Child Labour

Introduction
Child labour refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of
their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally,
physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful. [3] This practice is considered
exploitative by manyinternational organisations. Legislations across the world prohibit
child labour.[4][5] These laws do not consider all work by children as child labour;
exceptions include work by child artists, supervised training, certain categories of work
such as those by Amish children, some forms of child work common among indigenous
American children, and others.
Conducting ethical international business is particularly challenging given diverse
countries and societies with different moral foundations and beliefs. Many international
businesses confront issues of child labor in their own operations and those of suppliers in
their value chain. Culture, laws and regulations, and international and industry protocols
provide some areas of common approach, although differences in practice across
countries and cultures must be respected when addressing child labor. Ethical
perspectives and theories such as value driven management will help businesses make
better decisions about child labor.

What is child labour?

The broad term "child labour" covers a considerable diversity between and within
countries in the types of activities in which children participate. Fortunately, abhorrent
images of children chained in factories or forced into prostitution stand out for their
relative rarity. Most working children are at home, helping their family by assisting in the
family business or farm and with domestic work.
Fundamentally, child labor is a symptom of poverty. Low income and poor institutions
are driving forces behind the prevalence of child labor worldwide. As a result, some
economic events or policies can have ambiguous effects on child labor; for example, a
country that experiences an increase in labor demand, perhaps because of globalization,
may experience greater demand for both adult and child labor. However, the greater
demand for adult labor can raise family incomes in a way that tends to reduce child labor.
While some children do work in circumstances so hideous as to command immediate

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attention, development is the best overall cure for child labor. However, historical growth
rates suggest that reducing child labor through improvements in living standards alone
will take time. If a more rapid reduction in the general incidence of child labor is a policy
goal, improving educational systems and providing financial incentives to poor families
to send children to school may be more useful solutions to the child labor problem than
punitive measures designed to prevent children from earning income.

Who is a child labourer?

The term child labour generally refers to any economic activity performed by a person
under the age of 15, defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) of the United
Nations. On the beneficial side of the continuum, there is light work after school or
legitimate apprenticeship opportunities, such as helping out in the family business or on
the family farm. At the destructive end is employment that is:

Preventing effective school attendance;

Hazardous to the physical and mental health of the child.

Estimating the number of children working around the world is a difficult task. Most
working children live in low-income countries. These countries often lack reliable data on
many aspects of their labor market. Even more difficult, some policymakers have until
recently defined "child labor" as economic activities that are deleterious to the well-being
of children. There are some situations where it is hard to imagine how an activity could
not be harmful to the child-forced prostitution, child soldiers-but as we will discuss, these
activities are very rare. Most working children participate in activities that can be harmful
or beneficial for the child, depending on the circumstances of the activity, and ultimately,
the impact of child labor on the well-being of the child depends on the counterfactual of
what the child would be doing in the absence of work.
Official figures always tend to underestimate the numbers of children working. But an
ILO study of child workers aged 10 to 14 indicates with some reliability which countries
have the highest incidence of child labour. Notable by their absence from the top ten are
the countries most readily associated with child labour - India and Pakistan - whose
respective percentages were 14.37% and 17.67%. The ILO's Statistical Information and

Child Labour
Monitoring Program on Child Labor (SIMPOC) most recently estimated that 211 million
children, or 18 percent of children 5-14, are economically active worldwide (ILO, 2002).
A child is defined as economically active if he or she works for wages (cash or in-kind);
works in the family farm in the production and processing of primary products; works in
family enterprises that are making primary products for the market, barter or own
consumption; or is unemployed and looking for these types of work.
The academic literature also uses the phrase "market work" to refer to these activities
(with the exception of unemployment). The estimated 211 million economically active
children correspond to 18 percent of the world's population of 5-14 year olds. Sixty
percent of these working children are in Asia, and 52 percent are boys. While 23 percent
of economically active children are believed to be in sub-Saharan Africa, participation
rates are highest there with an estimated 30 percent of children 5-14 working. Most
economically active children are in low-income countries.
Estimates of the number of child workers worldwide are notoriously unreliable. This is
partly because the definition of child labour is unclear - at what point does helping out the
family become work? But it is also because governments are not keen to measure a
phenomenon that is officially not supposed to exist. The best estimate of 250 million
comes from the International Labour Organization. But this not only excludes children in
the industrialized world - it also does not measure the child workers hidden from the
statistician's view, notably girls doing domestic work. Including these child workers from
the shadows would push the total up to nearer 500 million - or half the children in the
developing world aged 5 - 14.

