A/HRC/18/30 children to work in this sector in order to support the family income. Very often children work with their parents. 33. With the growth in rural poverty and lack of investment in rural livelihoods, communities are drawn to work in this sector as they know that they can gain immediate benefits from selling gold as opposed to cultivating land.8 34. As in many other sectors where children work, employers find it easier to hire children as they are easily exploited and cheaper to employ. Children are also recruited to work in mines because of their small size and the fact that they are thought to be nimble. B. Education 35. Although international law requires that primary education is free and compulsory, very often parents still have to pay for school equipment such as uniforms, books and stationery. Such additional costs make it unaffordable for parents to send their children to school. Additionally, mechanisms are often not in place to enforce the compulsory primary education requirements. Due to lack of childcare facilities or schools in the area of the mines and quarries, parents, often mothers, end up taking their children to work. 36. In cases where schools are available, their insufficient number, the insufficient number of teachers, the poor educational infrastructure and the poor quality of education result in illiterate children and disgruntled parents who have made a financial sacrifice to put their children in school. Moreover, further compounding the situation, where schools are available, compulsory and free, children may not be able to attend, as they are still required to work in order to supplement the family income to meet basic needs, such as food and accommodation. C. Legal and institutional structures 37. The lack of or insufficient legal framework, policies and institutions to combat child slavery and to support and protect children from slavery is a significant cause of child slavery in the mining sector. This is often compounded by a weak institutional framework whereby there is a lack of clarity about the roles and responsibilities of Government bodies and often a lack of sufficient human and financial resources to implement, where they exist, Government programmes. D. Informality and illegality in the artisanal mining and quarrying sector 38. The informality in which the artisanal mining and quarrying is performed makes it difficult for the authorities to control this sector, which allows for the use of children. Many existing laws on mining were established to regulate large-scale mining operations. These laws are inappropriate for small-scale and artisanal mining and quarrying whose owners have very little understanding of health, labour and safety regulations by which they are to abide. The mines and quarries are often in remote ungoverned areas of the country and have unskilled and non-unionized workers with little knowledge of their rights: this situation, compounded by the poverty in these remote areas, facilitates child slavery in this sector. 8 Marcello Veiga and Randy Baker, Protocols for Environmental and Health Assessment of Mercury Released by Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Miners (Vienna, UNDP, 2004). 9