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Chil Labour: A Major International Issue Child labour usually means work done by children under the age of fifteen, which limits or damages their physical, mental,
Submitted by ghaleb on December 4, 2005
Category: Social Issues
Words: 1834 | Pages: 8
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Child labour usually means work done by children under the age of fifteen, which limits or damages their physical, mental, social or psychological development. Some work does not harm children and may in fact be beneficial for them. Most people agree that when we talk about child labour, we refer to something in tolerable - young children denied school and play working simply to live, in dangerous conditions. Some of the worst child labour abuses involve mostly four and five year olds.
About 250 million children work in dangerous and unsafe conditions. The International Labour Organization estimates that at least one-quarter of all children in Africa work and in some countries it is closer to half Getting exact figures is difficult in countries, like China, where government restrictions make it next to impossible to get reliable figures even though child labour is unrestrained. Child labour is more common in rural areas than in urban areas because it is easier to keep it under wraps. Of course, it is also widespread in the free trade zone, where foreign companies go to avoid union and labour laws. Child labour results from a system, which creates poverty on a massive scale. We can not look at child labour just at the level of the individual family - we need to understand the class and cultural politics behind it. Child labour is also part of the economic structure in many countries, just like it used to be in Canada. Entire industries now depend on labour of children and families also depend on their children to work - some pledge their children's work in return for a loan or to pay back a debt. Children rarely earn a living wage; in fact they are hired because they can be paid so little. Parents of child labourers are often unemployed or underemployed and so employers need to hire adults, so that their children do not need to work. Employers use children because kids are cheap to hire and often uneducated. Children are not likely to organize trade unions...
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