Child labour

Children of migrant workers in the destination country and children left behind when parents migrate to provide for them can be at risk of child labour, which is prohibited by international human rights and labour standards. Article 32(1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates:

1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

2. States Parties shall take legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to ensure the implementation of the present article. To this end, and having regard to the relevant provisions of other international instruments, States Parties shall in particular:

a. Provide for a minimum age or minimum ages for admission to employment;

b. Provide for appropriate regulation of the hours and conditions of employment;

c. Provide for appropriate penalties or other sanctions to ensure the effective enforcement of the present article.

As this provision implies, not all work by children is considered child labour or

prohibited by national legislation or international standards. Two of the ILO fundamental conventions, the ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), seek to abolish child labour. As of 12 August 2015, Convention No. 138 had been ratified by 168 and Convention No. 182 by 179 of ILO’s 186 Member States. Under Convention No. 138, all employment or work is forbidden for children – with certain specified exceptions (see below) – before the age of 15 or the end of compulsory schooling, whichever age is higher. Members are also called on to raise progressively the minimum age for employment or work. Convention No. 138 additionally contains certain flexibility provisions, particularly for developing countries, which may, after consultation with the organizations of employers and workers concerned, where such exist, initially specify a minimum age of 14. The Convention also

schooling or vocational training of the children concerned) by persons 13 – 15 years of age, so long as the competent authority identifies which activities constitute light work and prescribes the number of hours and conditions under which such employment or work may be undertaken. It is also possible, in ratifying Convention No. 138, to exempt certain occupations, such as family-owned businesses and farms, from this definition, so long as safety and health are not jeopardized. Hazardous work, on the other hand, can only be undertaken at age 18, or 16 on condition that the health, safety and morals of the young persons concerned are fully protected and that the young persons have received adequate specific instruction or vocational training in the relevant branch of activity.

Box 4.20 Human interest story: migrant working girls, victims of the global crisis

10 years old, working two jobs, no time for school.

[Marifat] helps her mother clean streets in Moscow. She has never attended school. With her limited knowledge of the Russian language and irregular status she has little chance of ever being admitted to a Moscow school.

Marifat says that even if she were admitted to school she wouldn’t have the time to study. She works from early morning cleaning streets, then spends the rest of the day looking after her four-year-old brother.

Still, it’s hard for the family to make ends meet. So Marifat is very proud to have found an extra job for herself – in addition to cleaning streets and providing child care, she cleans the apartment and does the laundry of an old woman in the building where they live.

She and her family have no plans to return to Dushanbe [Tajikistan], they couldn’t afford it if they did and they would hardly find any job there. When asked about her plans for the future, Marifat said she simply has none – at the age of 10, life has taught her not to think ahead.

Marifat’s plight is emblematic of the growing vulnerability facing child labourers in general, and girl child labourers in particular, in today’s climate of economic crisis, unemployment and increasing poverty, says [an] ILO report issued for the World Day Against Child Labour.

The report states that because of the increase in poverty resulting from the crisis, poor families with a number of children may have to choose which children stay in school. In cultures where a higher value is placed on education of male children, girls risk being taken out of school, and are then likely to enter the workforce at an early age.

The report cites the importance of investing in the education of girls as an effective way of tackling poverty, noting that educated girls are more likely to earn more as adults, marry later in life, have fewer and healthier children and have greater decision-making power within the household. Educated mothers are also more likely to ensure that their own children are educated, thereby helping to avoid future child labour.

“Migrant working girls, victims of the global crisis”, Geneva, ILO Newsroom, International Labour Office, 2009.

In contrast to the flexibility devices and progressive implementation contained in Conventions Nos. 138 and 182, which targets the worst forms of child labour, requires the same level of implementation from all members, irrespective of level of development or national circumstances. The Convention lists the types of work that are prohibited for children under 18, which include all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery; prostitution and the production of pornography or pornographic performances; illicit activities; and hazardous work. Member States must also design and implement programmes of action to eliminate, as a priority, these worst forms of child labour, and must establish or designate appropriate mechanisms to monitor implementation of the Convention. In addition to programmes of action, Convention No. 182 calls on members to take effective and time-bound measures to prevent, protect and remove children from the worst forms of child labour and socially integrate them into free basic education or vocational training.

According to the recent ILO publication, Marking progress against child labour – global estimates and trends 2000 – 2012, 168 million children aged 5 – 17 worked as child labourers in 2012 (approximately 100 million boys and 68 million girls). More than half – 85 million (55 million boys and 30 million girls) – performed “hazardous work”. The large majority of child labourers were unpaid family workers (68 per cent), followed by those with paid employment (21 per cent) and self-employment (5 per cent).

Box 4.21 Human interest story: monitoring hazardous child labour in Tajikistan

[…] Safar became the main breadwinner for the family a year ago when his father went to work in Russia and completely abandoned his family back home. This is the tragedy of many broken families in today’s Tajikistan, where the number of external migrants is estimated between 500,000 and 800,000 people – in a country with a population of 7 million.

“80 per cent of working children come from a one-parent family or from a family where the father is a migrant worker”, explains Muhayo Khosabekova, national coordinator of the German-funded ILO-IPEC project “Combating Child Labour in Central Asia – Commitment Becomes Action.”

Besides its positive effect on poverty reduction in Tajikistan, labour migration of men had a serious impact in terms of increased numbers of child labourers. In the absence of men who work abroad, children have to take responsibility over their family income.

Even with his miserable salary Safar holds on to this job. There are no jobs in the villages, and many rural children like him have to move to town in search of work.

There they are employed at informal workplaces to wash cars, to transport, load and unload goods and baggage at local bazaars, they work as conductors on shuttle buses, and perform any other subsidiary work.

These days one can easily find these children in every city in Tajikistan. In the city of Khudzhand hundreds of them stand every morning at an informal labour exchange near the local bazaar, ready to take any job. For these children that is the only way to earn a living, and for their adult employers they are just a cheap labour force. “I have been standing here for ten days now, and have hardly earned money to pay for food, and I still have to pay for shelter,” complains 13-year-old Ibrahim, lorry-carrier.

Hazardous working conditions, physically demanding work, inadequate rest, malnutrition and unsanitary working conditions inevitably affect the children’s health. According to [ILO-IPEC’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour] ILO-IPEC, the daily load carried by one child worker may reach 800 kg. […]

“Monitoring hazardous child labour in Tajikistan”, Geneva, ILO Media Centre, International Labour Office, 2011.

The children of migrants (and refugees) are often particularly vulnerable to “hazardous work” in the agricultural sector, which is characterized by a high incidence of child labour. Worldwide, among child labourers aged 5 – 17, 59 per cent work in that sector, often to help their parents reach quotas impossible for an unaided worker to meet. In some countries, migrant children are employed to produce commodities for export, for instance cocoa and rubber, or to cut flowers. This increases the importance of ensuring that the agricultural sector, often excluded from labour legislation, is effectively

regulated. Another key sector is services, which employs 32 per cent of all child labourers, 7 per cent of whom perform domestic work.

A prohibition of child labour is inherently difficult to enforce, and may be especially difficult with migrant children – and of course even more so where they have been trafficked or are otherwise undocumented.

An ILO-IPU handbook for parliamentarians prepared in 2002, Eliminating the worst forms of child labour: A practical guide to ILO Convention No. 182 (No. 3), provides further information and guidance for parliamentary action on this subject.