Child Labor – A Challenge the World is Facing
Childhood is the most innocent stage in a human life. It is that phase of life where a child is free from all the tensions, fun-loving, play and learns new things, and is the sweetheart of all the family members. But this is only one side of the story. The other side is full of tensions and burdens. Here, the innocent child is not the sweetheart of the family members, instead he is an earning machine working the entire day in order to satisfy the needs and wants of his/her family. This is what is called ‘CHILD LABOUR’. There are various causes and effects of child labour. Eliminating child labour is one of the biggest challenges that the whole world is facing.
Child labour includes working children who are below a certain minimum age. This practice is going on since long and is one of the worst forms of child exploitation. Child labour not only causes damage to a child ’s physical and mental health but also keep him deprive of his basic rights to education, development, and freedom. According to statistics provided by UNICEF, there are an estimated 250 million children aged 5 to 14 years employed in child labour worldwide and this figure is continuously increasing.
Child labour is not only affecting under-developed and developing countries, but developed countries are also facing this though the rate is comparatively very less. Child labor in Asia accounts for the highest percentage of child labour (61%) followed by Africa (32%). According to International Labour Organization (ILO), if child labor will be banned and all children gets proper education, world’s total income would be raised by nearly 22% over 20 years, which accounts for more than $4 trillion. Banning child labor will help in boosting the economy of a country.
Causes of Child Labour
The main causes of child labor include
poverty, unemployment, and excess population. Among these, poverty is the
primary cause of child labour. You must have observed that poor families have
more number of children, so it becomes very difficult for them to survive on
the income of only one family member which is also quite less. So they make
their small children their source of income. They make their children work in
factories, shops, even selling items on streets. Some parents even carry infants
on the streets to earn money from begging. Some percentage of child labour also comes from
harassment by parents, step-parents or relatives.
There are many cases of child labor where a
child has to work against the repayment of a loan which was taken by his father
who was unable to pay it off. This is called as ‘bonded child labour’. Bonded
child labor normally happens in villages. Such children work like slaves in
order to pay the loan taken. Not only poor families, but some well established
business families also put their children into business at a quite young age
instead of making them complete their education.
Effects of Child Labour
There are very bad effects of child
labor for our society, which forces some children to steal things from others
in order to satisfy their daily living. Many small girls are even made to
indulge in prostitution. A recent case of child labor came into picture where a 10 year old kid was beaten to death because the innocent kid was slow at things. The cruel owner went angry and threw the child across the room resulting in the most extreme punishments. It was not only the cruel owner who was at the fault, but the parents of the child were also equally involved in this incident. They took $10 as advance and sent their child to work for the sake of getting some monthly income. May be even the parents would never have thought that a little sum of money could lead to such horrible incident.
There are various organizations which are
fighting against child labour by helping children and imparting education among
that part of society from where majority of the child labour comes. Poor
families should be given knowledge about family planning/control so that they
are not burdened by children. It would be advisable not to keep small children
at home for taking domestic help in daily household chores. Let us all take
some step in this direction so that we can bring smiles to many faces and make
this world a beautiful place for a child to live in.
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