21.7.11
The term ‘child labour’ is often used when talking of buying ethical clothing from commercial companies like Primark or Gap but what do we actually mean when we use this term?
“...States Parties recognize the right of the child 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.”
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Karmalize
It is clear that children work and often that is a good thing – to learn skills, gain responsibility, tackle poverty but when that labour is dangerous or interferes with a child’s education or development, this is defined as child labour and therefore unacceptable.
Child labour is not a modern global issue, neither is it an issue for countries in the global south. In the Victorian era, children in the UK worked in a range of dangerous jobs (as chimney sweeps, miners, farming hands amongst other things). The introduction of concepts like universal education and worker’s rights began to reduce the occurrence of child labour in England.
The latest figures on child labour according to the
International Labour Organisation are that 215 million children (aged between 5–17 years old) are in child labour across the world. The majority of those children are in Asia but in sub-Saharan Africa, one in four 5–17 year olds are in child labour – and what are these children doing? Well 60% of them work in the agriculture sector, 7% in industries like mining and 26% in services which include manufacturing of clothing.
So those are the facts – how can we turn that into a lesson for students especially in citizenship or PSHE classes?
Most students will be familiar with the concept of work – they may have a paper round, done tasks to earn pocket money or seen their parents or other adults go to work. However child labour is different. It is primarily an issue of poverty – about 68% of children in child labour work to benefit their families. They work to help put food on the table, they work to help their parents meet work targets, and they work to ensure that one of their siblings manages to get to school. The issue of child labour is therefore tied to the issue of poverty.
There are three big questions that we should consider when we talk about child labour:
- Is child labour a good or a bad phenomenon?
- Why does child labour continue to exist if there is an international law against it?
- Should we try and to reduce child labour? If yes, what should we do?