Child labour

Most of us would feel horrid being any part in condoning or supporting the exploitation of children - when in reality you may have just done that on your last shopping trip.

                                                     Child Labour: A Day in The Life

Child labour is defined as "any work that has adverse effects on safety, physical or mental health and moral development, or excessive hours of work in any occupation, including one that is otherwise safe. Hazardous work includes all work (except domestic work) of forty-three hours or more in one week and all mining and quarrying" (Well, pg. 100)

Top ten countries with the worst child labour problems

1. Myanmar
2. North Korea
3. Somalia
4. Sudan
5. Democratic Republic of Congo
6. Zimbabwe 
7. Afghanistan
8. Burundi
9. Pakistan
10. Ethiopia

Child labour is rampant in many developing countries. Western companies are caught in the mix of consuming products through the exploitation of these child labourers in developing countries just to save production costs.

Who decides if if children work? These children do not have the choice. They are forced to work. It is often taken into account cultural, social and affective reasons for making decisions whether children should work or go to school. In many instances families do not have the ability to send their children to school and must have their children work to make money for the household. Child labour is essentially driven by poverty.

World map of poverty. The countries that suffer the
highest percentage of poverty are essentially the
places that are exposed to child labour.

"Children in the United States are employed in agriculture, a high proportion of them from immigrant or ethnic-minority families." - UNICEF

Facts as of 2013 according to International Labour Organization:

• Asia and the Pacific still has the largest numbers
• 1/5 children of the ages 5-14 are working
• Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region with the highest incidences of child labour 
• 1/4 children aged 5-14 
• Latin American and the Caribbean consist of 13 million children in child labour
• numbers has decreased dramatically in recent years and now is at 1/20 
• Middle East and North Africa consist of 9.2 million children in child labour

These children are being forced to work in the most horrendous working hazards, to the extremity of being strapped to a chair until their work is completed. The children are being kept in small dark rooms with no fresh air for hours on end filled with people so the oxygen is often limited - this is absolutely absurd. When will the madness end? Why are we not implementing a service or bill where we completely eliminate this process. It is thanks to organizations such as UNICEF, ILO, World Bank project on Understanding Children's Work they have produced databases on children's labour from household surveys and rapid assessment that have been analyzed in policy documents, country reports and, increasingly, in academic literature. It is due to these organizations that now, in 2014 we have an an EXTREME decrease in child labour throughout the world. 

Gender amongst child labour:

Vulnerability to child labour is associated with age and gender.  Girls and boys face highly gendered jobs, specific jobs are only associated to girls just as boys are strictly given jobs to do as well.

• Girls' work is more likely to be centred as 'domestic work' which is on the home and includes the care of siblings or other younger children, housework and the preparation of food
• Boys' work on labour intensive, unskilled tasks frees up the labour of adults for more skilled work, for production and for social reproduction
• working in the rural economy either on family farms, in family work-teams r less independent wage-earners
• boys working in agriculture account for nearly three quarter of all boys labour
• Boys are more likely to be growing cereals whilst girls are more likely to be growing vegetables and rearing poultry
• Within market work, both girls and boys tend to work there where boys are more likely to be growing cereals whilst girls are more likely to be growing vegetables and rearing poultry

 Child labour are a substantial part of the active labour force. Since hold labour competes with school attendance and profiency, children sent to work do not accumulate human capital, missing the opportunity to enhance their productivity and further earning capacity. This lowers the wage of their future families, and increases the probability o their offspring being sent to work. In this way poverty and child labour is passed onf rom generatin to generation.  Child work is heterogeneous. Children's wages depress adult wages are insufficient to cover substances consumption needs. Children's work could be done by adults but is paid much lower wages, employers prefer to hire children rather than adults due to the wage difference. Child labour thus increases adult unemployment which in turn forces adults to put heir children to work generating a vicious circle.

This short cap of the documentary expresses the awful working conditions and how we are often blinded and do not look further into where our products are being produced and shipped from. This documentary tries to explain a main point of "How are you going to break a cycle of poverty and have real economic development when you have a whole lost generation of children that are not educated" this statement really spoke to me about the vicious cycle that these children are being born into. They do not have the ability to get an education since they must work, but they are working for horrible wages therefore needing to work extreme hours and for there entire life from child-adulthood. To create real economic development we must educate these people in the developing countries and break these countries cycles and help promote equality and help build their nation as a whole to better these people:

Becoming aware is the first step to helping end this crisis. It is just as easy as educating yourselves on where your product is coming. Unions and grassroots groups are increasingly recognizing direct connections between worker rights and the fight against child labour. Recognizing child labour as a violation of children's and workers' rights, trade unions are joining with families and community organizations to combat child labour, to move children out of work and into school and to support core labour standards, historically and in today's global economy. Find out if your government has ratified the ILO conventions on child labour, talk to businesses involved in the production of goods and ask them what measures they take to ensure that the goods they produce are child labour free. Recruit others into the campaign. Sensitize others. No individual, nor organization can be demised as being too small to bring about change. It is only through joining forces of goodwill on all levels of society that we can hoe to put an end to child labour.

UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund

Every year on June 12th, the World Day Against Child Labour is observed to raise awareness of the plight of child labourers world-wide. Hundreds of millions of girls and boys around the world are affected.