Child Labor Fact

Child labor has been a problem for several years, in some countries the problem has become a major topic in the child rights issues. Many companies use child labor to work 8 to 10 hours per day. Here are 10 interesting child labour facts, and maybe you have not thought about before.

1. In developing countries, approximately 16% of the population of children aged 5-14 to be working.

10-14 years Child Labour

2. According to a 2004 report by the ‘International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour’ and the ILO (IPEC), trafficking of girls from Nepal to India occurs for the purpose of sex trafficking. They work a sex worker, and sometimes they do not get paid.

3. According to an ILO report of 2003 that will cost $ 760 billion over a period of 20 years, to eliminate child labor completely, all that money, if invested for both health and educational needs of children, will provide long-term benefits in the future (around $ 4 trillion).

4. 126 million children around the world, experiencing child abuse, beatings involving employers’, had to endure sexual violence and, most importantly, humiliation and other forms of harassment.

10 years Child Labour

5. Of the total number of child laborers in the world, 73 million are under the age of 10 years. About 22,000 children losing their lives every year because accidents in the workplace.

6. Regions of sub-Saharan Africa accounted for the highest proportion (26%) working children in the world. Working population in this region has an estimated 49 million.

7. One of six children ages 5 to 14 years as a worker in developing countries.

8. 126 million children working in hazardous conditions throughout the world, often endure beatings, humiliation and sexual abuse by their employers.

9. An estimated 1.2 million children – both boys and girls – are trafficked each year to serve as workers in agriculture, mining, manufacturing and commercial sex workers.

Child Labour = Child Abuse

10. 30% of children in less developed countries child labor. Some things above are the facts about child labour. We must seek to eliminate child labor

Child Labor Statistics

Child Labor Statistics by Gender and Sector [Chart]

Annotation

The chart shows the employment sectors for male and female child laborers from age cohorts 5-14 and 15-17. The information is drawn from national child labor surveys in sixteen sample countries. It is based on nationally representative household surveys conducted between 1999 and 2007. The data comes from a study IPEC Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC). (Geneva, ILO, 2009). The sample countries and the dates of data in the survey were Colombia (2001), Ecuador (2006), El Salvador (2001), Guatemala (2006), Burkina Faso (2006), Malawi (2002), Mali (2005), Senegal (2004), Cambodia (2001), Mongolia (2002), Philippines (2001), Sri Lanka (1999), Azerbaijan (2005), Kyrgyzstan (2007), Turkey (2006) and Ukraine (1999).
The statistics provide a more detailed picture of global child labor than what had been available previously. The chart shows that the majority of children were employed in agriculture, a significant portion employed in services, which can include everything from shoe-shining and windshield washing to street vending and hauling. A minority of child laborers are employed in shops, craft production and manufacture, which can include construction, mining, quarry work and the like, all hazardous jobs for children.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) established the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) in 1992 with the goal of progressively eliminating child labor, through research, building countries' capacity to deal with the problem, and promoting a worldwide movement to combat child labor. For statistical purposes, a child is considered to be involved in child labor under the following classification: (a) children 5-11 years of age who did at least one hour of economic activity or at least 28 hours of domestic work during the week preceding the survey, and (b) children 12-14 years of age who did at least 14 hours of economic activity or at least 28 hours domestic work during the week preceding the survey. Whether or not particular forms of "work" can be called "child labor" depends on the child's age, the type and hours of work performed, the conditions under which it is performed and the objectives pursued by individual countries.
IPEC classifies acceptable and unacceptable types of child labor. Acceptable work includes children helping parents around the home, earning pocket money after school and on holidays, and even helping in a family business. Such activity is viewed as beneficial to children's development and socialization. Unacceptable child labor, in contrast, is harmful to physical and mental development, to children's dignity, and "deprives children of their childhood." Child labor should be eliminated if it is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; if it interferes with their schooling by preventing them from attending school, obligates them to leave school prematurely, or requires excessively long and heavy work as to compromise children's ability to attend school or learn effectively. The most extreme forms of unacceptable child labor include enslavement or bonded labor, separation from their families, exposure to hazards and illness, or being forced onto the streets of large cities to sleep and work for a living.

Source

"World Day 2009: Give girls a chance: End child labour,"International Labour Organization, http://www.ilo.org/ipec/Campaignandadvocacy/WDACL/WorldDay2009/lang--en/index.htm (accessed November 2, 2009). Annotated by Susan Douglass.

Child labor Cause                                                       

Children shouldn’t be subject to hard labor at such a tender age; they’re not created to run a household before they’ve started school, or work on a farm so their family can eat. And yet, there are an estimated 91 million child laborers under the age of 11 in our world today.
Poverty is both a cause and an effect of child labor. Working from a young age can damage a child’s mental and physical health, their security and their chance at gaining an education—which also diminishes the child’s chance of escaping poverty.

Who is affected?

