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Articles: Business | World Economy & Child labour
- Mr. T.R.Sridhar Prasad. Uppalapati.
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For much of the 1990s, Povoado de Jose Valerio's school was closed because the Teofilandia administration failed to pay teachers. Today, even many children who do attend school must do so intermittently, as their parents must put them back to work when money is scarce. Under such conditions, all of economic and cultural life is centered on survival. 'The problem is lack of jobs,' says the mayor of Teofilandia. 'If you have industry, you can have jobs, and if people have jobs, they're able to survive.'
Even though Brazil has had laws against child labor since 1891, these are regularly ignored by states, corporations and parents. In 1996, 3.3 million children, aged 7 to 14, worked. But also in that year, a new government program that pays families $12.50 to $25 a month per child who attends school regularly came into effect. The program had only 3,710 participants in 1996, but 362,000 by 2000. The program's success has helped reduce to 2.5 million the number of child workers in Brazil. Still, the director of Brazil's anti-child labor programs, Glaubert Santos, admits, 'It's not a solution. We still have to make sure families have a way to earn steady income -- and that means creating jobs.'
The ILO Report:
The Scope of the problem of child labor is staggering. Behind the stories of particular groups of child workers are the macrostatistics. The International Labor Organization (ILO), in concert with some governments and firms, labor organizations and nongovernmental organizations, has been engaged for more than a decade in a campaign against what they term the worst forms of child labor. Their recent report, A Future Without Child Labor, should be required reading for anyone interested in globalization and labor conditions.The ILO carefully distinguishes 'economically active' children from those engaged in 'child labor.'
Economic activity by children that is appropriate to age, safe and consonant with a child's education, is perfectly acceptable. Once school and homework are completed, light age-appropriate work may even help children 'learn to take responsibility.' The ILO has no interest in abolishing 'household chores, work in family undertakings' or 'work undertaken as part of education.' Light, part-time work, could begin at age 12 and, in general, non-hazardous work should begin no earlier than age 15, although 'national social and economic circumstances' will lead different countries to establish different standards; developing countries today might set 14 as a minimum age standard. The ILO hopes to establish 16 as 'the general minimum age to which countries should aspire,' with hazardous work restricted to those 18 and older.
According to the ILO's definition of economic activity, some 211 million children aged 5-14 are at work. For all children under 18,352 million are economically active. But most of these children are not performing ordinary, acceptable work. Instead, fully 186 million child laborers aged 5- 14 and another 59 million aged 15-17 are classed as child laborers. This means that on a world scale, one child in six is a child laborer. In the 'worst forms,' toil 180 million children, one in eight.
Further more, most of the children engaged in hazardous work, 111 million, are under 15 years old. Another 59 million are 15-17. Even in the most developed economies, a significant minority of children aged 10-14 is economically active. Especially where there are large pockets of poor families in developed countries, child labor becomes part of an overall family survival strategy.
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