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Child labor laws in third world countries
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Child labor laws in third world countries
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In today’s world, one would believe that the majority of Americans would oppose supporting a business that exploits the use of child labor to produce its goods. However, the odds are we all have in one way or another supported these businesses the last time we went shopping. Whether it is a toy for a child or a jacket to keep you warm, it was probably was made using child labor in one of the many different parts of the globe. The use of child labor is a major factor of the global economy in today's age of globalization where U.S. companies such as Nike, Reebok, or Wal-Mart have taken control of the market (Calucag).
Western civilization has attempted to fight child labor for years now with little to show for it. The main reason has been the failure to come up with reasonable ways to communicate Western values and opinions on practices that should be eliminated and turn them into effective solutions. Third-world countries offer child labor (Low-cost Labor) as competitive advantage in the world market (Qadeer). As a result, companies from the west have let low-cost, high profitability, blind their morality. Consequently, rather than making sure no child labor is involved in the production of their product, companies have embraced it by running their operations in countries that allow it to occur. By doing this, companies are able to keep production costs as low as possible, thus increasing profits.
Child labor is the employment of children who are under the legal minimum age. UNICEF defines child labor to be seen as happening along continuum, with exploitation on one end and the development of a strong work ethic on the other side (Stackhouse). When children are forced to work long hours, their ability to attend school or to co...
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...izabeth. Child labor in sub-Saharan Africa . Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc., 2004.
Basu, Kaushik. Child Labor: Cause, Consequence, and Cure, with Remarks on International Labor Standards. December 1998. 21 11 2010 .
Black, Ken. What is bonded labor? 08 september 2010.
Burra, Neera. Born to Work. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Calucag, Ernesto B. "International trade and labor (Popular Economics)." Business World (2004).
Greenhouse, Steven. "Clinton to seek big increase in funds to fight child labor abroad." New York Times 7 february 2000.
Qadeer, Mohammed. "why the third world still needs child labor; WORK." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 12 december 1996.
Stackhouse, John. "UNICEF report says "child labor condemned hazardous work, betrayal of rights"." The Globe and Mail 12 december 1996.
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
Chitra Divakaruni wrote the essay “Live Free and Starve” to share her views on U.S. laws having to do with child labor. In her first paragraph, Divakaruni led the reader to believe that the bill passed had a positive effect on Third World Countries that allow child labor. Divakaruni took a different angle on a common problem. Instead of offering a quick, cheap solution, the author looked beneath the surface to find the root of the problem. Divakaruni knows that the children working in factories have no other choice if they want to eat another meal and live another day. She wants to end the cruelty these children are forced to live in, but she knows that boycotting child labor is not the best way to do so. Divakaruni is a credible source when
Child labor has become an ongoing global concern for many years. The practice sweatshops in places such as South America and Asia are responsible for much of the manufactured goods people own today. While hundreds of organized unions and corporations look for answers to this unheal...
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.
Basu, Kaushik, and Pham Hoang Van. "The Economics of Child Labor." The Economics of Child Labor (1998): 412-27. Print.
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.
We have all at one point seen or read an article of young girls and boys being abducted or simply forced into manual labor. Many reasons have been given as to why child labor occurs in these foreign countries such as: poverty, low pay, and unskilled work. These foreign companies or sweatshops find it easy to simply abduct poor and uneducated children, and force them into slavery for little to no pay and horrible working conditions. This is because there is greater demand for low skilled, and low cost labor that employers prefer to fill with child labor, instead of having to deal with more expensive and less flexible adult employees. Throughout the years there has been an increase in the supply of child labor mainly because of young kids in
A survey done every four years says that there has been less child labor in countries such as India and Morocco than in the United States (Barta and others). Some companies overseas have strict policies against child labor; for example, a toy factory in China will not accept children for work because they feel children should not be forced to do hard labor for any amount of money. On the opposing side, in some places child labor is a huge problem such as Africa and parts of Asia. For example, in Bangladesh several under 18 workers were found working in Rana Plaza and a 15 year old worker died in a factory accident in May, according to Kate O’Keeffe of the Wall Street Journal. O’ Keeffe also writes, “There is concern that child labor will go for the worse rather than for better, especially if Western economies rebound stronger.”
Child Labour In the past few years, a great deal of attention has been drawn to the global problem of child labour. Virtually everyone is guilty of participating in this abusive practice through the purchase of goods made in across the globe, usually in poor, developing nations. This issue has been around for a great length of time but has come to the forefront recently because of reports that link well known American companies like Wal-Mart and Nike to the exploitation of children. Prior to this media attention, many Americans and other people in developed nation were blind to the reality of the oppressive conditions that are reality to many.
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 is the employment of children, but not all work done by children should be classified as child labor that should be eliminated. Children’s participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling is generally regarded as being something positive. The term “child labor” is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful.
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs. These children worked long hours, were frequently beaten, and were paid a pittance. In 1979, a study shows more than 50 million children below the age of 16 were considered child labor (United Nation labors agency data). In 1998, according to the Campaign for Labor rights that is a NGO and United Nation Labor Agency, 250 million children around the world are working in farms, factories, and household. Some human rights experts indicate that there are as many as 400 million children under the age of 15 are performing forced labor either part or full-time under unsafe work environment. Based upon the needs of the situation, there are specific areas of the world where the practice of child labor is taking place. According to the journal written by Basu, Ashagrie gat...
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...
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