By: Benjamin Okyere
Chapter 1: What is Child Labor
According to the International Labor Organization, Child Labor is any child under the age of 12-18 whatever the case may be who undertakes any form of work other than what the children themselves define as leasure. The new look on child labor is that the ILO has identified some forms of child labor which it has labelled "hazardous forms of child labor". This include work in the mines, street, manufacturing, child soldiers, girl prostitution, etc.
Child labor is a disease in the world especially in Less Developed Countries.
Children under the age of 18 are seen working in farms, mines, manufacturing
industries, textile industries, and on the streets selling all sorts of
things under very harzadous conditions. These children get all sort of
diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and other STDs, get burns, wounds, knocked down
by cars, and many die from various accidents.
Chapter 2: History of Child Labor
That the shameful practice of child labor should have played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset is not to be wondered at. The displaced working classes, from the seventeenth century on, took it for granted that a family would not be able to support itself if the children were not employedIn 1840 perhaps only twenty percent of the children of London had any schooling, a number which had risen by 1860, when perhaps half of the children between 5 and 15 were in some sort of school, if only a day school (of the sort in which Dickens's Pip finds himself in Great Expectations) or a Sunday school; the others were working. Many of the more fortunate found employment as apprentices to respectable trades (in the building trade workers put in 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter) or as general servants -- there were over 120,000 domestic servants in London alone at mid-century, who worked 80 hour weeks for one halfpence per hour -- but many more were not so lucky. Most prostitutes (and there were thousands in London alone) were between 15 and 22 years of age.
Many children worked 16 hour days under atrocious conditions, as their
elders did. Ineffective parliamentary acts to regulate
the work of workhouse children in factories and cotton mills to 12
hours per day had been passed as early as 1802 and 1819.
After radical agitation, notably in 1831, when "Short Time Committees"
organized largely by Evangelicals began to demand a
ten hour day, a royal commission established by the Whig government
recommended in 1833 that children aged 11-18 be
permitted to work a maximum of twelve hours per day; children 9-11
were allowed to work 8 hour days; and children under 9
were no longer permitted to work at all (children as young as 3 had
been put to work previously).
Chapter 3: New Law on Child Labor
At the International Labor Organization Summit in Nivada, in 1989 a
new convention was formulated which puts the age of child labor into two
different categories. It identified some forms of child labor which it
termed hazardous and which children are not allowed to do until they attain
the age of 18. These include work in the mines, streets, textiles, and
child soldiers. Other forms of work apart from the harzadous forms of child
labor, the age was reduced to 16. These include helping parents at the
markets, on the family farms, and other income generating activies other
than the hazardous forms identified.
Chapter 4: The Worst Forms of Child Labor
The new convention on child labor makes specific reference to :
(a)all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the
sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage
and serfdom and forced or compulsory
labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use
in armed conflict;
(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for
the production of pornography or for
pornographic performances;
(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities,
in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined
in the relevant international treaties;
(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried
out, is likely to harm the health, safety
or morals of children.
Chapter 5: Problems of Child Labor
Child labor can be injurious to the child in many ways. We can generally
distinguish between physical and psychosocial work hazards. Physical work
hazards are those which seriously endanger the normal child's health and
normal physical development or even place children's lives in immediate
peril. The most obvious ones are contact with or use of chemicals
or other hazardous substances or work processes which are intrinsically
dangerous because of the likelihood of accidents, injury or
disease. These could include lack of sanitation, poor lighting, loud
noise, or excessive working hours.
As children are still in the process of growing up,their normal development can be severely endangered by conditions that might not constitute such a peril to adults. Children suffer more from exposure to hazardous substances because of their weight and body size and insufficiently developed mechanisms for detoxication. Young workers also have a lower heat-tolerance and are more susceptible to noise-induced hearing loss. Due to their more limited working capacity, children are, in general, more prone than adults to occupational injuries due to inattention, fatigue, poor judgement and lesser knowledge.
Table 1(Annex 1) of this link provides an overview of some examples
of child labour in hazardous occupations and its
possible consequences.
Chapter 6: The Case of Girls
The Girl Child is descriminated against in many ways in many parts of
the world, including their right to education. The exploitation of the
girl child in labor is very profound as they tend to be obedient and do
not complain much. They are used in commercial sexual trades in many parts
of the world espacially in Thailand and other South East Asian Countries.
These girls are sold into perpetual sex slavery without any chance to step
out of it. They are exploited and paid at very low fees by their sex masters
who benefit from using these girls as their "assets". These girls contract
Sexually Transmitted Diseases such as AIDS, and are then dumped by their
masters to die without any care by these exploiting masters.
Chapter 7: Eliminating Child Labor
To eliminate child labor from the Less Developed world,a policy concerning
child labour should take the features of the various sectors of activity
into account, thus it is important to identity carefully the issues raised
by child labour in the various sectors. It would be rather unrealistic
to prohibit children under 14 years of age from participating in the agricultural
activities carried out by their familiesArticle 2 of Convention No. 138
establishes at least two minimum ages for admission to employment below
which "no-one under that age shall be admitted to employment or work in
any occupation". The (general) minimum age for admission to employment
shall not be less than the age of completion of compulsory schooling and,
in any case, shall not be less than 15 years, 14 years initially for countries
whose economy and educational facilities are insufficiently developed.
a national policy concerning child labour is meaningless unless it is coordinated
with all other aspects of children's policy and, more importantly, unless
it is coordinated with education and training policy. Education and training
objectives (length of compulsory primary schooling, the capacity of primary
and secondary school systems, the orientation of school systems, etc.)
must be taken into account when determining the policy to adopt regarding
child labour. On a practical level, the age for admission to employment
should correspond to the age of the end of compulsory schooling.
Chapter 8: What is The ILO Doing About The Worst Forms Of Child Labor
Several landmark initiatives during the past two years give reason
for hope that the elimination of child labour is a feasible
objective. Hundreds of thousands children throughout the world participated
in the Global march to ban child labour. In
1998, the adoption of the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles
and Rights at Work provided the Organization with a
powerful tool against child labour. And the unanimous adoption of the
Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, and its accompanying Recommendation
by the delegates at the International Labour Conference at its 87th Session,
was the culmination of years of experience leading to a commitment by nations,
irrespective of their economic situation, to deal immediately with the
problem of the worst forms of child labour.
This link provides an update on IPEC, including a brief overview of
the extent and magnitude of the problem, the partners
involved, programme of activities, expenditures and the core approach.
The section starts off with a short review of the
challenge that quantifying the problem still represents, in particular
for the most hazardous forms of child labour and IPEC's
response through its Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme
on Child Labour (SIMPOC). It continuous with an overview of the growing
commitment at national and international level to address the problem ?
exemplified inter alia in the fact that IPEC has evolved into a global
partnership of close to 90 countries and has been able to expand its activities
thanks to the continued confidence of donors in the approach of the
Programme ? and ends with a summary of the IPEC
approach and strategy.