Child labour

Child labour refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally [3] dangerous and harmful. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organisations. [4][5] Legislations across the world prohibit child labour. These laws do not consider all work by children as child labour; exceptions include work by child artists, supervised training, certain categories of work such [6][7] as those by Amishchildren, and others. Child labour was employed to varying extents through most of history. Before 1940, numerous children aged 514 worked in Europe, the United States and various colonies of European powers. These children worked in agriculture, home-based assembly operations, factories, mining and in services such as newsies. Some worked night shifts lasting 12 hours. With the rise of household income, availability of [8][9][10] schools and passage of child labour laws, the incidence rates of child labour fell. In developing countries, with high poverty and poor schooling opportunities, child labour is still prevalent. In 2010, sub-saharan Africa had the highest incidence rates of child labour, with several African nations [11] witnessing over 50 percent of children aged 514 working. Worldwide agriculture is the largest [12] employer of child labour. Vast majority of child labour is found in rural settings and informal urban [13] economy; children are predominantly employed by their parents, rather than factories. Poverty and lack [14] of schools are considered as the primary cause of child labour. The incidence of child labour in the world decreased from 25% to 10% between 1960 and 2003, [15] according to the World Bank.

History

Industrial Revolution
During the Industrial Revolution, children as young as four were employed in production factories with [16] dangerous, and often fatal, working conditions. Based on this understanding of the use of children as labourers, it is now considered by wealthy countries to be a human rights violation, and is outlawed, while some poorer countries may allow or tolerate child labour. Child labour can also be defined as the full-time employment of children who are under a minimum legal age.

Early 1900s
In the early 1900s, thousands of boys were employed in glass making industries. Glass makingwas a dangerous and tough job especially without the current technologies. The process of making glass includes intense heat to melt glass (3133 F). When the boys are at work, they are exposed to this heat. This could cause eye trouble, lung aliments, heat exhaustion, cut, and burns. Since workers were paid by the piece, they had to work productively for hours without a break. Since furnaces had to be constantly burning, there were night shifts from 5:00 pm to 3:00 am Many factory owners preferred boys under 16 [21] years of age. Children as young as three were put to work. A high number of children also worked [22] asprostitutes. Many children (and adults) worked 16-hour days. As early as 1802 and 1819 Factory

Acts were passed to regulate the working hours of workhouse children in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day. These acts were largely ineffective and after radical agitation, by for example the "Short Time Committees" in 1831, a Royal Commission recommended in 1833 that children aged 1118 should work a maximum of 12 hours per day, children aged 911 a maximum of eight hours, and children under the age of nine were no longer permitted to work. This act however only applied to the textile industry, and further agitation led to another act in 1847 limiting both adults and children to 10-hour working days. An estimated 1.7 million children under the age of fifteen were employed in American industry by 1900.
[24] [23]

In 1910, over 2 million children in the same age group were employed in the United States. This [25] included children who rolled cigarettes, engaged in factory work, worked as bobbin doffers in textile [26] mills, worked in coal mines and were employed in canneries. Lewis Hine's photographs of child labourers in the 1910s powerfully evoked the plight of working children in the American south. Hines took these photographs between 1908 and 1917 as staff photographer for the National Child Labour Committee. Household enterprises Factories and mines were not the only place where child labour was prevalent in early 20th century. Home-based manufacturing across the United States and Europe employed children in tedious [9] work. Poverty and misery were commonplace. Governments and reformers argued that labour in factories must be regulated and the state had an obligation to provide welfare for poor. Ironically, legislation that followed had an opposite effect. Work moved out of factories into urban homes. Families and women in particular preferred it because it allowed them to generate income while taking care of household duties. Home-based manufacturing operations were active year round. Families willingly deployed their children [27] in these income generating home enterprises. In many cases, men worked from home. In France, over 58 percent of garment workers operated out of their homes; in Germany, the number of full-time home operations nearly doubled between 1882 to 1907; and in the United States, millions of families operated out of home seven days a week, year round to produce garments, shoes, artificial flowers, feathers, match boxes, toys, umbrellas and other products. Children aged 514 worked alongside the parents. Home-based operations and child labour in Australia, Britain, Austria and other parts of the world was common. Rural areas similarly saw families deploying their children in agriculture. In 1946, Frieda Miller then Director of United States Department of Labour - told the International Labour Organisation that these home-based operations offered, "low wages, long hours, child labour, unhealthy and insanitary [9][28][29][30] working conditions."

