By Xinhua Writer Natalia Costa

    BRASILIA, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Overworked, starved and humiliated, the 30-year-old Brazilian woman cannot forget what it was like as a child laborer. After all these years, the haunting memory is still biting when she recalls her childhood.

    Etelca Vieira dos Santos started working when she was only 6. After her family moved into a small town, she was "given" to a family and worked for them in exchange for food and shelter.

    "I was exploited," she said. "The environment was so harsh that I ran away from that house when I was 8. I was looking for my mother and found her but she gave me to another family in Campo Grande as soon as she could."

    Etelca had lived for seven years with the family in Campo Grande, the capital city of Mato Grosso do Sul state. She used to work from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. in return for nothing but food and a place to sleep.

    "I was always starving and humiliated. I did not know anyone in the city. I was badly treated from the moment I got up until bedtime," she said.

    Child labor exploitation was one of the major social issues facing Brazil. According to the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 12.7 percent of children aged between 5 and 17 were child laborers in 2001 with 41.2 percent of them unpaid.

    Fortunately, Etelca managed to study when she was young. Yet she was forced to grow mature without truly living her childhood and adolescence." The worst thing was the humiliation and lack of freedom to come and go and express ideas," Etelca said.

    When Etelca turned 15, the family she worked for treated her nicely. Etelca was paid and taken care of. The family even paid for her to study tourism and gastronomy at college.

    The story of Etelca has a happy ending. The efforts of the Brazilian government to eliminate child labor have also produced positive results. Survey showed the proportion of child laborers aged between 5 and 17 is dropping while that of children attending school in the same age group is increasing in recent years.

    The government's efforts have drawn praise from the International Labor Organization (ILO). Michele Jankanish, director of the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC), said Brazil had managed to generate new skills and increase efforts to deal with the problem.

    In October 2009, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and East Timor signed an agreement to work together to eradicate child labor and strengthen social protection by 2020, with the support of ILO.

    Etelca now is working in a restaurant. She planned to go to SaoPaulo to work with well-known chefs and come back to Campo Grande to set up her own business.

    "Dreaming is free, isn't it?" she said.

    Although lack of a normal childhood has caused psychological problems that still disturb Etelca, she still has dreams about the future. In Etelca's eyes, the key to root out child labor is "investment in education and respect to child rights".

Special report: Global News Day for Children