Le travail des enfants (document en anglais)

The child labor

Child labor is done by any working child who is under the age specified by law. The word, “work” means full time commercial work to sustain self or help the family. Child labor is a danger to a Child’s mental, physical, social, educational, emotional and spiritual development. Any child who is employed in activities to feed self and family is being subjected to “child labor’.

Child labor is a very complicated problem in all over the world.

It is a matter of grave concern that children are not receiving the education and leisure which is important for their growing years, because they are sucked into commercial and laborious activities which is meant for old people . According to the statistics given by official agencies, seventy – three million of children between ten to fourteen years of age are employed in economic activities all over the world

Child labour is also prevalent in rich and industrialized countries, although less compared to poor nations. For example there are a large part of children working for help their parent in seasonal cycles, in street trade and small workshops in Southern Europe.

Child Labour in India

Child labor in India is a human right issue for all the world. It is a serious and extensive problem, with many children under the age of fourteen working in carpet making factories, glass blowing units and making fireworks with bare little hands. According to the statistics given by Indian government there are twenty million child laborers in the country, while other agencies claim that it is fifty million.

We can see the Indian government wants to hide the gravity of the situation…

In Northern India the exploitation of little children for labor is an accepted practice and perceived by the local population as a necessity to alleviate poverty.

Carpet weaving industries pay very low wages to child laborers and make them work for long hours in unhygienic conditions. Children working in such units are migrant workers from Northern India, who are sended here by their families to earn some money and send it to them. Their families dependence on their income (revenus), forces them to endure the onerous work conditions in the carpet factories. The situation of child laborers in India is desperate.

Children work for eight hours at a stretch with only a small break for meals. The meals are also frugal and the children are ill nourished. Most of the migrant children who can’t go home, sleep at their work place, which is very bad for their health and development. Seventy five percent of Indian population still resides in rural areas and are very poor. Children in rural families who are poor perceive their children as an income generating resource to supplement the family income. Parents sacrifice their children’s education to feed all the family and view them as wage earners for the entire clan.

Even when laws or codes of conduct exist, they are often violated.

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