JOURNAL
Children’s Rights International
Justice is Hope
An Initiative of World Congress on Family Law and Children’s Rights Inc.
Exploitative Child Labour, still a harsh reality
Photograph by AP Photo/Prashant Ravi |
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By Bill Jackson, Margaret Harrison, Sasha Trikojus and accredited sources
Both India and China are increasingly used by the west as sources of cheap manufactured goods, as emerging economic tiger states and, particularly in the case of China, as consumers of raw resources. However, the profits that flow from the export industries of both countries are heavily dependent on the supply of cheap labour. There is, however, a fear that the Indian and Chinese hunger for global success is increasing the chances of worker exploitation in those countries through competition to produce goods at ever-lower cost.
In the west, manufactured goods from developing countries pass seamlessly through the consumer chain and the circumstances of their manufacture are often of little consequence to consumers, who are either ignorant of or indifferent to the working conditions of those who produce them. In reality, a significant reason for the low cost of those goods is the presence of an impoverished and exploited adult workforce and an increasingly, but largely hidden, workforce of children. The conditions in which children are required to provide their labour are the subject matter of this Journal issue.
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Photograph by REUTERS/Jayanta Shaw |
Recent figures from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) show that:
- Globally, 1 in 6 children work;
- 218 million children aged 5 - 17 are involved in child labour world wide;
- 126 million children work in hazardous conditions;
- The highest numbers of child labourers are in the Asia/Pacific region, where there are 122 million working children;
- The highest proportion of child labourers is in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 26% of children (49 million) are involved in work.
The tendency to focus on the most visible and most obviously exploitative forms of child labour – such as children’s employment in hazardous jobs, or sweatshops - can obscure the many other ways in which children are forced to work. Rural working children, for example, are mainly engaged in agricultural activities and collecting water, fuel and fodder. In many countries, poor girls work as domestic servants for wealthier families. Frequently children, especially girls, perform unpaid work for their families at the expense of their education. Domestic work and involvement in family enterprises can be as coercive, damaging and dangerous as work performed in more ‘formal’ environments.
Unfortunately there are numerous examples of the reliance on child labour by companies in the west and in developing countries. Practices in factories in China, south-east Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Europe recently attracted widespread and damaging publicity for the companies involved, as did the use of children in China in the manufacture of merchandising products for the Beijing Olympics, much to the embarrassment of the Chinese government.
In Tamil Nadu, India, children are employed as bonded labourers, as skilled workers in the carpet, embroidery, and brass and copper industries, as unskilled labourers in mines, brick and road making, domestic work, in shops and restaurants, as beggars and prostitutes and in the pornography industry. The vast majority of child labour is “invisible”: hidden by the adult community, often ignored by governments and the legal system, and consequently officially uncounted and unrecognised.
In many developing countries, the lack of income support forces rural children to migrate to the cities, either with family members or alone. Their need to move may be forced on them by the need to support themselves and/or their families, or to escape the bonded work pledged by their parents to employers in lieu of debts or payment. The similarities between bonded labour and slavery are striking when rates of interest on indebted loans to landowners or factory managers are so high that repayment within a lifetime is impossible.
In the cities children work on the streets rather than in the fields and contribute to family incomes as best they can. Those living without families sleep wherever they can – on railway platforms or at bus stations – and their days are spent trying to feed themselves.
Abandoned and orphaned children are the most vulnerable and exploited as they lack family support and are used by criminals and sex traders. Very few will receive any education and have no opportunity to escape from their appalling living conditions.
Hon Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC meets a young AIDS patient at the Jeevan Jyothi Hospice, Tamil Nadu, India (with Sister Anisa – Presentation Order). |
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Children Rights International’s Patron, The Hon. Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC, and a volunteer film crew recently visited Tamil Nadu with Paul Smith, the Lasallian Foundation’s CEO, to produce a film to help the Foundation raise funds for its children’s programmes in India.
These programmes work to assist child labourers, street children, and rejected and orphaned children to help them live safe and full lives.
click here to see the 4 minute Video
India’s children have the added obstacles presented by the archaic practices of female infanticide, child marriage and the HIV/Aids pandemic. This has been particularly apparent in Tamil Nadu where the high incidence of the virus has seen increasing numbers of children forced to become their families’ primary breadwinners and carers. Also, children are often orphaned as a consequence of AIDS, and those who contract the virus can be cast out from their families and communities to fend for themselves.
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Photograph by REUTERS/Sherwin Crasto |
- About 5.7 million people are infected with HIV in India, a rate which is second only to South Africa.
- The first case of HIV in India was diagnosed among sex workers in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, in 1986.
- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Manipur states account for three-quarters of the country's estimated HIV cases.
- One sixth of all new Aids cases in the world occur in India and 30% of the sufferers are women.
Britain's Department for International Development estimates that two adults become infected with HIV every minute in India.
This issue of the CRI Journal provides a brief look at the issue of child labour. You are invited to join us for an International Conference on Child Labour and Child Exploitation in Cairns, Australia, August 3-5, 2008.