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Nature of child labor
The negative effects of child labor
The negative effects of child labor
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“Sandy couldn’t see hands in the darkness of his home (a shack made from palm bark and zinc). He is from Dominican Republic. Although, he couldn’t see his hands: he could feel the burning sensation from the scars on his left thumb. He labored on a farm trimming garlic plants.” (Child Labour) He couldn’t eat breakfast and besides it was nothing for him to eat. He didn’t have work boots so he was forced to walk barefoot.
It is not believable that today child slaves are sold for less than they were in the 1900s. The child slaves’ masters don’t sell them in public auctions because it’s illegal. Yet, child slaves are stilled owned due to contracts, poverty, and fraud. Child slaves are trapped, controlled, and dehumanized just like in history stories. Child labor slave in agriculture can be ended if the government gets involved, if people boycott products produced by child labor, and if an education system is put into place where the children are working.
Definition
Child labor Slavery in agriculture is work that harms children and/or keeps them from attending school says the International Labour Organization. However, child labor is working full- time at a young age, work that hinders physical and social status, and work that has too much responsibility for a minor.
Statistics
Worldwide, 61% of child laborers are in agriculture. Child labor slaves in agriculture range from the age of five to seventeen. Child labor in agriculture is hazardous for minors. About 59% of children work in these hazardous situations. There are 61% of children in agriculture slavery in Asia, 32% in Africa, 7% in Latin America stated by the International Labour Organization. While, people would say the U.S. to be a land of freedom even the childr...
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...ck watchers: working kids keep poor Latin American families afloat, but at a long-term cost for the region.” Latin trade 14 ( Jan.2006):20. Opposing Viewpoints in context. Web. 20 Feb. 2014.
“Child Labouring Agriculture.” International Labour Organization. N.p., N.d. web. 24. Feb. 2014. /.
“Take Action: End child labor in U.S. agriculture.” Humans Right Watch. N.P., web. 2014. www.hrw.org/.
“ Child Labour in Agriculture.” Food, Agriculture & decent work ILO & FAO working together: N.p., n.d. web.2014. www.fao-ilo.org/
“ child labor.” Excerpted from the state of the worlds children 1997, New York:Oxford University for UNICEF, 1997
“cotton crimes campaign.” Antislavery today’s fight for tomorrow’s freedom. N.p., n.d. web. 26 Feb. 2014 www.antislavery.org/
“child labour stories.” International labour office N.p., n.d. web. 26 Feb. 2014 ,www.ilo.org/>
The novel Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys does an excellent job illustrating the troubling issue of child labor. The extent of child labor in a country is directly linked by the nature and extent of poverty within it. Child labor deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity. It is detrimental to physical and mental development. Today, there are an estimated 246 million child laborers around the globe. This irritating social issue is not only violates a nation’s minimum age laws , it also involves intolerable abuse, such as child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor, and illicit activities. In Between Shades of Grey , Lina and her ten year old brother are unrightfully charged 25 years of labor at a work camp in Siberia. It prevented the children from going to school and used them to undermine labor standards. In the harsh winter and even worse living conditions, they watched their mother as she starved to death.
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
"ILO." Child Labour in Agriculture (IPEC). N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2017. (-- removed HTML --) .
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.
Want to know how many deaths does Child labor cause throughout the whole year? Because of child labor, there are over 2.7 million deaths every year! Child labor is a definite human rights violation which is included in both factories and farms. There they are overworked, underfed, and have no medical attention. The use of children for child labor is gross to even think about and is a major human rights issue. First of all, child labor should not just be used for their size to work in factories. Secondly, they should not be the victims to the harmful pesticides and chemicals sprayed over the field to help the crops.
We are often unaware or pick to disregard the problem of child labor in sweatshops. However, even though most people are not conscious of this, it is a reality that many children are deprived of their childhood and are enforced to work. It has been estimated by the International Labor Organization (2013) that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in emerging countries. More than half of these child laborers are hired in Asia, others work in Africa and Latin America mostly.
Child Labour In the past few years, a great deal of attention has been drawn to the global problem of child labour. Virtually everyone is guilty of participating in this abusive practice through the purchase of goods made in across the globe, usually in poor, developing nations. This issue has been around for a great length of time but has come to the forefront recently because of reports that link well known American companies like Wal-Mart and Nike to the exploitation of children. Prior to this media attention, many Americans and other people in developed nation were blind to the reality of the oppressive conditions that are reality to many.
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.
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
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 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...
Modern child labour is a terrible form of slavery. Known to occur in third world countries, it can be considered the worst form of slavery because of the horrible hardships the children must endure. Physical and mental disorders, education barriers or being uneducated, child isolation, child prostitution, terrible working conditions and being underpaid are all prevalent in child labour populations. Child slavery is the worst form of slavery because it causes physical and mental disorders and creates education barriers for the children enslaved, therefore deprives them of a normal childhood.
So I believe that the issue of child labour is not simple. As Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report argued, children’s work needs to be seen as having two extremes. On one hand, there is the destructive or exploitative work and, on the other hand, there is beneficial work - promoting or enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling, recreation and rest. ‘And between these two poles are vast areas of work that need not negatively affect a child’s development.’ My firm belief is that there is a difference between child labour and child work and that in both cases the issue is whether or not the child is deliberately being exploited.
Slavery, in many people's minds, is not a problem that we have to face today. But in fact, it is still a major problem in third world countries. Most countries have laws put in place to prevent slave labor, but these are overlooked by companies all around the world. Slavery may not be as prominent as it was back when we fought the revolutionary war, but it is still a problem that we must work together to solve.
Since the definition varies drastically in different parts of the world it is hard to decide what is child labour and what is labour. For example the minimum work age in Egypt is 12, this would therefore constitute the 12 year old as an adult in the workforce and therefore would not be put in the child labour category.16 However the basic minimum age recommended by the International Labour Organization is 15.17 The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child as any person under the age of 18 therefore constituting the full time employment of 12 year olds as child labour.18 While the definition of child may be disputed, I still firmly believe that the full time work of persons under the age of 18, which puts them in harms way and distracts from education, and life outside of work constitutes as a human rights violation.