Empowering women and girl to end child labour

The term “child labour” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.

It refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school obliging them to leave school prematurely or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

The ILO designates whether employment for an under-17-year-old is child labour based on the terms set out in its minimum age convention. Child labour occurs when the person employed is below the age that compulsory schooling in the region ends or is below the age of 15. If a country is underdeveloped in schooling or economic activity, then it can apply to the ILO to have its minimum age reduced to 14. Any work that puts the person in danger must not be completed by a worker under the age of 18. However, a country can also apply to have the minimum age for this reduced to 16 if there are mitigating circumstances.

New estimates by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggest that millions of child labourers worldwide has dropped by a third between 2000 and 2012 from 245 million to 168 million. In the same period, the number of children doing hazardous work more than halved to just over 85 million.

Child labour fell at its fastest rate between 2008 and 2012. Five years ago, the ILO estimated that there were 215 million child labourers worldwide. While the drop is positive, the 168 million figure suggests that over one in ten children worldwide will still fall under the ILO's definition of a child labourer.

Asia and the Pacific still have the largest numbers (almost 78 million or 9.3% of child population), but Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region with the highest incidence of child labour (59 million, over 21%). There are 13 million (8.8%) of children in child labour, in Latin America and the Caribbean and in the Middle East and North Africa there are 9.2 million (8.4%).

Agriculture remains by far the most important sector where child labourers can be found (98 million, or 59%), but the problems are not negligible in services (54 million) and industry (12 million) – mostly in the informal economy.

Also, despite this being the biggest fall recorded so far, it still means that the ILO's targets of eliminating the worst forms of child labour by 2016 will not be met. They will not even be met by 2020 unless the number of children doing hazardous work starts to fall at a rate of 24% a year. As it stands, the average drop is 6.5%.

MORAL ASPECTS OF CHILD LABOUR

We have become increasingly aware of the social and environmental impact of child labour.

Children labour is a large problem across the world, it has been observed --- International Labour Organization states that 115 million are estimated Child labour -- 53 million to work in the worst forms of children labour, fewer than 15 million are in hazardous conditions for example sweat shops and 70% of children workers carry out unpaid work for their families.

Talking about the Child labour, we cannot ignore the child prostitution and child slavery and it should not be tackled in isolation. Children are also offered as prostitutes this can for the production of pornography or pornographic performances. They can be used for trafficking of drugs. All across the world, millions of children are forced to do extremely hazardous work in harmful conditions which will be putting their health, education, personal and social development at risk.

Children have to face difficult circumstances:

• Full-time work at a young age.
• Excessive working hours subjection to psychological, verbal, physical and sexual abuse.
• Physically punished.
• Limited or no pay.
• They have no chance to escape from the poverty cycle --- this is due to them having no access to education.

In many impoverished locales, child labour is all that stands between the family unit and all-pervasive, life-threatening, destitution.

Child labor declines markedly as income per capita grows. To deprive these bread-earners of the opportunity to lift themselves and their families incrementally above malnutrition, disease, and famine - is an apex of immoral hypocrisy.

CHILD LABOUR AS AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE

According to statistical data compiled by the International Labour Organization in 2008, an estimated 172 million children aged 5 to 14 partake in child labour globally. Out of the estimated 172 million, about 126 million children regularly engage in hazardous work that can potentially endanger their personal safety, mental & physical health, and development.

A consequence of the child labour issue is that it does not just limit itself to the service, automobile or agricultural industries. Regrettably, child labour extends itself to practices such as selling or trafficking children, the forced recruitment of child soldiers, using or offering children for prostitution, production of pornography, or early marriage.

Furthermore, children who enter into bonded or indentured labour contracts often deal with corporal punishments and threats of violence from their employers if they choose to leave the job.

SOCIAL ISSUE

Child Labor, work performed by children that either endangers their health or safety, interferes with or prevents their education, or keeps them from play and other activities important to their development.

Children work in different types of atmospheric pollution, including those discharged by vehicles, industrial units and smoke caused due to burning of waste goods were registered to be the main culprit. Children working at auto-workshop were reported with the highest number of asthma and other chest infections, according to the compilers of the report.

Cigarette smoking and increased exposure to passive smoking was also registered among these children. Child labor of this character has long been considered a social evil to be abolished.

HEALTH ISSUE

The ILO definition of the worst forms of child labour includes work that is likely to jeopardise health and safety. Effective targeting of those child work activities most damaging to health requires both conceptual understanding and empirical evidence of the interactions between child labour and health. The relationships between child labour and health are complex. They can be direct and indirect, static and dynamic, positive and negative, causal and spurious. The diversity of potential relationships makes their empirical disentanglement a difficult exercise.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUE

Current global epidemiological data consistently reports that up to 20% of children and adolescents suffer from a disabling mental illness that suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents and that up to 50% of all adult mental disorders have their onset in adolescence. It is argued that 

• poverty and economic loss diminish the capacity for supportive, consistent, and involved parenting and render parents more vulnerable to the debilitating effects of negative life events.
• a major mediator of the link between economic hardship and parenting behavior is psychological distress deriving from an excess of negative life events, undesirable chronic conditions, and the absence and disruption of marital bonds.

