25 October 2008
Issue: Child Labor
I'm posting a video called "No Es Un Joc" ("Not a Game"); you can visit the website for more information. This video takes you into the lives of child laborers in several Latin American countries. I probably won't normally post videos that are this long, but I was really impressed with this one. It has a minimum of commentary, it lets children speak for themselves, and it really gives the viewer some critical perspective.
Child labor is a very real problem around the world. It's difficult to accurately say how many children are involved in child labor, because it's a tricky thing to define. Many children work in agriculture or with their families, and the line that marks an appropriate amount of work can be fuzzy. Reliable estimates state that 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are economically active, and half of those children work full-time (meaning they don't go to school). Child labor is much more common in rural areas than in urban areas, and boys are more likely to be engaged in economic activity. (Still, girls are more likely to have heavy unpaid household chores in their home OR someone else's, and primary and secondary school enrollment rates are almost universally lower for girls than for boys.) Child labor is closely linked to other topics that we'll tackle in coming weeks and months: Child trafficking, child soldiers, street children, the gender gap in education, etc.
An important term to know when you're reading about child labor is "worst forms of child labor." Descriptions of what constitutes the worst forms of child labor were briefly categorized in the International Labor Organization's Convention 182). Basically, these worst forms include any kind of slavery or forced labor, commercial sexual exploitation (like prostitution and pornography), illegal activities (like drug trafficking), or any kind of work that subjects children to hazardous conditions or physical/psychological danger. This means that on the spectrum of child labor activities, working on a family farm is typically much less harmful than, say, being forced to fight as a soldier in Uganda or being forced into prostitution in Thailand. An estimated 179 million children are engaged in one of the worst forms of child labor on a full- or part-time basis. This comes out to be one child out of every eight children in the world.
To read more about child labor, click here or here.
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2 comments:
Hey Missy,
This looks like it will be a great blog. I have a lot of questions about these topics.
What do you think is the cause behind child labor?
By this I mean everything except the "worst forms." I don't think the worst forms should even be called labor, but exploitation.
Other than exploitation and a lack of education, what do you think are some of the problems with child labor?
- Earl
Welcome, Earl :) Thanks for your participation!
(By the way, please feel free to jump in, anyone who has an opinion on the subject! Nothing would make me happier than to see lots of participation here.)
Earl, I think the questions you ask are very complicated, and any response I give here will be inadequate, but let me just mention a few general responses based on my research and experiences.
As to the causes of child labor: 1) I would say that the biggest cause is poverty. I'll talk more about poverty in the future, but it is really difficult for the average American to understand the condition that billions of people live in. When families are having trouble providing enough food, sending children to work is the logical choice. 2) I do, though, think that there are cultural beliefs in some places that contribute to this as well. If a culture/community undervalues education, they will be less inclined to make a way for kids to go to school. This is a particular problem for girls; when we did our research in Mozambique, for instance, we talked to a number of families who saw no importance in educating girls who would be married off at a young age anyway.
3) I also think that questionable practices of some corporations have a role in the propagation of child labor. Some businesses, in pursuit of profit, deliberately put factories/sweatshops in poor rural areas, knowing that they can get cheap labor there. Often this results in children working in factories with deplorable working conditions. 4) And if governments don't have adequate laws --or more commonly, don't enforce existing legislation-- there is inadequate accountability for people who exploit children.
Now for the problems with child labor: This is a huge and convoluted issue. I do want to mention from the outset that in my opinion, MOST activity categorized as child labor should be categorized as child exploitation. Keep in mind that those numbers I cited you were for children between the ages of 5 and 14; we're not talking here about teenagers working in the Sno Shack during their summer break. (I did that in high school, and I got paid a fair and regular wage, and I was never injured or abused.) The question I always ask myself is, would I be comfortable with MY child doing this kind of labor at this age? As I read about the work -slash-exploitation children are involved in, the answer almost 100 percent of the time to this question is absolutely not.
For simplicity's sake, let me split it into a few main areas. 1) Health impacts. One-fourth of working children are injured on the job. Most injuries occur in agriculture, but there are also injuries in factories and on the streets. Kids' bodies aren't as developed as adults', and the long-term physical effects of labor-intensive jobs are very serious (especially if, thanks to poverty, that child is also undernourished and and anemic).
2) Psycho-emotional impacts. I think we all agree that "just being a kid" is important to a child's development: going to school, playing with friends. The stress of working leads to high rates, among working children in some areas, of substance abuse and "acting out." Obviously, these impacts are considerably worse for children involved in soldiering, the sex trade, or other extraordinarily exploitative forms of labor. 3) Education. I know you mentioned it, but I don't want to understate this. Globally, 125 million children are out of school, and poverty plays a HUGE role in this. I will be doing a post soon on why this is such a big deal, but I know that my blog readers intuitively value education anyway.
The US Department of Labor has a good website dedicated to child labor that you might want to check out, too:
http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/laborctr/child_labor/
I hope to hear many more questions and comments from you, Readers!
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