Child Labour

International conventions define children as aged 18 and under.

Individual governments may define "child" according to different ages or other criteria.

"Child" and "childhood" are also defined differently by different cultures. A "child" is not necessarily delineated by a fixed age. Social scientists point out that children’s abilities and maturities vary so much that defining a child’s maturity by calendar age can be misleading. For a discussion, see Jo Boyden, Birgitta Ling, William Myers, "What Works for Working Children" (Stockholm: Radda Barnen and Unicef, 1998), pp 9-26.

In 2000, the ILO estimates, "246 million child workers aged 5 and 17 were involved in child labor, of which 171 million were involved in work that by its nature is hazardous to their safety, physical or mental health, and moral development. Moreover, some 8.4 million children were engaged in so-called 'unconditional' worst forms of child labor, which include forced and bonded labor, the use of children in armed conflict, trafficking in children and commercial sexual exploitation. www.ilo.org/public/english/ standards/ipec/simpoc/others/globalest.pdf

Unicef’s State of the World’s Children Report says only that although the exact number is not known, it is surely in the hundreds of millions.

More information about who child laborers are, where they live, and new statistics on the total number can be found on www.ilo.org; also, the US Dept. of Labor’s By The Sweat and Toil of Children, Vol. VI: An Economic Consideration of Child Labor.

For more information about individual child laborers, see stories produced by Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change.

61% in Asia, 32% in Africa, and 7% in Latin America, 1% in US, Canada, Europe and other wealthy nations In Asia, 22% of the workforce is children. In Latin America, 17% of the workforce is children. The proportion of child laborers varies a lot among countries and even regions inside those countries. See Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable, Geneva, 1998, p. 7; and other ILO publications.

"In Africa, one child in three is at work, and in Latin America, one child in five works. In both these continents, only a tiny proportion of child workers are involved in the formal sector and the vast majority of work is for their families, in homes, in the fields or on the streets." -- Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report

Work ranges from taking care of animals and planting and harvesting food, to many kinds of small manufacturing (e.g. of bricks and cement), auto repair, and making of footwear and textiles. (See a list in US Dept. of Labor, By the Sweat & Toil of Children, Vo. V: Efforts to Eliminate Child Labor, Appendix C. http://www.dol.gov

A large proportion of children whom the ILO classifies as child laborers work in agriculture.

See Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable (1998) "Every Child Counts" (2002) and other ILO publications (http://www.ilo.org).

More boys than girls work outside their homes. But more girls work in some jobs: for instance, as domestic maids. Being a maid in someone’s house can be risky. Maids typically are cut off from friends and family, and can easily be physically or sexually abused by their employers.

Note: Less than 5% of child laborers make products for export to other countries. Sources for this statistic include Unicef’s State of the World’s Children Report 1997.

Many children in hazardous and dangerous jobs are in danger of injury, even death.

Beyond compassion, consider who today’s children will become in the future. Between today and the year 2020, the vast majority of new workers, citizens and new consumers — whose skills and needs will build the world’s economy and society — will come from developing countries. Over that 20-year period, some 730 million people will join the world’s workforce — more than all the people employed in today's most developed nations in 2000. More than 90 percent of these new workers will be from developing nations, according to research by Population Action International. How many will have had to work at an early age, destroying their health or hampering their education?

Learn about the issue. Support organizations that are raising awareness, and providing direct help to individual children.

Unicef lists four "myths":

1. It is a myth that child labor is only a problem in developing countries. "But in fact, children routinely work in all industrialized countries, and hazardous forms of child labour can be found in many countries. In the US, for example, children are employed in agriculture, a high proportion of them from immigrant or ethnic-minority families. A 1990 survey of Mexican-American children working in the farms of New York state showed that almost half had worked in fields still wet with pesticides and over a third had themselves been sprayed."
2. It is a myth that child labor will only disappear when poverty disappears. Hazardous labor can, and should be eliminated by even the poorest countries.
3. It is a myth that most child laborers work in sweatshops making goods for export. "Soccer balls made by children in Pakistan for use by children in industrialized countries may provide a compelling symbol, but in fact, only a very small proportion of all child workers are employed in export industries - probably less than 5 per cent. Most of the world’s child labourers actually are to be found in the informal sector - selling on the street, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses – far from the reach of official labour inspectors and from media scrutiny."
4. It is a myth that "the only way to make headway against child labour is for consumers and governments to apply pressure through sanctions and boycotts. While international commitment and pressure are important, boycotts and other sweeping measures can only affect export sectors, which are relatively small exploiters of child labour. Such measures are also blunt instruments with long-term consequences that can actually harm rather than help the children involved."

Poverty is widely considered the top reason why children work at inappropriate jobs for their ages. But there are other reasons as well -- not necessarily in this order:

1. family expectations and traditions
2. abuse of the child
3. lack of good schools and day care
4. lack of other services, such as health care
5. public opinion that downplays the risk of early work for children
6. uncaring attitudes of employers
7. limited choices for women

"The parents of child labourers are often unemployed or underemployed, desperate for secure employment and income. Yet it is their children - more powerless and paid less - who are offered the jobs. In other words, says UNICEF, children are employed because they are easier to exploit," according to the "Roots of Child Labor" in Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report.

The report also says that international economic trends also have increased child labor in poor countries. "During the 1980s, in many developing countries, government indebtedness, unwise internal economic policies and recession resulted in economic crisis. Structural adjustment programmes in many countries accentuated cuts in social spending that have hit the poor disproportionately. " Although structural adjustment programs are being revised to spare education from deep cuts, the report says, some countries make such cuts anyway because of their own, local priorities. In many countries public education has deteriorated so much, the report declared, that education itself has become part of the problem — because children work to avoid going to school. This conclusion is supported by the work of many social scientists, according to Jo Boyden, Birgitta Ling, and William Myers, who conducted a literature search for their 1998 book, What Works for Working Children (Stockholm: Radda Barnen, Unicef, 1998).

Children do some types of low-status work, the report adds, because children come from minority groups or populations that have long suffered discrimination. " In northern Europe, for example, child labourers are likely to be African or Turkish; in Argentina, many are Bolivian or Paraguayan; in Thailand, many are from Myanmar. An increasingly consumer-oriented culture, spurring the desire and expectation for consumer goods, can also lead children into work and away from school."

Other sources: Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable, published by ILO, Geneva, 1998. ILO information available using: www.ilo.org.

Not necessarily in this order:

1. Increased family incomes
2. Education — that helps children learn skills that will help them earn a living
3. Social services — that help children and families survive crises, such as disease, or loss of home and shelter
4. Family control of fertility — so that families are not burdened by children

The ILO’s International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) has explored many programs to help child laborers. See IPEC documents on the www.ilo.org site.

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child calls for children to participate in important decisions that will affect their lives.

Some educators and social scientists believe that one of the most important ways to help child workers is to ask their opinions, and involve them in constructing "solutions" to their own problems. Strong advocates of this approach are Boyden, Myers and Ling; Concerned for Working Children in Karnataka, India; many children’s "unions" and "movements," and the Save the Children family of non-governmental organizations.

Source: Photography for social change

Other Sources
http://www.ilo.org
http://www.childlabor.org
http://www.unicef.org
http://www.ngosindia.com/resources/child_labour.php