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Child labour around the world
Child labor in third world countries
Child labour around the world
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To help their family, many children in Uzbekistan are forced to gather cotton each day. The work conditions in the cotton fields are harmful; they live in dirty housings, develop illnesses, and suffer injuries. The children must meet a certain cotton quota; otherwise, they pay a fine, which most cannot afford, are expelled from school, or authorities beat them. After the cotton has been collected, the Uzbek government sells the cotton at a high price to earn money. To avoid breaking any labor laws, it has concealed child labor by threatening reporters. The Uzbek government forces many children to pick cotton every day, which may lead to injuries, illnesses, or even death.
Uzbek children who are unable to participate in the harvest or to fulfill their quota face severe punishments from authorities. They work in cotton fields every day for months to support their family. Parents who are unwilling to send their children must mail a letter to local authorities and either pay a fine or hire someone to pick cotton for their child; teachers also collect letters from parents confirming their child’s participation in the harvest. The children are then taken from their schools and forced to live in a temporary housing near the cotton fields. Regional authorities, police officials, farm administrators, and school officials make sure a quota of forty kilograms (eighty-eight pounds) per day is met (Uzbekistan). Otherwise, the children face punishment–expulsion from school, beatings, and paying fines. Authorities claimed to have only punished children if they misbehaved. However, many human rights activists report cases of police and school officials beating children for not meeting the quota. The dean of the National University of Karakalpaks...
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...n. However, it has denied any access to its fields and continues to hide reports made on child labor.
Works Cited
Doward, Jamie. “H%M Comes under Pressure to Act on the Child Labour Law.” The Guardian
15 Dec. 2012. Print
D.T. “Forced Labor in Uzbekistan: In the Land of Cotton.” The Economist 16 Oct. 2013. Print
"Forced Labor and Child Labor in the Cotton Sector of Uzbekistan Is Unique to the World: It
Is a State-controlled System, under the Direction of a President in Power since the End of the
Soviet Union." International Labor Rights Forum. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
industries/cotton>.
“Uzbekistan: Forced Labor Widespread in Cotton Harvest.” Human Rights Watch 26 Jan. 2013.
Web. 27 Jan. 2014.
“Uzbek Government Breaks Promise to End Child Labor in Cotton Fields.” The Washington
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Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
According to the International Labour Organization almost 21 million people are victims of forced labor (n. pagn). 19 million of these people are exploited by private enterprises and individuals, and generate 150 billion dollars in profits per year (n. pagn). It wasn’t until February 2016 that the US President signed H.R. 644, which banned the import of products produced with forced and child labor (n. pagn).
“There are at least 12.3 million persons in forced labour today” (www.ilo.org). A great number of the victims are poverty-stricken people in Asia, “whose vulnerability is exploited by others for a profit” (www.ilo.org).
What is Child Labor?Child Labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school. Around the world and in the U.S., growing gaps between rich and poor in recent decades have forced millions of young children out of school and into work. It is estimated that 215 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are currently working under conditions that are considered illegal, hazardous, or extremely exploitative.1 Underage children work many different types of jobs that included commercial agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining, and domestic services. Some children were involved in illicit activities that included drug trade, prostitution, and other traumatic occupations that included serving as soldiers. Child Labor involved threatening children’s physical, mental, or emotional well- being. It involved intolerable abuse, such as slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor or illicit activities and prevented children from going to school.
