Scourge of Child Labour

Scourge of Child Labour

By Dr Arvind Kumar

According to the latest released by the International Labour Organization (ILO), about 115 million children, of them forty-eight million children in the Asia Pacific region, are involved in hazardous work. This is work that by its nature or the circumstances, in which it is carried out, is likely to harm children’s health, safety or morals. Children working in many different industries and occupations can be exposed to such risks and the problem is global, affecting industrialized as well as developing countries. Hazardous work is among the worst forms of child labour which the international community has targeted for elimination by 2016. The need for urgent action in order to reach this target was both the theme of The Hague Global Child Labour Conference in 2010 which adopted a Roadmap for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour, and has been endorsed in the ILO’s Global Action Plan.

There is a dire need to provide a global spotlight on hazardous child labour, and call for urgent action to tackle the problem. In this regard, the ILO has called for:

• New urgency in identifying and tackling hazardous child labour, as an important means to make progress on the global goal of eliminating the worst forms of child labour;
• Recognizing that hazardous work is part of the larger child labour problem, scaling up global, national and local level efforts against all forms of child labour through education, social protection and strategies to promote decent and productive work for youth and adults;
• Building strong tripartite action on the issue of the hazardous work of children, using international standards and the experience of employers’ and workers’ organizations in the area of safety and health.

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