Introduction
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.
Sustainability
A central theoretical concern of the present paper is the issue of sustainability. The notion of sustainability and the idea of sustainable development have their origins in international summits such as the Stockholm Conference of 1972, and have been ratified and concretized as international political movements through interventions such as the Brundtland Commission. Through the Rio Conference and the Kyoto Protocol, the social, economic and environmental models of sustainability have been put forward and entered into all aspects of global governance and strategic planning (Boyle and Freestone, 1999: 5). In particular, and in order to understand how child labour affects society and child welfare, it is crucial to take into consideration the social perspective of the triple bottom concept of sustainability development advocated by Elkington. This model, as Elkington (2004: 3) notes, ‘focuses corporations not just on the economic value that they add, but also on the environmental and social value that they add – or destroy.’ The environmental or social value is an important corollary of economic value. This relationship becomes all the more important in the context of child labour. Although child labour may contribute to the economy, and may provide local as well as national revenue and solutions to economic challenges, in the event that it detracts from the social value of the community it can be ...
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...ers and subsidiaries. In the context of child labour and sustainability, it is a combined approach which brings government pressures to bear alongside local community and non-governmental organizational action which leads to the conditions in which child rights are most likely to be protected. Moreover, an internationalist approach to CSR on the part of organisations is something which is likely to yield results and ensure that pressures are brought to bear at the level of local labour laws and de facto as well as de jure practices. The conventions and legislation are only useful and effective to the extent that they are actually enforced ‘on the ground,’ and it is only through a multi-lateral approach to pressures and standards that the rights of children will be protected, and the conventional and legislative framework put fully and comprehensively into practice.
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
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.
Working Conditions of Children Factories/ Mills inspected : Cotton Mill, Cromford Date : 8th of October of the year 1844 I visited the cotton mill in Cromford Because, whilst there are advantages to employing children, for example: requiring far less pay compared to adults, and apprentices not even needing pay! We understand that also they are useful in the fact that they are far more agile therefore being able to crawl under machinery easily so then they can fix broken threads. I was concerned to hear of disturbing cases of: * Cramped and dank/ dark working conditions with an awful stench * Impossibly long hours * Ill treatment, i.e. beatings etc * Poor protection from machinery * Deformation due to your work I talked to: Robert Blincoe, apprentice from the age of 7. Elizabeth Bentley, 23, change the flyers on the frame when full etc.
Christopher Hibbert’s The English: A Social History, 1066-1945, harshly reflects child labor. The author uses graphic details to portray the horrible work environment that the children, sometimes as young as four and five, were forced to work in. Hibbert discusses in much detail the conditions the children work in, the way they are mistreated, and what was done to prevent child labor.
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
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.
Why are children being forced into labor in todays society? Childhood is a vital and powerful experience in each individual's lifetime. It is the most important and impressionable period of learning. Throughout all of the highs and the lows, childhood is remembered forever. Although children have many rights, in some developing countries these rights are not always protected. Older, manipulative adults are taking advantage of children to make a profit for themselves. This is known as child labor, and it happens much more than many people realize. Child labor is corrupt and there is no place for it in our modern world today.
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.
Part of the reason is that, to further accelerate the process of globalization, scholars and activists around the world to bring more information about the working conditions of workers in different parts of the information, but also to children from the remote areas of manufacturing goods to the consumption of high-income countries hands. This brings to two different people on the same platform, the personal really care about the plight of children in poor countries and who constitute the power of trade protectionism in developed countries. Sent two united in support of the Third World labor markets various forms of intervention, including a ban on child labor produced by the goods into industrialized countries, by providing for a number of international organizations such as the WTO agreements or adopted by the ILO International labor standards, as well as the child made goods labeled to give consumers the right to choose to boycott these goods. Although there may be reasons against the use of child labor in other areas, but the social welfare loss due to economic inefficiency, from an economic point of view, against child labor the most important
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...
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.
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