Finally, attention is given to the mechanisms by which parents' social networks reduce emotional strain, lessen the tendency toward punitive, coercive, and inconsistent parenting behavior, and, in turn, foster positive socioemotional development in economically deprived children.

Unemployment is the central problem being faced by every developing country in the 21st century.

children are engaged in hazardous work:

• Children working in agriculture may use dangerous tools, carry heavy loads, and apply harmful pesticides. The children face a number of dangers including exposure to chemical , hard labour, accidents and illness, such as poisoning, asthma, allergies, cuts and skin cancer.
• In factories, children are susceptible to industrial accidents. Children who produce glass bangles are exposed to high temperatures and toxic chemicals and suffer from severe joint pain and lung problems.
• There is limited evidence that children weave cloth using power looms. Children working with power looms suffer respiratory disease, work long hours, and face physical and sexual abuse.
• In the carpet weaving industry children also work long hours and are vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse.
• Some children are found working in hazardous conditions in the informal construction, transport, leather tanning, and surgical instrument industries. Although evidence is limited, children are reportedly involved in deep-sea fishing.
• While tanning leather, children are exposed to toxic chemicals and dyes and often contract respiratory diseases and sustain chemical burns. Such work also makes them susceptible to eye and lung diseases.
• Children in urban areas are often employed as domestic servants and may be subjected to extreme abuse. Some child domestic servants have even been killed by their employers.
• Children scavenge for medical waste to recycle, which exposes them to deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Child Labor in the Third World COUNTRIES

The problem of child labor has become an ever-increasing concern among many nations. Many of the worst child labor offenses take place in Third World countries. Throughout these nations, children are being forced to work long hours in terrible conditions for little or no money. To fully understand child labor, one needs to address the reasons for supporting and opposing child labor, its effect on underdeveloped countries’ economies and the child laborers, and what is being done to combat child labor.

DEFINITION OF CHILD LABOUR IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES

Child labor in Third World countries can be defined as mostly full-time work of children under the age of 14 in situations that are damaging to health, education, or moral development for pay or no pay. The most common type of child labor is bonded labor, in which workers agree to sell their labor in exchange for a lump sum payment, such as a medical bill. These debts are usually impossible to repay. Therefore, the debt is passed down from generation to generation. Bonded children may also be kidnapped, exported as prostitutes or "recruited" to work in factories and plantations. These children may perform a variety of tasks. They may work in brick kilns, assemble shoes, mix gunpowder for firecrackers, or work at carpet looms.

IS CHILD LABOUR ACCEPTALE OR UNACCEPTABLE       

Although many nations object to child labor, many Third World countries believe it is an acceptable and necessary way of life. Some Third World countries argue that child labor is inevitable for societies at an early stage of industrial development. While trying to achieve this development, poverty and underdevelopment cause child labor to be a necessary, if unfortunate, aspect of modernization in poor countries.

In the majority of Hindu societies, for instance, there is a natural division of labor (castes), and members of lower castes should start training for their lot in life at an early age. Little children can be efficient at many unskilled and semi-skilled tasks, and these children of the lower castes are actually meant to work rather than attend school. Another argument is that it is naïve for Western societies to apply their standards to other countries and cultures.

It is argued that Western societies need to respect the local cultures and customs of different nation. Finally, ending child labor is not a guarantee that the well-being of the child will be improved. Many of these children need to work to sustain life, and if they cannot work in the formal or legal sectors of the economy, they will find jobs in the informal sector. It may force children from productive jobs into prostitution and dangerous life on the street.

While many Third World nations feel child labor is necessary, many developed nations strongly oppose the practice. They believe that exploiting children is immoral and unethical. The majority of these nations have laws protecting their own children from the possibility of exploitation in the workforce. Opponents of child labor believe that childhood should be a period devoted to training and education, not work. Furthermore, they feel that children have the right to be children and to enjoy their youth.

Instead of enjoying their young years, these children are forced to work long days in cruel circumstances and receive little or no money. Child labor also generates poverty. Children work for much lower pay rates than adults, so employers prefer to hire children rather than adults. This phenomenon becomes a vicious, self-defeating circle: child labor increases unemployment among adults, but employment of children also forces adults to put their children to work.

These children work in terrible conditions to support their families financially. Opponents of child labor claim that it is a blatant violation of human rights and needs to be abolished in order to protect the children’s welfare and to generate a more productive economy.