Child labor encompasses children between the ages of five and 17. It’s usually defined according to a child’s age and work type, and is typically identified as work that robs a child of their childhood, and is harmful to their health and future well-being.
Worldwide, there are 215 million child laborers; 115 million of these children are exposed to hazardous work such as working with heavy machinery or in deep underground mines. Seventy-five per cent of working children are in agriculture on farms and plantations, often working from sunrise to sunset with dangerous pesticides and chemicals.
Child labor is most prominent in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in four children between the ages of five and 17 are engaged in child labor.

Progress so far

According to the International Labor Organisation, a branch of the United Nations, the number of child laborers worldwide has declined by 11 per cent in the past four years, and the number of children in hazardous work has decreased by 26 per cent. However, progress is irregular and child labour still remains extremely common in many countries worldwide.
In 2006, the United Nations signed the Global Action Plan for child labor, aiming to eliminate the worst forms of child labor by 2016. To achieve this goal, we need renewed commitment to wide-scale action.
Despite increased awareness about the issue, child labor among boys and young people between the ages of 15 and 17 has risen, and progress in eliminating the practice in sub-Saharan has stalled.
(International Labor Office: Accelerating action against child labor, 2010)

Compassion’s response

Compassion does not directly engage with the issue of child labor. However, our Child Sponsorship Program can be a preventative measure against the issue, as each child is known to centre staff and has their wellbeing monitored. An essential part of the Child Sponsorship Program is ensuring children have the opportunity to complete primary school. We often work with families to teach the value of educating their child and find a way for their child to go to school rather than work by assisting with food supplies or vocational training for parents. However, if it’s still necessary for the child to work, we are sometimes able to help arrange special classes so that they can continue their schooling.
The Child Sponsorship Program uses a holistic child development model to help release children from every aspect of poverty, with the goal that by graduation every child will:

• Demonstrate commitment to the lordship of Christ
• Choose good health practices and be physically healthy
• Exhibit the motivation and skills to be economically self-supporting
• Interact with other people in a healthy and compassionate manner.

If child labor is an issue especially close to your heart, you CAN do something about it. Click here to get involved in the Child Advocacy Network (CAN), or sponsor a child today!

Child Labor

Child Labor in U.S. History

Breaker Boys

Hughestown Borough Pa. Coal Co.
Pittston, Pa.
Photo: Lewis Hine

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike. Growing opposition to child labor in the North caused many factories to move to the South. By 1900, states varied considerably in whether they had child labor standards and in their content and degree of enforcement. By then, American children worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers.

Spinning Room

Cornell Mill
Fall River, Mass.
Photo: Lewis Hine

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the numbers of child laborers in the U.S. peaked. Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor. Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined, and common initiatives were conducted by organizations led by working women and middle class consumers, such as state Consumers’ Leagues and Working Women’s Societies. These organizations generated the National Consumers’ League in 1899 and the National Child Labor Committee in 1904, which shared goals of challenging child labor, including through anti-sweatshop campaigns and labeling programs. The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

Child Labor Reform and the U.S. Labor Movement

1832 New England unions condemn child labor

The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workingmen resolve that “Children should not be allowed to labor in the factories from morning till night, without any time for healthy recreation and mental culture,” for it “endangers their . . . well-being and health”

Women’s Trade Union League of New York

1836 Early trade unions propose state minimum age laws

Union members at the National Trades’ Union Convention make the first formal, public proposal recommending that states establish minimum ages for factory work

1836 First state child labor law

Massachusetts requires children under 15 working in factories to attend school at least 3 months/year

1842 States begin limiting children’s work days

Massachusetts limits children’s work days to 10 hours; other states soon pass similar laws—but most of these laws are not consistently enforced

1876 Labor movement urges minimum age law

Working Men’s Party proposes banning the employment of children under the age of 14

1881 Newly formed AFL supports state minimum age laws

The first national convention of the American Federation of Labor passes a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment

1883 New York unions win state reform

Led by Samuel Gompers, the New York labor movement successfully sponsors legislation prohibiting cigar making in tenements, where thousands of young children work in the trade

1892 Democrats adopt union recommendations

Democratic Party adopts platform plank based on union recommendations to ban factory employment for children under 15

National Child Labor Committee

1904 National Child Labor Committee forms

Aggressive national campaign for federal child labor law reform begins

1916 New federal law sanctions state violators

First federal child labor law prohibits movement of goods across state lines if minimum age laws are violated (law in effect only until 1918, when it’s declared unconstitutional, then revised, passed, and declared unconstitutional again)

1924 First attempt to gain federal regulation fails

Congress passes a constitutional amendment giving the federal government authority to regulate child labor, but too few states ratify it and it never takes effect

1936 Federal purchasing law passes

Walsh-Healey Act states U.S. government will not purchase goods made by underage children

1937 Second attempt to gain federal regulation fails

Second attempt to ratify constitutional amendment giving federal government authority to regulate child labor falls just short of getting necessary votes

1937 New federal law sanctions growers

Sugar Act makes sugar beet growers ineligible for benefit payments if they violate state minimum age and hours of work standards

1938 Federal regulation of child labor achieved in Fair Labor Standards Act

For the first time, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children are regulated by federal law