Child labour made worse by conflict, climate change

A total 168 million children worldwide are forced to work to sustain themselves and their families, often in dire conditions, and climate change and conflict are exacerbating the problem, international organizations warned ahead of World Day against Child Labor on Monday.

More than half of child workers - that's about 85 million five- to-17-year-olds - work in “hazardous conditions”, which includes everything from mines and factories, to domestic work and hotels and bars, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

The majority are in the Asia-Pacific region, where some 78 million children – almost one in 10 – are forced to work, often for a pittance.

“The international community is paying more and more attention to this challenge, but more needs to be done,” ILO director Guy Ryder urged in a statement on Monday. “All children have the right to be protected from child labor.”

A girl shows some of the mica flakes she has collected whilst working in a open cast illegal mine in Giridih district in the eastern state of Jharkhand, India, January 22, 2016.

Natural disasters and war – the focus of this year’s World Day - put children especially at risk by destroying communities and crops, closing schools and uprooting families.

In a report last year, Human Rights Watch found that about 60 percent of Syrian refugee families in Jordan relied on money earned by their children.

Climate change, usually associated with melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels, is also having a dramatic effect in developing countries, forcing children out of school and into work, or moving them from safe to more dangerous workplaces, according to children’s rights organization Terre des Hommes.

“Drought, heavy rain and other extreme weather is destroying farmland... This forces families to migrate and send their children to work in hazardous conditions to support the household, and sabotages children’s education by interrupting their schooling,” it said in a report published last week.

Displaced Syrian children attend a class at a makeshift camp, north of the Syrian city of Azaz, on March 23, 2017.

The vast majority of child workers work in agriculture. Some sell their wares on the street. In more extreme cases, they end up in mining or scavenging for metals, or are enlisted as combatants or spies in regional conflicts.

Abuse is common, many fall victim to trafficking and get no pay, and at gold mines in Burkina Faso or on construction sites in India, they breathe in toxic dust and work with poisonous substances, with little or no protection.

Child labourers pose for a photo atop a mound of bricks in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, 25 October 2015.

UN member states have pledged to eradicate child labor by 2025 under the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and over 160 countries have ratified two key ILO conventions on child labor, covering at least 80 percent of the world’s children.

But campaigners complain that even where laws are in place, they are not always implemented.

Now child labor could be on the rise again, made worse by conflicts in Syria and elsewhere, Indian children’s rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi warned Monday.

“There was a significant drop in the prevalence of child labor for a decade or so. But much to our dismay, that is no longer true,” he wrote in The Times of India.

“Clearly, the global community needs to engage and focus all over again with a sense of urgency on the menace of child labor and trafficking,” he said.

(CGTN)