Millions of children work to help their families in ways that are neither harmful nor exploitative. But millions more are put to work in ways that drain childhood of all joy and crush the right to normal physical and mental development.
This is the kind of work that the Convention on the Rights of the Child seeks to end. Article 32 sets out the right "to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development."
By and large, it is the children of marginalized communities, their futures already threatened by inadequate diet and health care, who are at greatest risk from exploitation at work. In India, the majority of children in servitude are children from low castes or tribal minorities. In Latin America, the highest incidence of child labor is found among the indigenous people.
Often such children are as young as six or seven years old. Often their hours of labor are 12 to 16 hours a day. Often their place of work is the sweatshop, the mine, the refuse heap or the street. Often the work itself is dull, day-long, repetitive, low-paid or unpaid. Sometimes the child works under the threat of violence and intimidation or is subject to sexual exploitation.
In the 1990s, child labor has found a new niche in the rapidly expanding export industries of some developing countries. In one small carpet factory in Asia, children as young as five were found to work from 6 in the morning until 7 at night for less than 20 cents a day. In another, they sat alongside adults for 12 to 14 hours in damp trenches, dug to accommodate the carpet looms on which they wove. In a garment factory, nine-year-olds worked around the clock sewing shirts for three days at a stretch, permitted only two one-hour breaks, during which they were forced to sleep next to their machines. Extracting such high human cost, child labor is nevertheless cheap. A shirt that sells in the United States for $60 can cost less than 10 cents in labor.
Such labor takes an enormous toll on children, in stunted intellectual and physical development, in chronic lung diseases, in ruined eyesight and bone deformations and sometimes in death.
Those who survive pay a high price in lost development, often passing that price on to their own children, forging the shackles of poverty, ignorance and servitude across the generations.
A recent report issued by UNICEF on the agency's fiftieth anniversary reveals that child labor is on the rise throughout the world. UNICEF estimates that there are 250 million child workers (ages 5 to 14) in the Third World. Almost half of all child workers are found in Asia. One in three children in Africa works as do one in five in Latin America. However, child labor is not limited to developing countries. The report also notes that child labor occurs in such developed countries as the United States and Great Britain. Child workers are found in many industries including agriculture, textile, heavy industry, and domestic work.
The increase in child labor is due to increasing poverty and the growing rift between rich and poor. This phenomenon is exacerbated by decreased government funding of education and social programs. According to the UNICEF report, "[f]or poor families, the small contribution of a child's income or assistance at home that allows the parent to work can make the difference between hunger and bare sufficiency."
In India, between 5 percent and 30 percent of the 340 million children under the age of 16 are estimated to fall under the definition of child labor. In Africa, over 20 percent of children are thought to be economically active. In Latin America, the proportion is estimated between 10 percent and 25 percent.
Child labor can be ended and the right of the child to be protected from exploitation can be enforced by new laws, by enforcing existing laws, by media pressure and by enrolling more children in school.
Following media exposure, for example, consumer boycotts of Asian carpets in European countries have begun to bite. A child-labor-free trademark should soon be appearing on the carpets produced by Indian manufacturers that meet the requirements of the Rugmark Foundation - an organization whose members include non-governmental organizations (NGOs), representatives of the German Export Promotion Council, UNICEF and owners of Indian carpet companies. Participating industries have agreed to allow monitoring of their factories at regular intervals and spot checks by NGOs.
Ultimately, it is the meeting of another basic right-the right to education -that can do most to protect the child from economic exploitation. Children cannot be abused in fields or factories if they are sitting in classrooms. And it is, above all, increasing school enrollment and retention that will withdraw millions of children from the workforces of the world.
Unfortunately, the children most likely to be exploited are those who are hardest to reach with conventional schooling.
Source: The Progress of Nations 1995, Copyright 1995 by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Published by UNICEF.
