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Child labour in africa essay
Child labour around the world
Child labour around the world
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Have you ever wondered where the gold your parents bought came from? Well African children dig out the gold you buy. This is child labor. Child labor is where they recruit children to work. In Africa, children are put to work in gold mines every day just to receive little or no pay, and many are even diagnosed with cancer and diseases because of the conditions they work in. These children do backbreaking work to receive no money and some places not enough money to even buy food. In the Constitution it states that everyone should be free and no one shall be entitled to unfair treatment. So this is already disobeying the law. The use of child labor in gold mines is violating and disobeying their human rights. First of all, child labor is …show more content…
Adam K. “In a gold mine in Burkina Faso kids go up and down a gold mine which is about thirty feet high and work underground for twelve hours only to earn as little as ten cents.”(1) There are many kids who work very hard to support their family only to receive little or no pay. Many children work twenty four hours a day and some think they are getting paid but, receive absolutely no pay for their hard work. These kids are put in dangerous conditions and lives on risk only to receive little or close to no pay at …show more content…
Alex Soho of the International Labor Organization in South Africa says that,"They are poor. Their income is low. They cannot afford hiring adult laborers,” . This means that the 1 billion population in Africa is working to receive pay for their families. Research shows that One out of five children in the one billion population in Africa co to work and trying to get out of poverty. But, kids have backbreaking work to get out of poverty and aid their families with money but they work in chemical conditions and many and diagnosed with many diseases. ¨These children are also not getting fair pay because for every ounce of gold they dig which is $1,127.(Sub-Saharan Africa's Dependence on Child Labor Affects Development 1)They only receive ten dollars and in some places twenty cents which is a lot less than what they mine every
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.
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.
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.
An estimated 1 million diamond miners in Africa earn less than $1 a dollar a day (Brilliant Earth n.d.) Children as young as 8 forgo school for daily wages ranging between $0.15- $0.60 (The International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School 2009). According to Adele Farquhar, a man fighting for legal ownership of a diamond mine, the problem isn’t people mining for precious diamonds, it’s those buying the diamonds originating in conflict areas; "People think it's a Zimbabwe problem but they forget that there is huge international complicity. You can't stop the Zimbabweans until you stop the money men. The people in Zimbabwe are getting next to nothing for these diamonds. The guy with the pick and shovel is literally earning $5. The guy to go and find is the one making $1,000. Go and look at the money and see who else is benefiting. That's why there's no momentum to stop this thing” (Cahill 2009). According to Time, the owner of the mines usually takes around 70% of the value when diamonds are sold to
Child labor laws need to be enforced more because governments are paying little attention to those who abuse the laws; therefore children are being abused physically by long hours and economically by low pay. Farmers and many businesses in third world countries are accused of taking major advantage of these laws. This topic is highlighted as one of the highest controversial issues in labor politics. Child labor is a major issue in countries such as Africa, Argentina, and Bangladesh. For example, in Africa, some children do the work of a grown man for as little as one dollar a day. On the other hand, in the United States some studies show that child labor is a bigger problem in the U.S than some third world countries (Barta and others). Many farmers are facing a huge problem; the government is attempting to keep children from working long hours on their family farms.
In terms of laws prohibiting child labor, 180 countries have ratified the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, which prohibits all forms of child labor, including child trafficking, slavery, hazardous work, etc., yet child labor continues to happen in these countries. Other countries like India and Eritrea also need to be pressured and convinced to ratify this convention(ILO). This is not the only law prohibiting child labor, however. Globally, child labor before the age of 14 has basically been banned, but most countries do not enforce this rule or have exceptions to this
Child labor happens all around the globe. In the United States there were children at the age of 15 years and younger working in factories, machinery and more. In the U.S. children had to work at least 10 hours a day back in 1800s. There are many reasons why children are being exploited. First of all, nothing much seems to be happening to prevent it. Child labor must be eliminated as quickly as possible, before many more children get trapped, like the millions ...
Child labor is seen across all over the world and one of the main causes of child labor is poverty. Parents would often send their children off to work at a young age so they can get much needed income to survive. Child labor is mostly practiced in poor countries such as India, China, Japan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, South Africa, North Korea, etc. In the topic of poverty the two countries I will be talking about are India and China.
Statistics indicate improvement in child labor issues, but trends can be reversed easily. Some child labor is more service-oriented and not a part that can be challenged by a boycott or legislation. Child labor in some countries involves being a servant who does not produce goods. Before identifying the consequences of child labor, probable causes and possible cures must be identified.
Imagine you and I with such limited opportunities. Imagine if children like us did not know the joys of school life but rather the life of hard physical labor. Imagine if we had to struggle miles for water, work several hours a day to earn a few scraps of food that kept us barely alive. Unimaginable, yet the life of 215 million kids around the world today – child laborers. Children are engaged in the worst forms of child labor, many of them in agriculture. They use potentially dangerous machinery and tools, carry heavy loads, work long hours in extreme heat a...
All kids deserve to be free and happy. They need education to succeed in life and deserve to cherish their few moments in life where they can be carefree. Child labor has taken this away from them. Child labor has denied them that right. Children under the age of 13 should not work so they can attend school.
We are often unaware or pick to disregard the problem of child labor in sweatshops. However, even though most people are not conscious of this, it is a reality that many children are deprived of their childhood and are enforced to work. It has been estimated by the International Labor Organization (2013) that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in emerging countries. More than half of these child laborers are hired in Asia, others work in Africa and Latin America mostly.
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...
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.
There are plantations throughout West Africa, but the country most abundant with them is Ivory Coast (Romano). On these plantations, children work about 80-100 hours weeks. They are paid nothing and they receive no education. They’re often under fed, making it difficult for them to have enough energy to do work. Most...