by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

When Sylvain Dessy, 44, offers an academic perspective on the plight of children at work in the developing world, he does so with a certain expertise. While growing up in rural Cameroon, he was such a child labourer himself.

"I worked in cocoa farms sucking coca beans," he says. "They had this nice sweet substance around it, and the most useful way to remove it was for children to eat it, so we were paid in kind. It was lunch for me from about age six to 11."

Dessy has been out of Africa since 1991, but the Université de Laval academic hasn't stopped trying to decipher the forces that see young people in the developing world - and even in some relatively wealthy countries - put to work in often dangerous, crippling and illegal jobs ranging from prostitution to drug dealing.

His conclusion has raised a few eyebrows. Even in its most inhumane form, child labour, he argues, is not the problem. "It's only a symptom of a problem," he says. "The problem is social exclusion and poverty. In many countries with ethnic conflicts, groups find themselves socially excluded, thereby condemned to abject poverty, which leaves some with early labour as the only way to survive. The root cause of child labour is poverty. It's poverty that needs to be addressed, not child labour itself."

As in Canada, international organizations don't frown on all kids with jobs. "Some participation is supposed to build character, promote law-abiding behaviour and discipline," he says. "It doesn't involve exploitation. But the other form that isn't tolerated includes child prostitution and drug trafficking and working as child soldiers. Those need to be discouraged or eliminated."

Economic pressures often force desperate parents to send their children into such dangerous activity. "The parents could choose between having their child babysit or deal drugs. Sometimes they weigh the risk and think it's best for the child to be involved in drug dealing because it pays more. When it's survival at stake, parental responsibility becomes a lesser goal. They are no longer operating under the same logic as a family that has basic needs provided by economic activity."

Poor countries aren't the only home of such exploitation. Countries where a small minority hold much of the wealth - he points to Malaysia, Taiwan and much of South America - are not poor but still report a relatively high percentage of child labour.

"The wealth is unequally distributed, so the social fabric is dysfunctioning," says Dessy. "If the rich could redistribute a little fraction of their income to create good public schools or health care, this could actually create a safety net that could protect families from falling into poverty. The lack of such a safety net explains the higher incidence of child labour in these places."

Oxfam Canada media rep Mark Fried agrees with Dessy that poverty is the main problem but says "child labour is still outlawed according to international law." Fried feels that Canadian retailers should vigorously monitor their production. "They should take responsibility for the products they sell," says Fried. "They purchase from subcontractors that should submit to independent verification. There's probably less of that happening than many people believe."