250 million

250 MILLION CHILDREN VICTIMS OF A GREED
(Free Labour World n. 1- January 1997)

  The ILO's latest report on child labour worldwide increases its previous estimates of the number of children working. Child exploitation is on the rise, even after making a clear distinction, as the ILO does in its report, between children who sell newspapers at the end of their school day to earn a bit of pocket money, as is often the case in Great Britain, and children working as prostitutes across Asia or sewing footballs in squalid workshops in Pakistan.
  The ILO would like to review strategy for dealing with this issue, recommending the "drafting of a new convention that would be specifically dedicated to the worst forms of child abour, involving slavery, debt bondage, prostitution and forced |abou".
  61 per cent of child workers are in Asia, 32 per cent in Africa and 7 per cent in Latin America. "Child labour also exists in the industrialised countries such as the United States, Italy. Portugal and the United Kingdom" says the report. At the end of November the whole of Italy was moved by the drama o’f 12-year-old Mario, who worked as a mason. He fell from scaffolding, from a height of ten metres and is now in a coma. His case revived the controversy over child labour. "A 12-yeal-old should be going to school, not emptying sacks of lime or lifting heavy loads" protested the catholic newspaper Osservatore Romano. Mario worked because his family needed money. His mother and father are unemployed. The Italian press reported on many other cases of child workers. According to the Italian association for the defence of the child, "Blue Telephone", 4,457 11-year-old children left school in 1993 and 20,987 adolescents left school before the age of 14 were same year, 1,768 children under the age of 14 were the victims of occupational accidents in Italy.

Risks
  The ILO report gives figures to illustrate the effects working has on children. A survey carried out in the Philippines, for example, shows that "60 per cent of children who work are exposed to chemical and biological risks and four out of ten suffer injury or illness because of their inexerience".
  A study carried out in India over a ten year period shows thal "children employed in industry and agriculture grow more slowly and weigh less than children at school". "In Bombay, children working in the hotel trade or construction industry show symptoms of chronic muscular, thoracie and respiratory complaints."
  In Sri Lanka, more child workers die of poising from pesticides than from childhood diseases.
In Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines and Thailand, children fish in deep waters. "Boys aged 10 to 15 dive without equipment and scores die every year in accidents and by drowning.   In many countries on all continents "many children work without adequate protection in the mines where temperatures are very high. In the gold mines many children get mercurity poising". The report also mentions the case of "three-year-old who make matches, exposed to dust, asbestos and red phosphorous".
  The traficking in children for prostitution and domestic work is also documented: in Indonesia, "five milion children, including 400,000 in the capital, Djakarta, are employed as domestic servants or sex slaves".
  In Brazil, 22 per cent of child workers are employed as domestic workers while in Venezuela the figure is 69 per cent.
  According to ILO Director General, "child labour is a facet of poverty and the path to eliminating this scourge will be a long one".

Home page