We have all at one point seen or read an article of young girls and boys being abducted or simply forced into manual labor. Many reasons have been given as to why child labor occurs in these foreign countries such as: poverty, low pay, and unskilled work. These foreign companies or sweatshops find it easy to simply abduct poor and uneducated children, and force them into slavery for little to no pay and horrible working conditions. This is because there is greater demand for low skilled, and low cost labor that employers prefer to fill with child labor, instead of having to deal with more expensive and less flexible adult employees. Throughout the years there has been an increase in the supply of child labor mainly because of young kids in
Child labor laws need to be enforced more because governments are paying little attention to those who abuse the laws; therefore children are being abused physically by long hours and economically by low pay. Farmers and many businesses in third world countries are accused of taking major advantage of these laws. This topic is highlighted as one of the highest controversial issues in labor politics. Child labor is a major issue in countries such as Africa, Argentina, and Bangladesh. For example, in Africa, some children do the work of a grown man for as little as one dollar a day. On the other hand, in the United States some studies show that child labor is a bigger problem in the U.S than some third world countries (Barta and others). Many farmers are facing a huge problem; the government is attempting to keep children from working long hours on their family farms.
Think about the cotton in your shirt, the sugar in your coffee, and the shoes on your feet, all of which could be products of child labor. Child labor is a practice that deprives children of their childhood, their potential, and their dignity and includes over 200 million children worldwide who are involved in the production of goods for companies and industries willing to exploit these kids for profit. Although most countries have laws prohibiting child labor, a lack of funding and manpower means that these laws are rarely enforced on a large scale. However, even for a first-world country like the United States, that has a large number of state and federal law enforcement officers, child labor is still a problem because priority is given to crimes that are more violent or heinous. Child labor must be made a priority issue because it is a global plague whose victims are physically and psychologically scarred, lack a proper education, are impoverished, and whose children are doomed to the same fate if nothing changes.
Child labor refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely or by requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work (International Labor Organization). Child labor has been a big problem ever since the Victorian Era. Many counties worldwide have used and still to this day use child labor. Though there are many laws that have been implemented against using children to work, many countries tend to ignore them. In my paper I will be discussing countries where child labor is present, push to stop child labor, companies that use child labor, the effects on children, and the reasons for child labor.
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs. These children worked long hours, were frequently beaten, and were paid a pittance. In 1979, a study shows more than 50 million children below the age of 16 were considered child labor (United Nation labors agency data). In 1998, according to the Campaign for Labor rights that is a NGO and United Nation Labor Agency, 250 million children around the world are working in farms, factories, and household. Some human rights experts indicate that there are as many as 400 million children under the age of 15 are performing forced labor either part or full-time under unsafe work environment. Based upon the needs of the situation, there are specific areas of the world where the practice of child labor is taking place. According to the journal written by Basu, Ashagrie gat...
Schmidt, James D. 2010. "Broken Promises: Child Labor and Industrial Violence." Insights on Law & Society 10, no. 3: 14-17. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 29, 2011).
According to UNICEF, there are an estimated one hundred and fifty eight million children aged five to fourteen in child labour worldwide. Millions of children are engaged in dangerous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, working as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations. If there is nothing wrong with child labour, then why is the exploitation so secret? Do you ever wonder when you go into certain shops how a handmade t-shirt can be so cheap? Or on the other hand, products which are sold to us at extremely high prices and we assume...
In document UN/ CRC/ 531, analyzed through UNICEF, an estimated 25% of the world’s children (developing world) are in the web of child labor. To add to this, nearly 70% of all girl/female laborers go unregistered, often performing acts of prostitution and strenuous domestic housework. This form of unregistered work is dangerous to young girls because the employers often abuse their employees sexually and physically, as well as psychologically scarring them for years. This alarming fact can be attributed to the inequality of education given to young girls.
Campaign against child labour and education for child labour are also our major programmes. 2. Facts about Child Labour : We always compare children with flowers and butterflies because of their common virtues like innocence, ever present freshness and tension free lifestyle. We do not differentiate between children and butterflies as far as their playfulness is concerned. We also consider our children as future pillars of our Nation.
In conclusion, I believe that child labour should be considered a violation of basic human rights. This essay demonstrates that not only does child labour take away fundamental human right however it also interferes with the education of the child and reinforces the cycle of poverty. It also proves child labour violates basic working rights found in the UDHR under article 23 and 24. Child labour is an outright violation