Gold Mining Child Labor In Tanzania

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Recommended: effects of child labor

Rachel Bullock
Professor Josh West
Introducing Global Issues
November 18, 2013
Gold Mining Child Labor in Tanzania
“150 million children aged 5-14 in developing countries, about 16 per cent of all children in this age group, are involved in child labor” (UNICEF). Child labor has extreme effects on the children’s health, child mortality, and also goes against children’s rights. These topics are explained in our text in chapter 11 “Children.” Child labor is an excessive problem in Tanzania where children have jobs of gold mining. Many of these children are forced into child labor to contribute to the income of their household. According to Mark Tran, writer for The Guardian newspaper, Tanzania has more than 800,000 small-scale gold miners, thousands of whom are children. Most of the small-scale mining takes place on unlicensed, unauthorized mines (Tran).
“A child considered malnourished is one whose weight is more than 20 percent below the normal reference weight for his or her age” (Snarr 217). A large number of the children in the world are malnourished. The number of malnutrition children is slowly decreasing but in Africa not much progress has been done. According to Snarr, in the developing countries, “one of every four children under the age of five is underweight.” Children that are underweight have a harder time getting over normal childhood illnesses like diarrhea and respiratory infections, this can cause the death of the child. (Snarr 218) “Children who grow up malnutrition usually have low levels of iron, protein, and energy which can result in stunt of growth, impaired social and cognitive development” (Snarr 218). Many of the children that work in the gold mines in Tanzania are working because they are malnutrition an...

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...tp://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_
Neff, Zama Coursen . "Africa's Child Mining Shame | Human Rights Watch."Africa's Child Mining Shame | Human Rights Watch. CNN, 11 Sept. 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. .
Snarr, Michael T., and D. Neil Snarr. "Children." Introducing global issues. 5th ed. Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012. 211-228. Print.
"Tanzania: Hazardous Life of Child Gold Miners." Tanzania: Hazardous Life of Child Gold Miners | Human Rights Watch. N.p., 28 Aug. 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2013. .
Tran, Mark. "Tanzania's child gold miners risking injury and abuse to support families." the Guardian. N.p., 28 Aug. 2013. Web. 28 Nov. 2013. .

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