Argumentative Essay On Child Labour

Child labour is an issue that has plagued society since the earliest of times. Despite measures taken by NGOs as well as the UN, child labour is still a prevalent problem in today’s society. Article 23 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child gives all children the right 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.1 Child labour clearly violates this right as well as others found in the UDHR. When we fail to see this issue as a human rights violation children around the world are subjected to hard labour which interferes with education, reinforces

Without education children are unable to succeed and break the cycle of poverty therefore being unable to provide for there own family and forcing there own children into the workforce like generations before.6 Child labour often continues the cycle of poverty because children are overworked and economically exploited because they are paid at the lowest rates.7Child labor violates the basic right to a primary education and economically exploits children therefore promoting the cycle of

Since the definition varies drastically in different parts of the world it is hard to decide what is child labour and what is labour. For example the minimum work age in Egypt is 12, this would therefore constitute the 12 year old as an adult in the workforce and therefore would not be put in the child labour category.16 However the basic minimum age recommended by the International Labour Organization is 15.17 The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child as any person under the age of 18 therefore constituting the full time employment of 12 year olds as child labour.18 While the definition of child may be disputed, I still firmly believe that the full time work of persons under the age of 18, which puts them in harms way and distracts from education, and life outside of work constitutes as a human rights violation. In conclusion, I believe that child labour should be considered a violation of basic human rights. This essay demonstrates that not only does child labour take away fundamental human right however it also interferes with the education of the child and reinforces the cycle of poverty. It also proves child labour violates basic working rights found in the UDHR under article 23 and 24. Child labour is an outright violation