500 million child workers including those not declared and those doing domestic
work
250 million child workers according to the International Labour Organization

Numbers of child workers in the developing world

Most countries have laws against child labour. But those laws kick in at different ages,
are routinely abused - and the very definition of exploitative child work varies the world
over.

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The International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention sets a basic minimum
age for employment of 15 years while allowing light work at 13 and prohibiting
hazardous work until 18. But only 49 countries have ratified the Convention and none of
these are countries considered to have the highest incidence of hazardous child labour.
Legal minimum ages for different types of work, selected countries:
18 Peru - Ports and seafaring Bolivia - Construction Luxembourg - Abattoirs,
meat rendering United States - Construction

17 Pakistan - Mining, circular saws Myanmar - Mining Austria - Tanneries, glass

manufacture Canada - Maritime work

16 Peru - Deep - sea fishing Cote d'lvoire - Mining Mexico - Work with acids
United Kingdom - Noxious substances

15 Thailand - Night clubs, bars Dominican Rep. - Mining Italy - Machinery in

motion Costa Rica - Street trades

14 India - Explosives, carpet weaving Cyprus - Construction Belize - Electrical

work Sri Lanka - Street trades

13 Germany - Light agricultural Switzerland - Non - industrial light Denmark Shop assistant Tunisia - Non - industrial light

12 Egypt - All work Benin - Light agricultural Senegal - Seasonal work Burkina
Faso - Domestic service

Where are they?

Most child workers in the South are to be found in Asia. But these figures are slightly
misleading given that the population is much higher in Asia than elsewhere - the
proportion of African children who work is twice as high as in Asia. While the most
extreme examples of exploitative child labour tend to come from Asia, an African child is
more likely to work. Proportion of total number of child workers found in each continent.

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Child workers in the US
In 1990, 100 adolescents were killed and a further 70,000 injured while at work in the
service sector. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates that
70 teenagers are killed each year in work - related accidents and that more than 200,000
working teenagers are injured annually. Given that both these estimates are drawn from
official data they are probably gross underestimates.
A study by the US General Accounting Office showed a 250% increase in child - labour
violations between 1983 and 1990. In 1990 a three - day 'sting' operation by the
Department of Labor discovered more than 11,000 children working illegally. The
involvement of migrant children in US agriculture is routine. In the 1980s the United
Farm Workers union estimated that 800,000 under - aged children worked harvesting
crops. In 1990 a survey of Mexican - American children working on farms in New York
state showed a third of them had been sprayed with pesticides.

Case study
Nestl
Nestle soon will be self policing its supply chain, in an attempt to curb child labor on
cocoa farms. The company announced that it will work with the Fair Labor Association
(FLA) to investigate whether children are working on the cocoa farms that supply its
factories. With more than 800,000 cocoa farms in the country, companies have struggled
to establish where their cocoa comes from and under what conditions it was farmed. The
FLA's methodology will bring consistency and transparency to the process, providing
Nestle with the information needed to eliminate instances of child labor in its supply
chain. The work with the FLA will complement Nestle's efforts to promote sustainability
and better working practices in its cocoa supply chain, which it set out in the Nestle
Cocoa Plan.

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Conclusions
Child labor, and especially the worst forms of child labor found in many
agricultural tasks, is a complex social problem that is often hidden from view in many
countries. Numerous international conventions, national laws and industry protocols such
as the Harkin-Engel Protocol have been drafted over the past decades. Broad consensus
has been reached on definitions of child labor and nuances of age, type of labor, and
exceptions for family-related work.
International business opens companies to new markets and new challenges. By
deciding to expand operations internationally, companies must also adapt their culture
and values to the international context and international standards. Social issues are
increasingly fundamental to business reputation, market share, attracting consumers and
employees, and avoiding greater government regulation.