Child Labour and IPEC: An overview

Children in almost all societies work in one way or another, although the types of work they do and the forms and conditions of their involvement vary among societies and over time. Girls’ and boys’ participation in certain types of light work, such as helping parents care for the home and family for short periods in the day, or teenagers working for a few hours before or after school, or during holidays, is considered to be part of growing up. It is also a means of acquiring basic knowledge, self-discipline and practical skills. But this type of economic activity is not what the child labour issue is all about. The global movement to eliminate child labour that has strongly emerged over the last decade should not be misunderstood as an appeal to prohibit all work carried out by children, but rather those kinds and circumstances of work that could be detrimental to them. Over the years there has been a growing understanding of the causes and consequences of child labour. It is now widely accepted that giving priority to the elimination of the worst forms of child labour, along with investments in the prevention of child labour, are the most effective approaches to dealing with the problem.

The rationale for seeing child labour as a problem comes from three distinct perspectives. The first is rooted in the respect for children’s universal rights; the second relates to the adverse effects of child labour on economic development, particularly for the long-term development of human capital; and the third to the adverse effects of inappropriate work on children’s health and mental development. While these perspectives are conceptually distinct and their immediate policy implications may at times even conflict – they are in fact complementary over the long run.

Child labour and the International Standards

Three sets of international standards – the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the ILO Conventions on Minimum Age and the Worst Forms of Child Labour, and the ILO Conventions on Safety at work, provide the legal, internationally-agreed upon basis for action as noted above.

These conventions also constitute the policy framework for IPEC’s work. The Convention on the Rights of the Child specifies the rights and protection, including protection from exploitation through labour, for those who are under age 18. Throughout its existence, ILO action has used a minimum age for admission to employment as a yardstick for defining and regulating child labour. At the very first session of the International Labour Conference in 1919, the ILO adopted the first international treaty on child labour – the Minimum Age (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 5), which prohibited the work of children under the age of 14 in industrial establishments. During the following fifty years, nine further Conventions were adopted. All of them set standards for minimum age in different sectors – industry, agriculture, maritime work, non-industrial employment, fishing, and underground work. The adoption of these standards demonstrated a growing international commitment to abolishing child labour, and to draw a line distinguishing child labour from more acceptable forms of work by children.

It was not until much later that it proved possible to adopt a comprehensive Convention on the subject – the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138). This landmark Convention applies to all economic sectors and to all working children, whether they are employed for wages or working on their own account. It represents the most comprehensive and authoritative international definition of minimum age for admission to employment. It is also innovative in that it provides for a progressive and flexible approach to the problem, particularly for developing countries. Thus, it places on ratifying States the obligation to fix a minimum age and defines a range of minimum ages below which no child should be required to work. These minima vary according to the level of development and according to the type of employment and work, as follows:

Focusing on the worst forms of child labour

The adoption of the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No.182) helped to focus the spotlight on the urgency of action to eliminate, as a priority, the worst forms of child labour, which it defines as:

• all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage, serfdom and forced or compulsory labour (including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict);
• the use, procuring, or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;
• the use, procuring, or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;
• work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children (Article 3).

A distinction can be drawn between two categories of the worst forms of child labour:

• those that this report terms the “unconditional” worst forms of child labour, referred to in Article 3(a)-(c) of Convention No. 182 above, that are so fundamentally at odds with children’s basic human rights that they are absolutely prohibited for all persons under the age of 18;
• hazardous work, as defined by national legislation, that may be conducted in legitimate sectors of economic activity but that is nonetheless damaging to the child worker.

The elimination of the worst forms of child labour is thus proclaimed to be a major and urgent priority for national and international action. However, the adoption and widespread acceptance of Convention No. 182 does not mean that the ultimate goal of the elimination of all forms of child labour has been abandoned. Giving priority to combating the worst forms of child labour is simply a matter of doing first things first. It provides an entry point to promote and facilitate further action to attain the ultimate goal.

A universal commitment to effective abolition

Under the Declaration, the elimination of all these forms of child labour has become the shared goal of every one of the ILO’s 175 member States. It is also an objective of the Organization as a whole, which has pledged to assist its Members to realize the principle of the effective abolition of child labour.

Defining the problem: what we want to eliminate

As mentioned under Section 1.1.1, not all economic activities undertaken by children can be equated with child labour. Child labour refers to work that:

• Is mentally, physically, or morally harmful to children;
• Can negatively affect their mental, physical, or social development, and
• Interferes with their schooling:
  
  • by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school;
  • by obliging them to leave school prematurely; or
  • by requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

In its most extreme forms, it involves children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of large cities – all of this often at a very early age.

