CHILD LABOR Can We Make It Finally End? Dmytro Polanski

Countries That Have Child Labor

What is Child Labor Child labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school. Around the world the growth of poverty in recent decades have forced millions of young children out of school and into work.

Where Are The Largest Areas of Child Labor?

Causes of Child Labor Current causes of global child labor, include extreme poverty, limited access to education, lack of workers’ rights, and limited laws on child labor. Other factors include a demand for cheap labor in global supply chains. (ex. coffee, cocoa).

How do we help with stopping child labor? A growing number of Canadians are willing to pay more money for products that are free of child labor. Including buying fair trade coffee, chocolate, tea etc. Many Torontonians donate to non-profit agencies (World Vision). We can also companies and ask who makes/ works on their products. My family and I will sponsor a child through World Vision for $40 a month. With this we can change a life.

Why Should Canada Help? 200 million children worldwide work in unacceptable conditions that are dangerous, hazardous and simply tragic. Millions of girls are working as house servants, exploited and abused. Canada is a first world country – wealthy and safe. We have the resources to make changes. Canada has a strong voice internationally that can make a difference.

How Does the Catholic Church Help to End Child Labor Pope Francis launched an appeal against child labor, calling it an “deplorable phenomenon … It is my heartfelt hope that the international community will initiate still more effective measures in addressing this authentic plague,” said Pope Francis on June 12, He made his comments on the World Day Against Child Labor, a day created by the United Nation’s International Labor Organization. This message was again repeated in The organization World Vision is a Christian agency that helps poor families around the world.

FACTS The International Labor Organization estimates that 215 million children ages are engaged in child labor (ILO, Accelerating action against child labor, 2010). An estimated 12 percent of children in India ages 5-14 are engaged in child labor activities, including carpet production (UNICEF, State of the World’s Children 2010). Approximately six out of ten slaves in the world are bonded laborers in South Asia (Siddhartha Kara, Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, 2008) It would cost $760 billion over a 20-year period to end child labor. The estimated benefit in terms of better education and health is about six times that—over $4 trillion in economies where child laborers are found (ILO, Investing in Every Child, 2003). Children trafficked into one form of labor may be later sold into another, as with girls from rural Nepal, who are recruited to work in carpet factories but are then trafficked into the sex industry over the border in India (ILO/IPEC, Helping Hands or Shackled Lives? Understanding Child Domestic Labor and Responses to It, 2004).

WHAT I THINK ABOUT THIS TOPIC I think this is a serious topic because many children are dying of hard work and not enough money to have food. In this modern society children should have education, food, clean environment and health. I think that governments that have child labor should enforce laws to end child labor.

Bibliography enfants/labour-travail.aspx?lang=eng enfants/labour-travail.aspx?lang=eng Newman, Shirlee, “Child Slavery in Modern Times”, New York: Franklin Watts, Stearman, Kaye, “Child Labor”, Chicago: Raintree, 2004.