Children Around the World - Child Labor

Child labor is a problem for which the world community has sought solutions and has seen some successes, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). The ILO, created in 1919 and incorporated into the UN in the 1940s, brings together unions, employers, and governments from UN member states to pursue safe and just work environments. In 2002 the ILO report "Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour" estimated that 211 million five- to fourteen-year-old children worked in 2000, a 16% decrease from the 250 million who were working in 1996. Nearly one-fifth (17.6%) of the world's five- to fourteen-year-olds worked and about one-third (seventy-three million) of working children were under the age of ten.

According to another ILO publication, Investing in Every Child: An Economic Study of the Costs and Benefits of Eliminating Child Labor (2004), 60.6% of working

TABLE 10.1

Infant mortality rates and international rankings, selected countries, selected years 1960–99
(Data are based on reporting by countries)
								International rankings1
Country2	1960	1970	1980	1990	1995	1998	19993	1960	1999
	Infant4 deaths per 1,000 live births
— Data not available.
1Rankings are from lowest to highest infant mortality rates (IMR). Countries with the same IMR receive the same rank. The country with the next highest IMR is assigned the rank it would have received had the lower-ranked countries not been tied, i.e., skip a rank. Some of the variation in infant mortality rate is due to differences among countries in distinguishing between fetal and infant deaths.
2Refers to countries, territories, cities, or geographic areas with at least 1 million population and with "complete" counts of live births and infant deaths as indicated in the United Nations Demographic yearbook.
3Rates for lsrael and New Zealand are from 1998.
4Under 1 year of age.
5Rates for 1990 and earlier years were calculated by combining information from the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.
6Includes data for East Jerusalem and Israeli residents in certain other territories under occupation by Israel military forces since June 1967.
7Excludes infants born alive after less than 28 weeks' gestation, of less than 1,000 grams in weight and 35 centimeters in length, who die within 7 days of birth.
Note: Some rates were revised.
SOURCE: "Table 25. Infant Mortality Rates and International Rankings: Selected Countries, Selected Years 1960–99," in Health, United States, 2003, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2003, http://WWW.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hus/trendtables.htm (accessed September 16, 2004)
Australia	20.2	17.9	10.7	8.2	5.7	5.0	5.7	5	22
Austria	37.5	25.9	14.3	7.8	5.4	4.9	4.4	24	9
Belgium	31.2	21.1	12.1	8.0	6.1	5.6	4.9	20	14
Bulgaria	45.1	27.3	20.2	14.8	14.8	14.4	14.5	30	35
Canada	27.3	18.8	10.4	6.8	6.0	5.3	5.3	14	18
Chile	125.1	78.8	33.0	16.0	11.1	10.9	10.1	36	32
Costa Rica	67.8	65.4	20.3	15.3	13.3	12.6	11.8	33	34
Cuba	37.3	38.7	19.6	10.7	9.4	7.1	6.4	23	26
Czech Republic	20.0	20.2	16.9	10.8	7.7	5.2	4.6	4	12
Denmark	21.5	14.2	8.4	7.5	5.1	4.7	4.2	8	7
England and Wales	22.5	18.5	12.1	7.9	6.2	5.7	5.8	8	24
Finland	21.0	13.2	7.6	5.6	4.0	4.1	3.7	6	5
France	27.5	18.2	10.0	7.3	4.9	4.6	4.3	15	8
Germany5	35.0	22.5	12.4	7.0	5.3	4.7	4.5	22	10
Greece	40.1	29.6	17.9	9.7	8.1	6.7	6.2	25	25
Hong Kong	41.5	19.2	11.2	6.2	4.6	3.2	3.1	26	1
Hungary	47.6	35.9	23.2	14.8	10.7	9.7	8.4	31	30
Ireland	29.3	19.5	11.1	8.2	6.3	6.2	5.5	17	19
Israel6	31.0	18.9	15.2	9.9	6.8	5.7	5.7	19	22
Italy	43.9	29.6	14.6	8.2	6.2	5.4	5.1	29	16
Japan	30.7	13.1	7.5	4.6	4.3	3.6	3.4	18	2
Netherlands	17.9	12.7	8.6	7.1	5.5	5.2	5.2	2	17
New Zealand	22.6	16.7	13.0	8.4	6.7	5.5	5.5	10	19
Northern Ireland	27.2	22.9	13.4	7.5	7.1	5.6	6.4	13	26
Norway	18.9	12.7	8.1	7.0	4.1	4.0	3.9	3	6
Poland	54.8	36.7	25.5	19.3	13.6	9.5	8.9	32	31
Portugal	77.5	55.5	24.3	11.0	7.5	6.0	5.6	35	21
Puerto Rico	43.3	27.9	18.5	13.4	12.7	10.5	10.6	27	33
Romania	75.7	49.4	29.3	26.9	21.2	20.5	18.6	34	37
Russian Federation7	—	—	22.0	17.6	18.2	16.4	17.1	—	36
Scotland	26.4	19.6	12.1	7.7	6.2	5.5	5.0	12	15
Singapore	34.8	21.4	11.7	6.7	4.0	4.2	3.5	21	4
Slovakia	28.6	25.7	20.9	12.0	11.0	8.8	8.3	16	29
Spain	43.7	28.1	12.3	7.6	5.5	4.9	4.5	28	10
Sweden	16.6	11.0	6.9	6.0	4.1	3.5	3.4	1	2
Switzerland	21.1	15.1	9.1	6.8	5.0	4.8	4.6	7	12
United States	26.0	20.0	12.6	9.2	7.6	7.2	7.1	11	28

