A young child dies from exhaustion, their limp body has been pushed to the very limit and they finally give in to death and another child has just become a statistic. This child was not even eleven years old. They had just completed their twenty hour day and then stumbled home 6 miles from where they were working. They saw their house in the distance which gave them hope to keep on walking. They dragged their feet towards the corner where they slept; their eyes are drooping not just from physical tiredness but from the pain of living this way. The last thing this little child saw was darkness, the last thing this weak child felt was coldness and the last thing this unfortunate child could do, was give up. At last this child is able to rest. This child was a victim of child labour. So, I ask you; is child labour morally right? I will argue that the exploitation of children is always wrong but that sometimes child labour is a necessary evil. I will also distinguish between child labour and child work.
According to UNICEF, there are an estimated one hundred and fifty eight million children aged five to fourteen in child labour worldwide. Millions of children are engaged in dangerous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, working as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations. If there is nothing wrong with child labour, then why is the exploitation so secret? Do you ever wonder when you go into certain shops how a handmade t-shirt can be so cheap? Or on the other hand, products which are sold to us at extremely high prices and we assume...
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...elivers newspapers before school might actually benefit from learning how to work, gaining responsibility, and a bit of money. If a child has a part time job they can learn the value of money.
So I believe that the issue of child labour is not simple. As Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report argued, children’s work needs to be seen as having two extremes. On one hand, there is the destructive or exploitative work and, on the other hand, there is beneficial work - promoting or enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling, recreation and rest. ‘And between these two poles are vast areas of work that need not negatively affect a child’s development.’ My firm belief is that there is a difference between child labour and child work and that in both cases the issue is whether or not the child is deliberately being exploited.
The novel Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys does an excellent job illustrating the troubling issue of child labor. The extent of child labor in a country is directly linked by the nature and extent of poverty within it. Child labor deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity. It is detrimental to physical and mental development. Today, there are an estimated 246 million child laborers around the globe. This irritating social issue is not only violates a nation’s minimum age laws , it also involves intolerable abuse, such as child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor, and illicit activities. In Between Shades of Grey , Lina and her ten year old brother are unrightfully charged 25 years of labor at a work camp in Siberia. It prevented the children from going to school and used them to undermine labor standards. In the harsh winter and even worse living conditions, they watched their mother as she starved to death.
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
All of my life I have considered myself as a person who loves children. I enjoy playing with them, helping them, and just being around them. So when I first agreed with corporations who use child labor I shocked myself completely. After examining two articles; one “The Case for Sweatshops”, by David R. Henderson, and two “Sweatshops or a Shot at a Better Life”, by Cathy Young, I came to the conclusion that in some cases when young children work under proper conditions it can keep them out of the streets and be helpful to them and their families.
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
Want to know how many deaths does Child labor cause throughout the whole year? Because of child labor, there are over 2.7 million deaths every year! Child labor is a definite human rights violation which is included in both factories and farms. There they are overworked, underfed, and have no medical attention. The use of children for child labor is gross to even think about and is a major human rights issue. First of all, child labor should not just be used for their size to work in factories. Secondly, they should not be the victims to the harmful pesticides and chemicals sprayed over the field to help the crops.
What is Child Labor?Child Labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school. Around the world and in the U.S., growing gaps between rich and poor in recent decades have forced millions of young children out of school and into work. It is estimated that 215 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are currently working under conditions that are considered illegal, hazardous, or extremely exploitative.1 Underage children work many different types of jobs that included commercial agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining, and domestic services. Some children were involved in illicit activities that included drug trade, prostitution, and other traumatic occupations that included serving as soldiers. Child Labor involved threatening children’s physical, mental, or emotional well- being. It involved intolerable abuse, such as slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor or illicit activities and prevented children from going to school.
Think about the cotton in your shirt, the sugar in your coffee, and the shoes on your feet, all of which could be products of child labor. Child labor is a practice that deprives children of their childhood, their potential, and their dignity and includes over 200 million children worldwide who are involved in the production of goods for companies and industries willing to exploit these kids for profit. Although most countries have laws prohibiting child labor, a lack of funding and manpower means that these laws are rarely enforced on a large scale. However, even for a first-world country like the United States, that has a large number of state and federal law enforcement officers, child labor is still a problem because priority is given to crimes that are more violent or heinous. Child labor must be made a priority issue because it is a global plague whose victims are physically and psychologically scarred, lack a proper education, are impoverished, and whose children are doomed to the same fate if nothing changes.
Child labor refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely or by requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work (International Labor Organization). Child labor has been a big problem ever since the Victorian Era. Many counties worldwide have used and still to this day use child labor. Though there are many laws that have been implemented against using children to work, many countries tend to ignore them. In my paper I will be discussing countries where child labor is present, push to stop child labor, companies that use child labor, the effects on children, and the reasons for child labor.
I don’t believe that the use of child labor is unethical. I for one had a full-time job at 8 years of age, the difference being that I chose to help out in the house. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that some of the children in the mines chose to work to support their families, but they didn’t choose to be exploited. Children have a lot of energy and can be naive enough to be overworked and undercompensated. Even allowing the parents to make that decision for them should come with its restrictions, parents can exploit their children as well. In the end, as long as the children aren’t abducted, sexually or physically abused, forced to work and unpaid, I don’t see a problem with the use of child
The next time when you are out on your shopping trip, chances you may have support a business that exploits children. It is very disturbing and heartbreaking to learn many children are chained to looms for 12 hours a day because families need to have their child bringing home a small amount of moneys. Child labor has always been a difficult subject to address, the topic have become much more complicated and prolific.
Child labor is where an underage person does work for a pay, however big or small. Some people feel that it is morally wrong to purchase items crafted through child labor. Others think that it is okay, because they are helping their families survive. I feel that child labor can be a good thing if the kid is paid enough money to survive. If you are the one purchasing the item, child labor might seem like a cruel way for companies to make money, but in most third-world countries, children work for money because if they didn't, they and their family would die.
In document UN/ CRC/ 531, analyzed through UNICEF, an estimated 25% of the world’s children (developing world) are in the web of child labor. To add to this, nearly 70% of all girl/female laborers go unregistered, often performing acts of prostitution and strenuous domestic housework. This form of unregistered work is dangerous to young girls because the employers often abuse their employees sexually and physically, as well as psychologically scarring them for years. This alarming fact can be attributed to the inequality of education given to young girls.
People might argue that children should not be allowed to work because for them at this tender age they should be provided with an education system that will make them occupationally flexible. Basically, they think education is important for the children future. At some point, may be they are right but as we know some children are fortunate enough to receive an excellent education because many families might be facing problem like poverty. This is more common in developing countries. Think about it…a work experience can help learning some important things such as appreciation of real value of money and also enhanced work ethic can be great benefited to a children and society both personally and professionally. There you go, it is not obvious that child labour is wrong for society or children, everyone just need to change their thought to positive side of
Globalization has brought with it both threats to and opportunities for better global governance, regulation and multi-agency work aimed at reducing the risks and impacts to vulnerable groups around the world. One such group is children, and one way in which they are vulnerable is through exploitative 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