Child labor wasn’t considered as a serious human rights issue until proper schooling became a universal norm. Historically speaking, child issues became prominent after the industrial revolution gave birth to important concepts like worker’s and children’s rights. Now that child labor has become prevalent in various parts of the world, the term has been widely used in factory, mining, agriculture, and other industries.
If you’ve always been worried about issues that concern child labor, this article can help you understand more about the issue. It explains several child labor laws and provides interesting statistics about the prevalence of violations against children’s rights.
Child Labor Facts and Figures
According to the International Labor Organization, over 218 million children aged five to 17 years are working in different countries. Surprisingly, this figure still excludes domestic labor. Developing countries are plagued by these troubling child issues. Child prostitution and under aged members of the military are greatly condemned by the law and the society. But 70% of child workers are now involved in agriculture, with 20-30% of them constituting Brazil, Mexico and Kenya’s workforce.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also discovered that 90% of children who are being forced into work are from Asia and Africa. After consulting several child labor laws, they concluded that three-quarters of these children work in dangerous conditions that involve heavy machinery, pesticides and hazardous chemicals. Girls were found to be more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation through debt bondage, slavery, trafficking and prostitution.
Severe working conditions don’t provide children with an environment conducive to physical and social development. Image courtesy of Flickr.
The Causes and Consequences of Child Labor
Children usually go to work to supplement their parents’ meager income. Others seek work to escape pressing child issues, such as poverty in their town or home village. The latter is particularly true in terms of human trafficking. Rigid social and cultural roles also force them into labor. Some parents think that young girls don’t need education, so they are usually sent to work until they marry someone and take over domestic chores.
Child labor poses staggering consequences. Severe working conditions don’t provide children with an environment conducive to physical and social development. Child labor laws are also based on the belief that education is the key to society’s development, so it condemns people who force children into labor. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was approved in 1989, has also recognized that every child should be protected from any form of economic exploitation.
Limited information is available for those who want to learn more about issues concerning child labor. But if you really want to know more about this pressing social issue, you can always check the research studies conducted by UNICEF, ILO and other organizations that denounce child labor.