children (110.4 million) lived in the Asia-Pacific region, 20.8% (37.9 million) lived in sub-Saharan Africa, and 9% (16.5 million) lived in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Every Child Counts noted that 55% of working children under age twelve worked in hazardous situations. In Sri Lanka, for example, those hazards resulted in more child deaths each year from pesticide poisoning than from malaria, tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, and polio combined. Child-trafficking, forced labor, armed conflict, prostitution, pornography, and illegal activities—what the authors called the "unconditional worst forms of child labor"—employed 8.4 million of the world's children.

Working conditions for children in overseas factories became a growing concern in the United States in the early 1990s as imports of apparel steadily climbed. A 1996 ILO report, "Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable," noted that more than half the $178 billion worth of garments sold in the United States in 1995 were imported, compared with 30% in 1980. By 1996, thirty-six of the forty-two largest apparel companies had adopted formal standards prohibiting child labor, and the number of children working overseas to make apparel sold in the United States appeared to be decreasing. However, the ILO report stressed that American companies did not adequately enforce their own standards. Child labor remained pervasive in some countries, particularly in Asia, where children in India, Pakistan, and the Philippines worked for small contractors or in their parents' homes.

Finding Solutions

A 2002 report from the U.S. Department of Labor ("Advancing the Campaign against Child Labor, Volume II: Addressing the Worst Forms of Child Labor") described some projects that have been implemented in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Nepal to eradicate the worst and most hazardous child labor. The projects were carried out by the ILO with financial contributions from the U.S. Department of Labor. For example, one project undertaken in the poor Municipality of León in Nicaragua in the fall of 1998 was called "The Elimination of Child Labor and Risk of Sexual Exploitation of Girls and Teenagers in the Bus Station of León." A four-phase action plan was developed. First the bus station was identified as a center of informal trade, where child vendors and beggars congregated. Some of the girls who gathered there were victims of abuse, and some depended on income from prostitution to survive. Influential people in the community were educated about the physical and mental consequences of child commercial sexual exploitation and their role in helping the children. Families that participated in the project were given loans to make improvements to an existing business or start a new business. Finally, attention was devoted to rehabilitation of the girls and their families (most often, the families were headed by poverty-stricken single mothers). With a U.S. contribution of $148,940, forty-nine girls were removed completely from commercial sexual exploitation work, and fifty-nine girls working in other activities decreased their workloads and began attending school.

The ILO undertook a study published in 2004 (Investing in Every Child: An Economic Study of the Costs and Benefits of Eliminating Child Labor) that estimated the costs associated with eliminating child labor. The study found that the economic benefits associated with a more highly educated and healthier populace would far out-weigh the costs of supplying quality education for all children, of defraying the loss of income from child labor for families, and of the social and governmental interventions needed to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. The ILO hoped to give countries an idea of the economic benefits of eliminating child labor.

The U.S. Department of Labor produced a 2004 report that detailed the progress made around the world in eliminating the worst forms of child labor—slavery, prostitution or the production of pornography, production or trafficking of drugs, or work that is harmful to the health, safety, or morale of children (2003 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs). The report noted that many governments (including those of Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nepal, Bulgaria, Haiti, and others) were implementing new trafficking laws meant to protect children from abduction, slavery, and forced prostitution; that the government of Costa Rica was at the forefront of global efforts to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children; that several countries (including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic) were working to eliminate hazardous child labor in agriculture; and that many governments (including those of Indonesia, Bulgaria, and Russia) were working to remove children from illegal activities like drug trafficking and provide them with education, counseling, and rehabilitation programs.

Many scholars who study the subject of child labor suggest that general economic development will help to reduce its prevalence. Anne O. Krueger, First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, summed this theory up in a speech before the attendees of the conference "National Security for the Twenty-first Century: Anticipated Challenges, Seizing Opportunities, Building Capabilities" in September, 2002:

Child labor is something prevalent in developing countries because the alternatives are so much worse: starvation or malnutrition, forced early marriages (for girls) or prostitution, or begging on the streets. Ample evidence suggests that parents in developing countries, like parents everywhere, choose schooling for their young when they can afford to do so, and the quickest path to that outcome is through more rapid economic growth.