CORDIS Archive

February
2003

Child labour - the world's shame

About 250 million children in the developing countries are estimated to be in work, half of them full-time. Many have little or no legal protection and are exposed to numerous industrial hazards. Others are sold into slavery and prostitution.

More than two-thirds of working children work in agriculture, often in family settings but also in commercial enterprises. Apart from long hours of manual labour they are exposed to hazardous machinery (in Australia and the US almost 30% of farm boys aged seven to nine are driving tractors), dust-related diseases and toxic chemicals. In some countries children stand in fields with flags to guide crop-spraying aircraft.

Children, sometimes as young as seven, work legally in mines and quarries in parts of Africa, Latin America and even (yes) central Europe. Four times as many are working illegally. They are exposed to dusts, gases and fumes as well as falling objects. Mercury poisoning is common in gold mines. Other heavy work can be found in the construction industry, where children make bricks, mix cement, paint and do electric wiring. Hazards are numerous.

The "marginal" sector, often through unregulated subcontractors, includes work in textiles, carpets, leather, ceramics, glass, matches, fireworks, slate cutting, paint shops, metalwork, brick making, button making and jewellery. Poor children make toys for rich children. They are burned by hot processes, acids and caustic soda. They are poisoned by metal vapours, solvents, adhesives and lead.

All over the world children work for long hours and little pay in restaurants, hotels, garages and shops. They are labourers, servants, maids, cooks, waiters, bar tenders, shop assistants and messengers.

Many children in Africa and Latin America work in garages where they are exposed to benzene, leaded petrol, diesel, carbon monoxide, solvents, asbestos, battery acid, resins and flammable vapours. They can be crushed by vehicles falling off jacks. Large numbers of children work in dark and noisy textile workshops with unguarded machinery and vats of toxic chemicals. They can be mutilated, burnt, scalded or drowned. Children work in abattoirs, assisting with the slaughter of animals and the carrying and cutting up of carcasses. They risk laceration, amputation and infectious diseases.

Domestic service is common, and with it the attendant hazards of physical, mental and sexual abuse. These children are largely invisible to the authorities, since households are not classed as workplaces.

In Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines and Thailand, children beat on coral reefs to chase fish into nets. Each fishing boat employs up to 300 boys who can be in the water for 12 hours a day. Dozens are killed or injured each year by predatory fish, decompression illness or infectious diseases picked up in the insanitary conditions on the boats.

Scavenging on city rubbish dumps is common in Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand. Children working as street traders are exposed to violence, prostitution and drugs. They are used to produce cocaine and traffick cannabis and heroin.

Child slavery and forced labour is widespread and growing. It goes hand in hand with adult-made poverty, migration and war. Poor parents sell their children to help pay off debts. Whole families in Nepal have been caught up in endless cycles of debt and bondage. Trafficking in children (and women) has increased dramatically throughout the world. They are sold as sweatshop workers, servants, drug carriers and prostitutes.

At least 1 million children under the age of 18 are working as prostitutes, mainly in Asia, with hundreds of thousands in Thailand alone. Many are trafficked from Burma and China. They are frequently abused and kept in slave-like conditions. They suffer from HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases and often meet a violent death.

This is a book about our world in the 21st century. You may like to read it.