CHILD LABOUR IN THE WORLD TODAY
For most people in the western world, child labour conjures up an image of small boys cleaning chimneys, ended by 19th
century reforms. But child labour, at times as extreme as
anything during the Industrial Revolution in the west, still
exists in many places in the third world; it has not even disappeared completely from industrial countries.
In 1972 the International Labour Office estimated that there
were 45 million children, aged 14 years or less, at regular work,
90 percent of them in the third world; these working children
1 constituted 4 to 5 percent of all children of that age. But
these figures, which are based on official statistics of the
countries concerned, are almost certainly a gross under- estimate, and the real figure is probably many times that. There is also evidence that, in some countries at least, the number is
growing rather than declining, as increasing industrialisation
takes place in poor countries without proper safeguards. Many
factors force children into some form of work. Women and
children often provide cheap labour in the early stages of
industrialisation. Children can form a competent, malleable workforce, unlikely to complain or to organise; they can be employed for derisory wages, or for no pay at all.
In some occupations, especially traditional agriculture, pastoralism and fishing, and domestic work in their own homes such as looking after infants, children have probably always worked. In this report we are not concerned with such children; although no doubt abuses occur, the condition of these children is not separable from that of their families, and since they
work under the close control of their families there are some
safeguards. It would, in any case, be fruitless to try to set up special standards for them. Following the ILO 1973 International convention on child labour, we are concerned with children under 12 years old in any employment, and those under 16 in jobs which may jeopardise their health, safety or morals.
1. ILO,1972, Minimum Age for Admission to Employment.
International Labour Conference, 57th Session, IV(1),
p.21. Considerable use has been made of this document in preparing this appendix.