Children pay high price for cheap labour

[ej510]

Millions of children work to help their families in ways that are neither harmful nor exploitative. But millions more are put to work in ways that drain childhood of all joy - and crush the right to normal physical and mental development.

This is the kind of work that the Convention on the Rights of the Child seeks to end. Article 32 sets out the right "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."

By and large, it is the children of marginalized communities, their futures already threatened by inadequate diet and health care, who are at greatest risk from exploitation at work. In India, the majority of children in servitude are children from low castes or tribal minorities. In Latin America, the highest incidence of child labour is found among the indigenous people.

Often such children are as young as six or seven years old. Often their hours of labour are 12 to 16 hours a day. Often their place of work is the sweatshop, the mine, the refuse heap, or the street. Often the work itself is dull, day-long, repetitive, low-paid or unpaid. Sometimes the child works under the threat of violence and intimidation, or is subject to sexual exploitation.

Cont'd at the link: http://www.unicef.org/pon95/chil0016.html