Article on child labour : Not all work is bad for children. According to social scientists most kinds of work are unobjectionable, if they are not exploitative. School boys delivering newspapers is a common sight in the USA and Canada. This activity benefits the child as he learns how to work, gain responsibility, and earn some pocket money. But if the child is not paid, the same work becomes exploitative. International conventions define children as aged 18 and under. Individual governments may define “child” according to different ages or other criteria. “Child” and “childhood” are also defined differently by different cultures. In fact, children’s abilities and maturity vary widely and, therefore, defining a child’s maturity by calendar age can be misleading.
Article on child labour for class 9, 10, 11, 12
Not all work is bad for children. According to social
scientists most kinds of work are unobjectionable, if they are not
exploitative. School boys delivering newspapers is a common sight in the USA and Canada
The
United Nations Children Fund (Unicef)’s 1997 State of the World’s Children
Report says: “Children’s work needs to be seen as happening along a continuum,
with destructive or exploitative work at one end and beneficial work—promoting or
enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling,
recreation and rest—at the other. And between these two poles are vast areas of
work that need not negatively affect a child’s development.” Social scientists
agree but draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable work differently.
International
conventions define children as aged 18 and under. Individual governments may
define “child” according to different ages or other criteria. “Child” and
“childhood” are also defined differently by different cultures. In fact,
children’s abilities and maturity vary widely and, therefore, defining a
child’s maturity by calendar age can be misleading.
In
2016, the ILO estimated, “246 million child workers aged 5 and 17 were involved
in child labour, of which 171 million were involved in work that by its nature
is hazardous to their safety, physical or mental health, and moral development.
Moreover, some 8.4 million children were engaged in so-called ‘unconditional’
or worst forms of child labour, such as forced and bonded labour, conscription
by military forces in armed conflict, trafficking, commercial, sexual and other
forms of exploitation.
In India India
More
boys than girls work outside their homes. Increasingly, however, more girls are
working in some jobs: for instance, as domestic maids. Being a maid in
someone’s house is risky. Cut off from friends and family, these little
maids can easily be phy-sically or sexually abused by their employers and even
by neighbours or unknown visitors.
Children
in hazardous and dangerous jobs are in danger of injury and death.
According
to UNICEF, it is a myth that “child labour is only a problem in
developing countries. … children routinely work in all industrialised
countries, and hazardous forms of child labour can be found in many
countries. child labour will only disappear when poverty
disappears. only a very small proportion of all child workers are employed
in export industries—probably less than 5 per cent. Most of the world’s child
labourers actually are to be found in the informal sector—selling on the
street, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses—far from the reach of
official labour inspectors and from media scrutiny.”
In our
view, poverty is largely responsible for what is wrong with child labour;
other causes are not as pervasive.
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