Introduction

Promises Broken: Child Labor
Human Rights Watch

I work in a house that has five family members. I’m the only servant. I’m very busy all day working, washing, cleaning and preparing food. The children in the family go to school, but I don’t get to go. They can also watch television, but I’m not allowed. I’m not allowed to play with the children. I’m always working. I sleep on the floor in the dining room. I’ve never been home to visit since beginning this work. My parents came to visit me twice, and collected some money from the family, but I don’t know how much.

Salani Radnayaka, a ten-year-old girl working as a live-in domestic servant for a family in Colombo, Sri Lanka


The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries – at least 120 million full time. Sixty-one percent of these are in Asia, 32 percent in Africa, and 7 percent in Latin America. Most working children in rural areas are found in agriculture; urban children work in trade and services, with fewer in manufacturing, construction and domestic service. Only an estimated 5 percent of child laborers work in export industries.

Article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child protects children from economic exploitation and work that is likely to be hazardous to the child’s development, or to interfere with the child’s education. It calls on states to take legislative and other measures, including sanctions and penalties, to guarantee this protection to children.

Those addressing the issue of child labor are sometimes divided on how to proceed and consider a range of different approaches. Some urge that child labor be eliminated quickly and aggressively, including through the use of trade sanctions when countries or industries fail to act decisively. Some call for reforming the conditions in which children work with a view toward gradual elimination. Some believe that work plays an important and positive role in children's lives and in their relations with their families, and seek reform, but not an end to child labor.

A simple approach of requiring employers to discharge all child workers can lead to devastating results for children removed from the workplace. Children discharged from work can find themselves on the street in prostitution or crime, or working in even worse conditions and for less pay. In tackling the issue of child labor, consideration of the immediate and direct consequences for working children and their families cannot be underestimated. The removal of children from the workforce can have devastating results for children if not accompanied with nuanced adjustment programs for their rehabilitation, education, and direct assistance.

The trade sanction approach – seeking boycotts of employers or governments who permit the use of child labor, or banning the importation of goods made with child labor – is extremely difficult to monitor. Employers’ assurances that they have not used child labor in manufacturing workplaces around the world are meaningless without effective and independent monitoring mechanisms in place. And trade sanctions or boycotts narrowly targeted to particular export industries, even if effective, have small impact, as only about 5 percent of child laborers work in export industries.

Child labor includes a range of situations from the clearly hazardous and exploitative, four year-old children tied to rug looms to keep them from running away, to the benign or positive, seventeen-year-olds helping out on the family farm or working after school to earn some pocket money. In many cases, as in the latter examples, children’s work can be helpful to them and their families; money earned and the experience gained by children can be positive contributions to their development into responsible adults. This depends largely on the age of the child, the conditions in which the child works, and whether work prevents the child from going to school.

What is clear, and what the international community has agreed on, is that certain types of child labor are hazardous to the health, safety, and morals of children and should be banned. The ILO Convention concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor (ILO Convention 182), adopted unanimously by the 174 member states of the ILO in June 1999, commits states who ratify it to take immediate steps to prohibit and eliminate “the worst forms of child labor,” and to take effective measures to prevent children’s engagement in it. The term child refers to anyone under the age of eighteen. Under the convention, the worst forms of child labor include the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage, forced or compulsory labor (including the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict), using children for prostitution or production of pornography, using children for illegal activities, particularly drug trafficking, and other work which is likely to “harm the health, safety or morals of children.”

Cognizant of the dangers of banning child labor without also providing children with alternatives to labor, the convention obligates states parties to ensure that children removed from the worst forms of child labor be given direct assistance to ensure their removal, rehabilitation, and social reintegration. Most importantly, the convention mandates that children removed from labor be ensured access to free basic education, and wherever possible and appropriate, vocational training.

The importance of providing free and compulsory primary education cannot be underestimated in the fight to end the economic exploitation of children. The reasons are simple. Education opens up the whole future to a child, offering the chance for improved health, safety, and greater economic opportunity, and the full enjoyment of their rights