From engagement in military activities to dangerous work in cocoa plantations, child labor is the malicious practice of forcing boys and girls under the age of 18 to work against their will and often in hazardous conditions that impact their physical health and mental wellbeing.
While not all work done by children and teenagers below the minimal age should be classified as child labor because of their education situation, nevertheless activities that deprive children of their youth should be abolished. Global estimates show that approximately 160 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are employed in jobs that rob them of their youth, impede their education, or damage their normal intellectual, physiological, or social growth. Almost 50% of these children (about 80 million) are working in environments that can impact their health.
What is child labor?
Child labor is the illegal practice of exploiting boys and girls who, due to having to do hard work, cannot benefit from normal physical, mental, and/or social well-being. Children are extremely prone to accidents during this sensitive period of their development (from childhood to adolescence).
For the most part, child labor occurs in some of the world’s poorest nations. It is also typical in locations where there is instability or military conflicts.
Why does child labor occur?
The main reason is poverty, followed by a lack of schools. Data presented by the International Labor Organization (ILO) shows that 70% of children are employed in agriculture, while the rest put in long hours in factories, in domestic service, or as forced laborers like child soldiers.
However, not every job performed by children should be considered child labor and marked as hazardous. Teenagers who have reached the legal working age can participate in activities that do not harm their health, self-growth or impede their education, such as working at a grocery store or with non-profit organizations.
When was child labor made illegal?
There’s no specific moment in time when every nation decided to universally make child labor illegal.
However, some of the first signs began to appear in UK at the beginning of the 19th century when a law was introduced in 1802 that intended to regulate the apprenticeship of impoverished children to cotton-mill proprietors, although this was not adequately enforced.
Three decades later, the Factory Act of 1833 in Great Britain established a factory inspection system that provided a better form of regulation.
In the international arena, it all started with The International Labour Conference in Berlin in 1890, when 15 European nations convened to examine labor standards, including the control of child labor.
A decade later, in 1900, the International Association for Labour Legislation was established in Basel, Switzerland, with the goal of improving measures to prevent child labor in other international labor laws.
Since its founding in 1919, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has played a significant role in establishing global standards and to end dangerous child labor, it implemented the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) in 1992.
In 2002, the ILO decided to set June 12 as the World Day Against Child Labor with the goal of raising awareness regarding child labor and fostering a global movement against it.
The worst types of child labor
Around 22,000 children lose their lives at work each year, according to ILO. The organization lists the following as the worst forms of child labor:
- Slavery or other comparable crimes
- Child trafficking
- Being recruited for forced military service
- Engagement in the adult industry and prostitution
- Manufacturing, trafficking, and use of illegal substances
Which country has the highest number of child labor?
The lack of and the differences in data collecting and reporting make it challenging to pinpoint which country has the highest number of child laborers. The most accurate data currently available was included in the 2020 ILO report, which stated that sub-Saharan Africa was the region with the highest number of children engaged in child labor.
The graph below shows the share and number of children between 5 and 17 years of age in child labor and dangerous work.
Source: “Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward” ILO, UNICEF 2020
Since 2008, there has been consistent progress on child labor in Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, but the same can not be said for countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Source: “Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward” ILO, UNICEF 2020
Brief facts about child labor
- The 2021 data shows that 160 million children aged 5 to 17 formed part of the child labor force with 79 million working in dangerous conditions.
- Out of all child laborers, almost 40% (or 63 million) are girls and 60% (or 97 million) are boys. Considering there are around 2.4 billion children in the world, that means 1 in 15 children is engaged in child labor.
- 112 million are employed in agriculture.
- Nearly 80 million work in dangerous environments that can impact their physical and mental health.
- As of 2020, 86.6 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 were estimated to be engaged in different forms of child labor in sub-Saharan Africa.
- 72 million boys and girls are exposed to child labor in sub-Saharan Africa.
- The labor participation rates of boys and girls child are equal throughout all regions but there are frequently seen differences between the sexes in the kinds of work done, with girls seen to be more engaged in unpaid domestic work.
How can child labor be brought to an end?
