411: Child Labour
Author: UNICEF
At least 250 million children under the age of 15 are working worldwide and nearly 60 million of them work in hazardous conditions.
An estimated 250 million children are engaged in child labour. Of those, almost three-quarters (171 million) work in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations.
Millions of girls work as domestic servants and unpaid household help and are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Millions of others work under horrific circumstances. They may be trafficked (1.2 million), forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery (5.7 million), into prostitution and pornography (1.8 million), into participating in armed conflict (0.3 million) or other illicit activities (0.6 million). However, the vast majority of child labourers ? 70 per cent or more ? work in agriculture.
Regional estimates indicate that:
- The Asian and Pacific regions harbour the largest number of child workers in the five to 14 age group, 127.3 million in total. (19 per cent of children work in the region.)
- Sub-Saharan Africa has an estimated 48 million child workers. Almost one child in three (29 per cent) below the age of 15 works.
- Latin America and the Caribbean have approximately 17.4 million child workers. (16 per cent of children work in the region).
- Fifteen per cent of children work in the Middle East and North Africa.
- Approximately 2.5 million children are working in industrialized and transition economies.
Child Work Versus Child Labor:
Child Work: Children?s participation in economic activity ? that does not negatively affect their health and development or interfere with education, can be positive. Work that does not interfere with education (light work) is permitted from the age of 12 years under the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 138.
Child Labor: This is more narrowly defined and refers to children working in contravention of the above standards. This means all children below 12 years of age working in any economic activities, those ages 12 to 14 years engaged in harmful work, and all children engaged in the worst forms of child labor. The most extreme and atrocious forms of child labor involve children being enslaved, forcibly recruited, prostituted, trafficked, forced into illegal activities and exposed to hazardous work.