Despite the controversy, child labor is becoming more popular and desirable among Third World countries as it is beneficial to these countries’ economies. The number of children participating in child labor is rapidly increasing, for access to the international market has caused export oriented countries to demand cheap labor.

Macro-economic policies have encouraged growth in export-oriented countries, which have, in turn, increased their supply of child laborers. Many Western companies drastically reduce their cost of production by sending their unfinished goods overseas to be assembled by cheap laborers. These laborers are usually children, and they are profitable and exploitable for employers. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) makes it illegal for any country to ban products simply because they were made by children. This enables employers to use desperate children to work for very cheap wages, which produces profit for them.

POLICIES TO COMBAT CHILD LABOUR IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Although child labor may be beneficial to Third World economies, it has many negative effects on the children providing that labor. Child laborers usually work in extremely harsh conditions for long periods of time and are paid little if anything at all. They are locked in rooms for several hours and sometimes chained as prisoners. Some of the children are kidnapped and later sold as slaves. Employers may beat the children, brand them with hot irons, hang them upside down from trees, withhold food, or force them to stand on their heads for ten to thirty minutes.

These children are confined to small cramped quarters every day. As a result, the odds of spreading and contracting diseases are quite high. Many laborers contract silicosis, tuberculosis, and a variety of other diseases from their co-workers. They are also more susceptible to injury and long-term emotional damage. Often, these children are severely injured or killed while at work.

Due to the horrific conditions that these children endure at work, many things have been done to combat child labor. Many Third World countries have ordered local authorities to raid factories that employ children and to prosecute the employers, which may mean levying fines against violating employers and/or two to five years in prison.

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has also devoted attention and resources to the fight against child labor. The Harkin-Brown bill bars the United States from importing products made or imported by children under the age of 15 and directs aid toward programs to eliminate child labor.

POLICIES FOR ELIMINITION OF CHILD LABOUR IN WORLD

Among the major international agents in the field, in particular the ILO, UNICEF, and the World Bank, a consensus has been reached to focus efforts to curb the worst forms of child labor. All three organizations assist governments in developing policies and strategies, and they also support implementation programs.

Encouraged by the positive results of the Second Global Report on Child Labour in 2006, the ILO set the deadline to eradicate the worst form of child labour by 2016. The ILO's Global Action Plan is based on three pillars:

• Supporting and mainstreaming national responses to child labour.
• Deepening and strengthening the worldwide movement against child labour.
• Further integrating child labour concerns in overall ILO strategies to promote decent work for all.

The Global Action Plan urged countries to design and put in place appropriate time-bound measures by 2008. Judging from the result of the third Global Report -- many if not most countries have failed to do so. What is more, in the broader context of progress on the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs), and in particular the pace regarding universal primary education, the signs are not too encouraging either.

GLOBAL ACTION

The International Program on the Elimination of child Labour (IPEC) was created in 1992 to enhance the ILOs response to its long-standing goal of the effective elimination of child labour.

Since then, IPEC has grown to become the biggest dedicated Child labour program in the world and the largest technical cooperation program within the ILO with over 60 million dollar expenditure in 2008.

Some other facts about IPEC:

• By 2009. IPEC was operational in 92 countries in all regions of the world.
• During the biennium 2008-09, IPEC activities benefited some 300,000 children directly and over 52 million indirectly.

In 2008, IPEC set out its vision for the next five years:

• Consolidate its position as the leading centre of knowledge and expertise on action against child labour.
• Maintain and further strengthen its research and data collection capacity, which form the basis for both targeted interventions and policy advice.
• Continue to be the central technical cooperation programme for action against child labour.
• Facilitate country-to-country technical cooperation within regions and across continents.
• Strengthen the worldwide movement against child labour and assume for the ILO a leadership role in the movement.
• Continue the integration of IPEC activities within ILO programming, most importantly within Decent Work Country Programmes.

CONCLUSION

Child labor is a severe and complex problem that cannot be solved easily. Although slavery is outlawed in almost every country, it is frequently practised and rarely punished.

Child labor in Third World countries can be defined as mostly full-time work of children under the age of 14 in situations that are damaging to health, education, or moral development- for pay or no pay. The most common type of child labor is bonded labor, in which workers agree to sell their labor in exchange for a lump sum payment, such as a medical bill. These debts are usually impossible to repay. Therefore, the debt is passed down from generation to generation. Bonded children may also be kidnapped, exported as prostitutes or camel riders, or "recruited" to work in factories and plantations. These children may perform a variety of tasks. They may work in brick kilns, assemble shoes, mix gunpowder for firecrackers, or work at carpet looms.

In the immediate future, international attention will be focused on the protection of children working in dangerous jobs and inhumane situations. The education of children from Third World countries will also help eliminate poverty from these developing nations, which, in turn, will someday eliminate child labor altogether.