Child Labour : Various Forms of Child Labour
Domestic Service Children in domestic servitude may well be the most vulnerable and exploited children of all, as well as the most difficult to protect. They are often extremely poorly paid or not paid at all, terms and conditions depend on whims and fancies of their employees and take no account of their legal rights; they are deprived of schooling, play and social activity, and emotional support from friends and family. They are vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. (MENTION EARLIER CITED CASES OF INDIA Ref SAACS).
The isolationism makes it difficult to discuss exact numbers. Local surveys have however reflected on the gravity of the problem.
A survey of middle income household in Colombo showed that are in three had a child under 14 yrs as domestic worker.
A survey of domestic workers in Uruguay found that 34% had begun working before they were 14.
A survey in India noting that 17% of domestic however were under 15 years old, reported that girls aged 12 to 15 were the preferred choice of 90% of employing households.
Even when not sexually abused, child domestic can suffer severe damage psychological, & social.
Force and Bonded LabourMany children find themselves in effective slavery. In South Asia, this has taken on a quasi – institutional form known as ‘bonded’ child labour under this system, children often only 8 or 9 yrs old are pledged by their parents to factory owners or their agents in exchange for small loans.
In India, this type of transaction is wide spread in agriculture, as well as industries such as cigarette – rolling, carpet – making, matchstick – making, slate and silk. The most notorious of these is the carpet industry of Mirzapur – Bhadohi – Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
Most, most - exploited children belong to the most marginalized segments of society.
Though this kind of virtual child slavery is usually associated only with India, Nepal and Pakistan, it exists in other parts as well
In Brazil, forced labour is found from charcoal burning projects to sugar care estates.
A tradition for generations, servitude was officially outlanded in 1980, but 400,000 black Africans save as slaves, formally or informally.
In Myanmar, thousands including children work on construction projects.
In Nepal, children and women carry bricks on their heads from the brick field to a truck they earn $0.25 for every 100 trips.
Commercial Sexual Exploitation The underground nature of the multi-billion dollar illegal industry, makes it difficult to gather reliable data, but NGOs in the field estimate that each year at least 1 million girls world wide are lured or forced into their form of labour. Boys are not left out either.
A part from sex – tourism, in which people from rich countries travel to locations like Brazil, Thailand, Goa in India in search of sex with children, thousands of young girls in numerous countries serve the sexual appetites of local people as well.
In the US, at least 100,000 children are believed to be involved.
Direct links between commercial sexual exploitation and other form of exploitative labour is clear. Nepalese carpet factories where 50% workers are children are common sites of sexual exploitation.
In addition to people to buy sex, there are traffickers, agents and intermediaries – professional criminals and syndicates who run portholes.
Beyond these direct actors, are deeply rested gender discriminations that blunt perceptions of violence.
Global market forces have also contributed, by widening the gap between the rich and the poor: - encouraging migration, destabilizing families, destroying support systems and safety nets.
Conflicts and was also create conditions in which children are sexually exploited.
Industrial and Plantation Work In the glass bangle industry in Firozabad, India one quarter of the workforce, around 50,000 children are under 14.
All over the world children work in hazardous conditions. This industries include leather working in the Naples (Italy) to pre industrial brick making of Columbia and Peru, which can involve children as young as eight.
Children are exploited in mining operations – e.g. diamond and gold mines of Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa, coal mines in Columbia.
Children have work with barest minimum of safety equipment. Respiratory problems are rampant – tuberculosis, bronchitis and asthma.
Children working in earthen ware and porcelain factories are unprotected from silica dust. In the lock industry they inhale noxious fumes. Similarly in the glassware industry.
The number of children exploited by plantation agriculture across the world are as great. E.g. Sugar plantations in Brazil, exposed to snake-bites, risking muitilation while working on the machinery, flower export farms in Colombia, young people are exposed to pesticides banned in industrialized countries.
In Africa children work on various plantations cocoa, coffee, tea and sisal
In Indonesia, children mostly girl work a tobacco plantations for $0.60 a day. Children are also employed in tea plantations of India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, in sugar cane and rubber plantations of Thailand.
While much of this industrial and plantation work is carried out by national subcontractors. Some of it is overseen by transnational corporations whose products find their way into the stores and homes of the west.
Street Work
In contrast to child domestic work children also work in visible places – hawking in markets, and darting in and out of traffic jams, plying trade in buses and trains etc
The street is a cruel and hazardous workplace. They can be murdered by organised crime, by other young people or even by the police, as happened in Rio de Janerio in 1993 when police officers massacred six street children. A repeat from the slate juvenile court stated that, on average, three street children are killed every day in Rio.
Children working in the streets come very often from slums and squatter settlements.
Their numbers have increased in places experiencing armed conflicts, like Freetown (Sierra Leone) and Monrousia (Liberia), as care takes have been killed, economy disrupted and family and community lives severed.
On the streets, they shine shoes, wash and guard cars, carry luggage, hawk, beg etc. Some return home often to precarious, unhealthy and violent conditions. Many are led into the illicit and dangerous world of crime, their lives marked by aggression, abuse.
Rag picking is another pre occupation the nature of work unhygienic dangerous and demeaning. Consequences are many health problems ulcers, scabies, physical injuries; carrying heavy weight affects height, weight, strength and stamina.
Work for the Family
All of the work children do, the most common is agricultural or domestic work within their over families. This kind of work though sometimes beneficial is sometimes as exploitative. It may demand too much of children keep them from school and take too great a tell on their developing bodies, prevent them from excersing their rights and developing to their full potential.
In rural Africa and south Asia children begin well before school age. This includes an entire gamut fame work, looking after animal etc. similar work is done in Latin American countries as well. In rural Colombia, l in 4 children aged 6 to 9 and 1 in 3 aged 10 and 11 work, either in the home or helping in a small business.
Girls WorkMost of the hazards faced by boy labourers are faced by girls as well yet girls have extra problems of their own, from the sexual exploitation to exclusion from education.
According to ILO, 56% of the 10-14 yr old currently estimated to be making in the developing would are boys. Yet if one were able to measure the same of girls, the figures would be higher.
Girls also work longer hours on an average than boys. In Guatemala, working girls spend an average of 21 hours a week or household duties on top of a 40 hour working week outside.
All over the world, more girls than boys are denied their fundamental right to primary schooling.
Gender bias is enshrined in all the main institutions of society. This become a vicious circle.
The more schooling a girl has, the fever children she will have, as has been reported and again the more children a poor family has, the more child workers there will be
Ref: UNICEF Report 1997 – The State of World’s children SACCS
