Work

The Convention on the Rights of the Child Article 31

1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.

2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child Article 32

1. 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.

2. States Parties shall take legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to ensure the implementation of the present article. To this end and having regard to the relevant provisions of other international instruments, States Parties shall in particular:

(a) Provide for a minimum age or minimum ages for admission to employment;

(b) Provide for appropriate regulation of the hours and conditions of employment;

(c) Provide for appropriate penalties or other sanctions to ensure the effective enforcement of the present article.

Child labour is the biggest problem, in terms of the number of children involved, around the world. Three reasons for the large numbers of child labourers are poverty, economic profits and traditions.

1. Poverty

My father is a farmer and I have seven brothers and sisters. I have been stitching footballs for the last four years and also going to school. The reason I stitch footballs is because my parents cannot afford the costs of my education. I stitch one football per day after school. With that money, I pay my school fees, get extra tuition and buy uniforms, clothes and shoes as well as paying for fixing my bike. I study because I want to get a good job. Most of the people in my village stitch footballs. If there were a ban on child labour, most of the people in my village would go hungry.

Khalid Hussain, 15, Sialkot, Pakistan

Khalid's story is common; poverty forces children into work at the expense of education. The obvious solution, then, is to eliminate poverty. Khalid is similar to many children in developed and developing nations: he works to help the family survive. He is different though from many other children who are forced to work from the age of 3. He is lucky because he can still go to school, his community is involved in the work and he has a goal. He also points out the difficulties of communities that are poor: work is necessary to survive and education is important to break the cycle of poverty.

Many children have to face what Radha faces:

(At) 11 years Radha has a routine job to do. She gets up early in the morning and brings the milk, cleans utensils, washes clothes, cooks food and looks after the children. Radha says that she sleeps at 10 o’clock at night. Already she has worked as a domestic servant for three years in the town. When her master or mistress scolds or beats her, Radha thinks of her own home and her parents but she is compelled to work even if she wants to go back.

“When I’m scolded or beaten by the family members of the master, I feel like going back to the village immediately to stay with my parents. But what can we do at the village? We have no land to grow crops and keep ourselves alive. For this reason I have to tolerate all these beatings and scoldings.”

Radha said she does not get any salary for her work, only two meals a day.

Child Workers in Asia

2. Economic exploitation

The growth of a global economy has seen many large corporations move from their native land to look for places where labour is cheaper and the working conditions are not regulated, or if there are regulations, not enforced. For example a worker in Asia is paid far less than one in Europe or the USA, and often has to work under conditions that are not regulated.

In the mid 1990s the plight of many child labourers was bought to the world's attention because they were working for famous shoe companies under appalling conditions and for pitiful wages.

Background: When the June, 1996 issue of Life magazine carried an article about child labor in Pakistan, Nike knew that it was in trouble. The article's lead photograph showed 12-year-old Tariq hunkered over the hexagonal pieces of a Nike soccer ball which he would spend most of a day stitching together for the grand sum of 60 cents. In a matter of weeks, activists all across Canada and the United States were standing in front of Nike outlets, holding up Tariq's photo.

Campaign for Labor Rights

3. Traditions

Many societies still have child labour because it is a tradition. Those who have been brought up learning western history, have learnt the plight of children working in the factories and the mines in the 19th century.

The 19th century saw a number of important social developments in western countries. Two important developments were the limitations on the use of child labour and the abolition of slavery. Both these traditions were many centuries old. However, the abolition of bonded labourers and limitations on child labour did not spread across the world. Some western companies realised this and began exploiting the traditions for profit.

"It's an ages-old practice," was the blythe defense from Nike's Donna Gibbs, referring to the use of bonded child labor in Pakistan. But, as Max White of Justice: Do It Nike (an organisation formed to oppose the pactice of child labour by international companies) noted, "Nike went into Pakistan, knowing full well that child labor is an ages-old practice there and taking no precautions whatsoever to prevent the use of child labor in the production of its soccer balls. We have to conclude that Nike expected to profit from its Pakistani contractors' known usage of bonded child labor."

Campaign for Labor Rights

The quotes at the beginning of this section give us the reasons why child labour needs to be stopped:

Africa risks losing all her efforts towards lasting development.

rescue our children from child labor and prevent a new generation of children from becoming victims.

forcing children to discontinue their education and making them enter the dangerous labor market robs us of our future.

Lasting development, that is better social and economic equality for all, can not be built on children, now nor in the future, because it robs all humanity of a future.

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