Updates

ILO Report: 'Children in hazardous work - What we know, what we need to do'

A new ILO report on children in hazardous work warns that up to 115 million of the 215 million child labourers are caught in hazardous work. These children are aged between 5 to 17 years old; hazardous factors have a severe impact on their bodies and minds; slowing down their development until late into their teenage years; they have a higher rate of injury and death than adults.

Research has shown that the largest proportion of children in hazardous work, relative to the overall number of children in the region, lives in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that approximately one in three children are engaged in child labour, representing 69 million children. Children living in the poorest households and in rural areas are most likely to be engaged in child labour.

Globally, hazardous work is generally found in agriculture activities such as fishing, forestry, livestock-herding and aquaculture in addition to subsistence and commercial farming. Other forms of this work include hazardous environments, slavery and forced labour, inter alia illicit activities such as drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict.

On the  2011 World Day Against Child Labour, the ILO calls for action in three areas:

• A renewed effort to ensure that all children below the minimum age of employment are in education and are not exposed to hazardous work.
• Strengthened workplace safety and health systems for all workers, but with specific safeguards for children between the minimum age of employment and the age of 18.
• All countries, in consultation with workers’ and employers’ organizations, to determine the types and conditions of work to be prohibited to children below the age of 18, and to ensure that lists of such work are regularly reviewed and effective enforcement action taken.

The Facebook page of World Day Against Child Labour contains extensive information about global events. Although there is no hash-tag to follow on Twitter, many tweets about the day and events are up. Also follow @ILO_IPEC (The International Labour Organization's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour), the sponsor of the day, for more information. 

Background

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002, in order to draw attention to the global magnitude of child labour and what is needed to eliminate it. Ten years later, with several hundred million child labourers worldwide, this aim remains of paramount importance, as underlined by the Director-General of the ILO Juan Somavia: “Child labour is one face of poverty. It is an expression of profound deficits of decent work. Decent work for women and men including a floor of basic social protection, as well as access to quality education, are the bulwark of stability for families, communities and societies. They are stepping stones to a world free from child labour. It is time for the broad vision and coherent policies that will end child labour.”

What is Child Labour?

Child labour is defined as work which deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development; work that is mentally, physically, socially and/or morally dangerous and harmful and which interferes with their education by denying them an opportunity to attend school, forcing them to leave school prematurely, or alternatively requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with long and heavy work.

UNICEF defines child labour as work that exceeds a minimum number of hours, depending on the age of a child and on the type of work. Such work is considered harmful to the child and should therefore be eliminated.