In short: child labour is work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and is harmful to their physical and mental development.

It is difficult to give a precise dictionary definition of the term “child labour” applicable to all situations and all countries. How can a line be drawn between “acceptable” forms of work by children on the one hand and child labour on the other? Whether or not particular forms of work can be called child labour depends on the child’s age, the types of work performed, the conditions under which it is performed and the objectives pursued by individual countries. The answer varies from country to country, as well as among sectors within countries.

The magnitude of the problem

When the ILO published its first global estimate of 250 million child workers in 1996, it had a forceful impact on public opinion worldwide and helped mobilize governments and civil society groups into action against child labour. In the several years that followed, the need to support both this growing global movement with more precise and detailed estimates of child labour became increasingly apparent. In 2001, a major research project to provide new global estimates was undertaken by ILO’s Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC). The results of this research were published in April 2002 in the report Every child counts – New global estimates on child labour and served as statistical input for A Future without child labour: Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. A follow-up research entitled, "The end of Child Labour: Within reach", was released in June this year.

A majority of child labour is work that is hazardous

Of the approximately 246 million children in child labour, nearly 171 million were in hazardous situations or conditions. In other words, children in hazardous work constituted about half the number of economically active children and more than two thirds of those in child labour. Of these children, a stunning 111 million children were below 15 years of age. Boys outnumber girls in hazardous work across all age groups. Seen in relative terms, among all children about one-half of the working boys were in hazardous situations, compared with slightly more than two in five working girls.

In addition to the number of children in hazardous work, it is estimated that there were roughly 8.4 million children involved in the unconditional worst forms of child labour that are listed in ILO Convention No. 182, Article 3. This includes forced and bonded labour (5.7 million), armed conflict (0.3 million), prostitution and pornography (1.8 million), and illicit activities (0.6 million). A significant number of these 8.4 million children were most certainly victims of trafficking as well. It is estimated that at least 1.2 million children were trafficked for child labour (The total number of 8.4 million children in the unconditional worst forms does not include trafficked children as a separate category because of the risk of double-counting.).

The causes of child labour

Poverty is the greatest single, if not the only, force which creates the flow of children into the workplace. It forces many children to work full time for their own and their families' survival. Furthermore, because of poverty, the acute need of many households to keep multiple family members working in order to ensure income security makes it nearly impossible for them to invest in their children's education.

The price of such an investment can be very high. Most "free" public education is in fact very expensive to a poor family, which is expected to meet the cost of books and other school supplies, uniforms and clothes, transportation, and sometimes even provide unofficial payments to teachers. In some places, the costs for a primary-level student may represent one-third of the entire cash income of a typical poor family, and many families have more than one child of school age.

In addition to the family's inability to pay for school, many children live in communities that do not have adequate school facilities, so they work. However, even when schools are available, the comparatively high cost of education to children of poor families means that the return on such an investment must also be high. While it is true that many children drop out of school because they have to work, it is equally true that many become so discouraged by school that they prefer to work.

Analyses at the macroeconomic level show a high rate of social return on investments in education, especially at the primary level. The Inter-American Development Bank in 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries has measured the correlation between national investment in primary education and economic growth; this survey revealed that the social return on this type of investment averaged 17 per cent. In this respect, history also reminds us that it was not that countries industrialized first and then invested in the "luxury" of universal schooling. On the contrary, in Austria, Germany, Japan and the United States, high rates of literacy were achieved before large-scale industrialization.

On the demand side it is generally considered that children are most likely to be employed when their labour is less expensive or less troublesome than that of adults, when other labour is scarce, and when they are considered irreplaceable by reason of their size or perceived dexterity. While it is true in most cases that child workers are paid less than their adult counterparts, the competitive wage differences and other advantages of child labour are not always as present, clear and compelling as is claimed. The argument for economic irreplaceability fares only a little better as demonstrated in recent studies that labour-cost savings realized through the employment of children were surprisingly small.

Not all reasons for using child labour are economic. In the informal sector, enterprises hire children and adults on a piece-rate basis, which means that there are no discernible cost savings as a result of using child labour. This in turn implies that there are important non-economic reasons for employing children. Parents are a major source of demand for the work of children from their own families. Huge numbers of children work as unpaid workers in family farms, shops and stores that depend on family labour for their economic viability. It is conventional to assume that these children are much less likely to be exploited than those who work outside the family, but the evidence does not support so sweeping a generalization; in fact the opposite is often true. It is clear, however, that many in both developing and industrialized countries feel that families should be able to count on children to assist in maintaining the household economy, and that such participation is considered desirable as long as it does not become abusive.