
What is child labour: Any child under the age specified by law worldwide works full time, mentally or physically to earn for own survival or adding to family income, that interrupts childs social development and education is called child labour.
Any child under the age of 15 engaged in activity to feed family or self is child labour. ILO Convention 138 (C. 138) obligates countries to fix a minimum age for employment that should not be less than the age for completing compulsory schooling and, in any event, should not be less than 15 years. Developing countries may set the minimum age at 14. C-138 provides flexibility for countries to establish a younger minimum age of 12 or 13 for children to partake in light work.
Children’s participation in economic activity - that does not negatively affect their health and development or interfere with education, can be positive. Work that does not interfere with education (light work) is permitted from the age of 12 years under the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 138. So child engaged in part time work to learn practical skill linked to social or inherited custom or crafts is not child labor. It becomes child labour only when child weaves carpet in a factory; earns money to support family without schooling, social development. On the other hand if child works for 3-4 hours to learn or earn for self or parents after schooling, would not be known as child labour as is additional education and practical skill that a child learns.
Definition of elements of worst forms of child labour- all types of slavery, forceful hiring of children, commercial and sexual exploitation of children, hard working condition.
http://www.sadashivan.com/factsandfigures/
With the change of world order future education system would be more practical than present system of theory from books and notebooks. Each child would be encouraged to involve in practical education that gives skill to survive in competitive world. So, defining education becomes important to define child labour. Thus any child works for pleasure, leisure, pocket money, helping parents, hobby, aspiration, non hazardous part time work is not child labour. Child labour purely accounts when child is forced to work under slavery, poverty, parentless or social or parents boycott.
Types of child labour- Self employed and employed with others are two categories of child labour:
. Self employed- street sellers, rag or scrap pickers, street entertainers, child prostitution or pornography (but mostly they are hired by notorious gangs), begging, and other odd jobs. These types of children are mainly street children and rural migrants. Most these children are parentless, abandoned by parents, riot or war misery. The situation changes; in poor countries they are helping hand to the parents.
. Employed with others- factory or mine workers, domestic servants, child prostitution or pornography. Conducting work in others premises or in others custody. Such children work with parents consent or are parentless. Some are sold or some work to help parents to meet livelihood.

hild labor is a consequence of poverty as hunger, homeless and others so is not as easy as we think. Even NGO’s and prominent individuals can not help eradication this issue until and unless they influence appropriate Governments to reevaluate the economic policies and rural economic growth. Till now rural economy is only known as agricultural economy and never emphasized on add-on value products. Governments have to consider growing and generating rural employment. Target set for 2015 to eradicate poverty may not be achieved until we understand roots and real causes of poverty.
http://www.sadashivan.com/quotpovertyquotasubject/
90% of child laborers are rural children who migrate to cities and end up begging, prostitution, domestic helpers, or other odd jobs. It is easy to say “give them education and not work”, but the question is who will give? How many will benefit? Individuals and organizations have been helping these children for several decades. Have they achieved any result? Each day numbers and methods of child labor is growing.
In books or written records the number of child labor may have reduced but physically, it is different, and areas of child labors have added like begging, domestic help, prostitution, pickpockets, street entertainment, which was never there 2-3 decades back.
I herewith enclosed the video clips and my sites to know more about relationship between poverty and child labor issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVPk9Jns28k
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4744275778188781484
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QlnKpAQ1aA
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8849854166464553063
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZCMAwYigzk
Illegalizing child labor is an invitation to corruption in bureaucracy. Despite child labor laws, child labor numbers are on the increase. Arresting child labor in factories have opened many sectors for them to get involved specially in flesh trade, begging, street entertainment, pick pocketing and robbery etc.

This blog was created in order to bring into consciousness the sad reality of child labor around the world in the 21st century. Currently I'm collecting every piece of information I can find regarding this subject, and put it here with reference to the origin. Please comment and spread it to people that may find this interesting. Good blog for reference
link: http://childlabor.typepad.com/
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Chances are good that child workers -- some of whom are slaves -- helped produce your valentine bonbons. The chocolate industry has promised to get kids out of the cocoa trade. But profits still come before progress.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/02/14/chocolate/index.htmlBy Caroline Tiger
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These children claim to have migrated from Madhya Pradesh without anyone¿s support. Their parents too are the entertainers in same field.
The parents are extremely poor that they are unable to support own children.
These children explain in this video that their own native place does not have water, school and source livelihood forced them to come to Delhi the capital of India.
Believe it or not: Major percentage of the child labor comes from rural villages and indulge in to unorganized activities such as begging, prostitution, street entertainers, pick pockets, rag picking, drug trafficking, and so on.
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humanitarian news and analysis UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (IRIN)
Children targeted: Local media report at least two incidents of the rape of girls as young as five years of age every week, and a recent study at a hospital in the capital, Monrovia, by international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), showed that teenage girls were more exposed to rape in the capital. An estimated 85 percent of the 658 rape survivors reporting to the hospital were aged under 18, while 48 percent were aged between 5 and 12 years. "In more than 90 percent of the cases involving children, they were raped by someone they knew," MSF said. Antoinette Nebo, a community leader in West Point, one of Monrovia's slums, confirmed that sexual offenders, who were usually in their forties, often targeted "baby girls". She said poverty was the main reason why girls were being raped. "They [cash-strapped parents] sometimes extort money from the perpetrators to privately settle the case without going through the courts system. It is a shared act of total wickedness by heartless persons to rape our young girls, and most of the victims' parents or guardians are ... [complicit in] rape cases." Liberia has an unemployment rate of 85 percent and is one of the world's poorest countries, with most of the population living on less than US$1 a day, according to the World Development Index. The growing trend towards transactional sex between older, financially stable men and young women and even younger girls has drawn the attention of President Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, who issued a warning to rape perpetrators in December 2006. For full report check this website: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=64306
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Approximately 211 million of the world’s children, between the ages of 5 and 14, work at least part time, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the tripartite body representing governments, labor, and employees. Of these, 120 million children are working full time to help support their impoverished families. Although child labor is most common in developing countries, it is found throughout the world, including in the United States of America. Many of these children are forced into the workforce to become beggars, farm hands, and factory workers. They are exposed to conditions extremely harmful to their physical and mental well-being. Linke to this site:
http://www.laborrights.org/projects/childlab/


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