My presentation will consist of 2 main parts. First, we'll explore the child labour problem. We'll end with looking at the Convention itself.
Child labor is a problem throughout the world, especially in developing countries. .
It is difficult to say how many children are involved. A report released by the International Labor Organization, estimates that there are 250 million child laborers between the ages of 5 and 14. 120 million of them are working full-time and 130 million children work part-time.
Now, why do children work? Why are they deprived of the simple joys of childhood?.
Children work for a variety of reasons, the most important being poverty. Though children are not well paid, they contribute to family income in developing countries. For example, minors in Paraguay contribute almost a quarter of the total family income.
Some highly publicized cases have recently brought attention to the problem of illegal child labour in export industries, such as clothing production and carpet weaving. Most child laborers, however, do not work in the export industry. Many work in unregulated and unsupervised parts of the economy, such as in agriculture or domestic service.
INTRODUCTION .
Though restrictions on child labor exist in most nations, many children do work. The International Labour Office reports that children work the longest hours and are the worst paid of all labourers. Heightened competition in the global marketplace has raised the demand for cheap labour. This further increases poverty because wages are pushed lower by child labour and adults remain underemployed. .
Employers take advantage of the docility of children because they cannot legally form unions to change their condition. .
SOME STATISTICS.
If we now look at the geographical spreading, we can see that child labor is most concentrated in Asia and Africa, which together account for more than 90 percent of total child employment (see Table 1).