In its paper entitled “Ending Child Labour Through a Multisectoral Approach”, UNICEF listed a number of actions that could put an end to child labor. These include:
🔹 First focus on the worst types of child labor and the most vulnerable girls and boys
The elimination of child labor, especially its worst types, can be achieved by helping children to escape dangerous environments as soon as possible and implementing initiatives for their mental healthcare and reintegration. This calls for the involvement of strong child protection personnel who can provide adequate services to parents and children.
🔹 Ensure education is accessible to everyone
To increase the likelihood that children not only enroll and stay in school but also thrive, it is necessary to ensure access to early childhood education services, affordable childcare, and pre-primary education for everyone.
🔹 Invest in social protection
Ensuring a strong system of social protection is vital to combat poverty which is a major contributor to child labor. Integrated services, such as those in the child protection and schooling sectors, should be used in conjunction with cash transfers. It is important to introduce or expand child benefits/cash transfers with the goal of eliminating child poverty, increasing school attendance, and improving access to healthcare. It is also crucial to observe the effects of these investments.
🔹 Register every new birth
The key to ensuring children’s access to various social services and shielding them from being exploited and abused is birth registration. To track and register children, countries should consider employing laws that are free and ubiquitous. They should also invest in secure and cutting-edge technology to make birth registration easier and deliver efficient, accurate, and permanent records.
🔹 Improve child protection mechanisms
This includes investing in training social workers to provide optimum services for child protection prevention and response. Child protection services should identify cases of all forms of child labor and take appropriate action.
🔹 Avoid child labor by using responsible business methods
Governments must keep enforcing laws that seek justice for human rights violations in business activities and supply chains for all companies, no matter what their size. This mainly refers to high and middle-income nations that are home to numerous international companies.
If companies provide proper wages and decent working conditions, offer paid maternity and parental leave, and access to high-quality, low-cost childcare, they can help to deal with the root causes of child labor by fostering child development and parental support at the same time.
🔹 Bring child laborers to light
Each country must engage in gathering new and improved data on child labor and make sure every child is helped, including children from migrating families, those who live on the streets, and those hidden in the worst kinds of child labor (sexual exploitation, for instance).
For the elimination of child labor, the worst types of child labor should be more consistently captured in official statistics. To evaluate the success of policies and programs concerning child labor and the factors that affect the outcomes of such initiatives, mixed methods (MM) impact assessments are essential.
According to information shared on the World Economic Forum, four more ways to end child labor can be added:
1️⃣ People should learn more about the issue and share information with others
It is important to take the time to educate ourselves so that we can fully understand the effects of child labor. As an illustration, approximately 65% of the world’s supply of cocoa (used to make chocolate) comes from West Africa, where 2 million children work in hazardous conditions.
After this information came to light, chocolate manufacturers started using Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems to tackle child labor. Being aware of this situation will enable people to choose to purchase chocolate from businesses that do not use child labor.
2️⃣ Support reporters who expose child labor
A common way that journalism can advocate for societal change to stop child labor is through editorials. We can help them by reading and sharing. Search engines and social networks can determine what topics are popular by evaluating the views and the amount of time people spend on each page.
3️⃣ Make morally sound investments
Investors who stop funding child laborers not only make it obvious that they oppose those who violate human rights, but they also erode the economic drivers for child labor. Entrepreneurs can examine a company’s employee safety history, average wage, and employee age. Additionally, investors can use public datasets to confirm that the businesses they are investing in adhere to their own ethical code.
4️⃣ Promote the use of labels to certify goods
The universal labelling project that confirms items are free from child labor can be supported by civil society groups. Customers would be able to recognize and buy ethical items with the help of such a label, supporting businesses that do not exploit children. Currently, a number of non-governmental groups run their own certification programs. One of these is the GoodWeave certification mark which was started by Kailash Satyarthi and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Final word
Child labor is not only a historical issue, it is also a current one. It continues to rob children of the joy of their early years, restricts their access to education, reduces their life expectancy, keeps them in poverty, and is dangerous for their well-being.. There are several actions that a number of international organizations recommend and promote to help to tackle child labor, including improving child protection mechanisms, using responsible business methods, and helping reporters who attempt to expose those who make use of child labor. If all the proposed actions were followed, this would offer a great opportunity to make the world a better place for children and teenagers.
