behavior therapy, substance abuse treatment, violence intervention training and conflict resolution workshops.

Nicholls rejected the status quo of confining inmates to cells with only one to two hours of yard time daily as an ineffective approach that does nothing to prepare offenders for release. Instead, the reform plan embeds comprehensive education and skills training into daily prison routines, including Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) certification in high-demand fields such as construction, information and communications technology, agriculture and maritime skills. For inmates who have never earned formal basic qualifications, the system will also expand literacy and numeracy programming, and officials are currently reviewing a proposal from the University of the West Indies to establish a tertiary education pipeline that allows inmates to pursue higher education while incarcerated.

The reform strategy also prioritizes targeting high-risk groups, including young men involved in gang activity, drug trafficking and firearms-related offenses who remain vulnerable to outside criminal influence even while incarcerated. Additional measures to cut in-prison violence include the launch of peer mentorship programs and the adoption of a formal restorative justice framework that centers accountability and healing over punitive isolation.

A core end goal of the entire transformation is to ensure that offenders leave prison prepared to rejoin society as productive, contributing citizens. To support this, the plan establishes a national reintegration program that covers pre-release planning, stable housing placement, employment support and sustained connection with family members. An existing prison aftercare committee has been tasked with expanding its mandate far beyond its current role of providing basic clothing and small stipends to releasing inmates. The committee will now work directly with private sector businesses, non-governmental organizations and government bodies, drawing on national crime prevention budgets to develop sustained support programs for returning citizens.

Nicholls also highlighted efforts to expand job placement partnerships with the private sector, create new apprenticeship opportunities for ex-offenders, strengthen second-chance employment frameworks and challenge the cultural taboos that create unnecessary barriers to work for people with criminal records. Completing the core reform priorities are plans to upgrade outdated prison infrastructure, increase and train staffing levels, and integrate smart security technology into daily operations.

Speaking on the same panel alongside Nicholls, Dodds Prison Superintendent DeCarlo Payne reaffirmed the shared vision for reform, noting that the sector’s goal is no longer simply to contain people, but to prepare them for successful reintegration into community life. Payne outlined that several behavioral, educational and vocational training initiatives are already up and running at Dodds Prison, and these early programs have already begun to deliver positive results.

Payne added that the current Prisons Act is archaic and ill-suited to the new model of corrections, meaning comprehensive legislative reform is a critical prerequisite for rolling out all planned changes. New operational frameworks including ankle monitoring for low-risk offenders, expanded parole, community service sentences and transitional housing all require formal monitoring structures, leading to calls for the establishment of a dedicated parole department.

Payne emphasized that the full transition from a traditional prison service to a modern Department of Corrections will require targeted investment in infrastructure, formalized institutional restructuring and full implementation of new operational frameworks. While a corrections headquarters is already included in existing planning, Payne said officials will revisit the proposal to speed up its activation. Additional key priorities for the transition include policy reform, ongoing staff training, institutional cultural transformation, full technological integration, sustained investment in rehabilitation programming and focused, adaptive leadership across the sector.