International Regulations Governing Prohibition Of Child Labour: Successful or Unsuccessful?

Child labour - these two words with which I believe everyone is quite familiar. Child labour generally means any people under 18 years of age who are employed.

However, child labour has been defined by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) as "work that exceeds a minimum number of hours, depending on the age of a child and on the type of work. Such work is considered harmful to the child and should therefore be eliminated." (http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_childlabour.html)

There are at present mainly three international regulations governing the prohibition of child labour worldwide -

• United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), Articles 32 and 33
• International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999), and
• International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 138 on Minimum Age for Workers (1973)

These above Conventions were adopted with an undoubtedly honest goal to eliminate child labour worldwide. These conventions requires the Member States to implement the enforcement of the Convention, and as well as shows ways to prevent child labour along with many other provisions which are the best tools to get rid off child labour.

But despite such measures being taken it has been admitted by the ILO Director General Juan Somavia that child labour still remains a problem on a massive scale (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1970563.stm).

Unfortunately the grim reality of today's child labour is that one in every six children worldwide is involved in child labour (http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_childlabour.html). According to the estimate of the ILO 13.6% child labour exist worldwide (Asia and the Pacific - 13.3%, the Latin America and the Caribbean - 10%, the Sub- Saharan Africa - 25.3%, and other regions 6.7%) (http://www.ilo.org/ipecinfo/product/viewProduct.doproductId=13313).

The child labour is common in mostly the developing countries, but surprisingly and unfortunately nowadays children are now being even exploited and used as labour in the developed countries too, such as the United Kingdom! As an example, I will cite a report published by BBC News in their headlines on 25 October 2010 titled "Child Onion Pickers Highlight Exploitation Problem" - girls and boys from Romania were found working in extremely low temperatures Worcestershire's fields (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11617664).

Even companies like Apple from the developed nations also admitted to using child labour at factories that manufactured their products (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7330986/Appleadmits-using-child-labour.html).

After looking at this figures and datas , do you think the international regulations governing the prohibition of child labour are successful? At least in my opinion I don't think that this international laws are successful, although the reason for this might be the widespread corruption and lack of democracy in the developing countries. But whatever the reason may be, but it is definitely the truth that children are now treated as items to be bought or sold and not as human beings, which is very unfortunate.

 

Source:
UNICEF <http://www.unicef.org/>
ILO <http://www.ilo.org/>
BBC <http://www.bbc.co.uk/>
Telegraph <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/>