Lafosse Aurélie MAP

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Child Labour

Child labour, a reality which doesn’t only concern developing countries. In 2001, the ILO counted 246 billion child workers in the world. Aged from five to seventeen years old, more than half of them work full time! The majority of children work in farming. Handiwork and industry are also key sectors: manipulation of ovens where molten glass flows in India, carpet manufacture in Nepal and Pakistan.

According to the ILO report (2001), in the group of children aged from five to seventeen years old, one to six is obliged to work. Still more worrying, one to eight is still subjected to the worst forms of labour, those which jeopardize their physical or mental health or morality.

There are children in fields, land mines, workshops or in kitchens. Farming is still the biggest user of children. This work is often organized in order for the children to have to work as long and hard as their parents. Every where, mortality, malnutrition and illiteracy are almost higher in the countryside than in towns. In big enterprises, laws concerning work age and duration are, in general, respected. This is not the case in small enterprises or small and non- declared workshops which abusively mistreat this very cheap workforce. Children are casting sheet iron, weaving carpets and making matches. The premises are often without air and light. Children which work as servants are, in general, leased or sold to richer families. In great majority, this concerns children girl who live with their employers. Many investigators think child bad treatment cases are frequent. They are surely, among all children at work, those who are the most abused and can the least stands up for themselves because they are living in absolute insulation. And then, there are all streets children: Some young people expulsed from their home, or orphaned, live wholly in the street. They survive by selling cigarettes or chewing-gum, they polish shoes, wash cars, sing on the side-walks or beg. Many of them fall into delinquency and prostitution.

Torn from their childhood, for economic and (or) political reasons, they bear the brunt of misery, a crisis, a war…Because they represent a manageable workforce, children are increasingly abused: from fields to the mines, nothing is spared them. For thirty years, the phenomenon has considerably evolved, and child labour represents less and less an apprenticeship. The economic crisis, poor countries indebtedness, structural adjustment and economic austerity programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have led to drastic cuts in social and education budgets.