Colonial empires
Systematic use of child labour was common place in the colonies of European powers between 1650 to 1950. In Africa, colonial administrators encouraged traditional kin-ordered modes of production, that is hiring a household for work not just the adults. Millions of children worked in colonial agricultural [32][33] plantations, mines and domestic service industries. Sophisticated schemes were promulgated where children in these colonies between the ages of 5-14 were hired as apprentice without pay in exchange for learning a craft. A system of Pauper Apprenticeship came into practice in 19th century where the colonial master neither needed the native parents' nor child's approval to assign a child to labour, away from [34] parents, at a distant farm owned by a different colonial master. Other schemes included 'earn-andlearn' programs where children would work and thereby learn. Britain for example passed a law, the socalled Masters and Servants Act of 1899, followed by Tax and Pass Law, to encourage child labour in colonies particularly in Africa. These laws offered the native people the legal ownership to some of the native land in exchange for making labour of wife and children available to colonial government's needs such as in farms and aspicannins.

Beyond laws, new taxes were imposed on colonies. One of these taxes was the Head Tax in British and French colonial empires. The tax was imposed on everyone older than 8 years, in some colonies. To pay these taxes and cover living expenses, children in colonial households had to [35][36][37] work. In southeast Asian colonies, such as Hong Kong, child labour such as the Mui Tsai (), was rationalised as a cultural tradition and ignored by British authorities. The Dutch East India Company officials rationalised their child labour abuses with, "it is a way to save these children from a worse fate." Christian mission schools in regions stretching from Zambia to Nigeria too required work from [32] children, and in exchange provided religious education, not secular education. Elsewhere, the Canadian Dominion Statutes in form of so-called Breaches of Contract Act, stipulated jail terms for [40] uncooperative child workers. Proposals to regulate child labour began as early as 1786.
[41] [38][39]

21st century

Incidence rates for child labour worldwide, per World Bank data. The data is incomplete, as many countries do not collect or report child labour data (colored gray). The color code is as follows: yellow (<10% of children working), green (10-20%), orange (20-30%), red (30-40%) and black (>40%). Some nations such as Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Ethiopia have more than half of all children aged 5-14 at work to make ends meet.[42]

Child labour is still common in many parts of the world. Estimates for child labour vary. It ranges between 250 to 304 million, if children aged 517 involved in any economic activity are counted. If light occasional work is excluded, ILO estimates there were 153 million child labourers aged 514 worldwide in 2008. This is about 20 million less than ILO estimate for child labourers in 2004. Some 60 percent of the child labour was involved in agricultural activities such as farming, dairy, fisheries and forestry. Another 25 percent of child labourers were in service activities such as retail, hawking goods, restaurants, load and transfer of goods, storage, picking and recycling trash, polishing shoes, domestic help, and other services. The remaining 15 percent laboured in assembly and manufacturing in informal economy, home-based [43][44][45] enterprises, factories, mines, packaging salt, operating machinery, and such operations. Two out of three child workers work along side their parents, in unpaid family work situations. Some children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants. Child labour predominantly occurs in the rural areas (70%) and informal urban sector (26%). Contrary to popular beliefs, most child labourers are employed by their parents rather than in manufacturing or formal economy. Children who work for pay or in-kind compensation are usually found in rural settings, than urban centers. Less than 3 percent of child labour aged 514 across the world work [13] outside of their household, or away from their parents. Child labour accounts for 22% of the workforce in Asia, 32% in Africa, 17% in Latin America, 1% in US, [46] Canada, Europe and other wealthy nations. The proportion of child labourers varies greatly among countries and even regions inside those countries. Africa has the highest percentage of children aged 5 17 employed as child labour, and a total of over 65 million. Asia, with its larger population, has the largest

number of children employed as child labour at about 114 million. Latin America and Caribbean region [47] has lower overall population density, but at 14 million child labourers has high incidence rates too.

A boy repairing a tire in Gambia.

Accurate present day child labour information is difficult to obtain because of disagreements between data sources as to what constitutes child labour? In some countries, government policy contributes to this difficulty. For example, the overall extent of child labour in China is unclear due to the government [48] categorizing child labour data as highly secret. China has enacted regulations to prevent child labour; still, the practice of child labour is reported to be a persistent problem within China, generally in [49][50] agriculture and low-skill service sectors as well as small workshops and manufacturing enterprises. Maplecroft Child Labour Index 2012 survey reports 76 countries pose extreme child labour complicity risks for companies operating worldwide. The ten highest risk countries in 2012, ranked in decreasing order, were: Myanmar, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Burundi, Pakistan and Ethiopia. Of the major growth economies, Maplecroft ranked Philippines 25th riskiest, India 27th, China 36th, Viet Nam 37th, Indonesia 46th, and Brazil 54th - all of them rated to involve extreme risks of child labour uncertainties, to corporations seeking to invest in developing world and import products from emerging markets.
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