child+labor

=Child Labor in India 2012= • Children 5 to 11 years of age, those who did at least one hour of economic activity or at least 28 hours of domestic work during the week preceding the survey did and • Children 12 to 14 years of age those who did at least 14 hours of economic activity or at least 42 hours of economic activity and domestic work combined during the week preceding the survey.

1. Bonded Child Labour 2. Child Labor Agriculture sector 3. Street Children 4. Children at glass factories 5. Child labor in match box factories 6. Child labor in carpet industry 7. Child labor in Brass and Lock industries
 * Child labour can be found majorly in below sectors in India:**

What are the Statistics of Child Labor in India? A survey conducted by **7th All India Education Survey** reveals below facts on Child Labor: • At present there are 17 million children labour in India.• A study found that children were sent to work by compulsion and not by choice, mostly by parents, but with recruiter playing a crucial role in influencing decision.• When working outside the family, children put in an average of 21 hours of labour per week.• 19% of children employed work as domestic help.• 90% working children are in rural India.• 85% of working children are in the unorganized sectors.• About 80% of child labour is engaged in agricultural work.• Millions of children work to help their families because the adults do not have appropriate employment and income thus forfeiting schooling and opportunities to play and rest.• Children also work because there is demand for cheap labour.• Large numbers of children work because they do not have access to good quality schools.• Poor and bonded families often “sell” their children to contractors who promise profitable jobs in the cities and the children end up being employed in brothels, hotels and domestic work.• There are approximately 2 million child commercial sex workers between the age of 5 and 15 years and about 3.3 million between 15 and 18 years.• 500,000 children are forced into this trade every year. WASHINGTON -- Facing political pressure from Republicans and farming groups, the White House has decided to scrap rules proposed last year that would have prevented minors from performing certain agricultural work deemed too dangerous for children. The Labor Department announced the decision late Thursday, saying it was withdrawing the rules due to concern from the public over how they could affect family farms. "The Obama administration is firmly committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life, especially the role that parents and other family members play in passing those traditions down through the generations," the department said in a statement. While the move is destined to please the many conservatives and agricultural groups who came out in opposition to the rules, it was quickly criticized by workplace and child safety advocates who say the White House is caving to anti-regulatory politics. "It's very discouraging. I didn't see this happening this way," says Mary Miller, a clinical professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing and a proponent of the rules. "Anyone who's anti-regulation, this was an easy thing to latch on to." Although family farms were actually exempted from the proposed rules, many opponents cast them as an assault on family farms and rural traditions, saying the White House wanted to keep children from doing even small chores. In fact, the rules would only have affected minors who were formally employed and on farm payrolls, preventing them from operating heavy machinery, handling tobacco crops, working in grain silos or performing other jobs considered potentially dangerous. Agricultural groups, including many farm bureaus, said they were worried that the restrictions would discourage youths from getting into the farming business. The American Farm Bureau Federation praised the White House's decision Thursday as a "victory for farm families."
 * What you can do to restore the rights of children:**
 * Instead of employing a child as a domestic help, try employing their parents instead.
 * Discourage others from employing children.
 * Ensure that they send their children to school.
 * Initiate or join a campaign that works on issues of abuse, exploitation, any situation that denies a child right's to protection.
 * Don't buy products from manufacturers who employ child labor.

Many politicians from rural states had lambasted the proposals as federal overreach that would hurt small farms. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), himself a rancher who's running for Senate, vowed to block the rules by withholding funding via House legislation. An Arkansas Republican running for Congress has made the rules a central campaign issue, saying the federal government needed to stay out of farmers' business. Even former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin waded into the issue, posting a screed-- titled "If I Want America To Fail, I'd Ban Kids From Farm Work" -- on her Facebook page this week that claimed the rules' backers had grossly mischaracterized what they would actually do. "The Obama Administration is working on regulations that would prevent children from working on our own family farms," the post read. "This is more overreach of the federal government with many negative consequences. And if you think the government’s new regs will stop at family farms, think again." Although the rules would not actually have banned minors from doing family farm work -- in fact, they could have done even the work deemed potentially dangerous on family farms, due to a parental exemption -- backers of the proposals said the misinformation was difficult to overcome. The White House may have sensed ahead of time the political dust-up the proposals would have caused. The White House's regulatory review office sat on the proposals for nine months before opening them up to public comment. Such a review is typically supposed to be concluded within three months. The White House released the rules after pressure from safety advocates. Norma Flores Lopez, a child farm workers' advocate at the nonprofit Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, told The Huffington Post that the rules were "common sense" and would have helped protect children who work as migrants, not because of tradition but because their families need money. "We felt that these were commonsense protections that maintained the traditions of family farms and would have saved many kids' lives. We're sad about it," said Lopez, who herself was a migrant worker as a child. "All the misinformation being put out there was really misrepresenting what these rules were. The benefits were overshadowed. The ones who will be paying for that is kids."

WHAT IS "CHILD LABOR"?
"Child labor" is, generally speaking, work for children that harms them or exploits them in some way (physically, mentally, morally, or by blocking access to education). BUT: There is no universally accepted definition of "child labor". Varying definitions of the term are used by international organizations, non-governmental organizations, trade unions and other interest groups. Writers and speakers don’t always specify what definition they are using, and that often leads to confusion. Not all work is bad for children. Some social scientists point out that some kinds of work may be completely unobjectionable — except for one thing about the work that makes it exploitative. For instance, a child who delivers newspapers before school might actually benefit from learning how to work, gaining responsibility, and a bit of money. But what if the child is not paid? Then he or she is being exploited. As Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report puts it, "Children’s work needs to be seen as happening along a continuum, with destructive or exploitative work at one end and beneficial work - promoting or enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling, recreation and rest - at the other. And between these two poles are vast areas of work that need not negatively affect a child’s development." Other social scientists have slightly different ways of drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable work. International conventions also define "child labor" as activities such as soldiering and prostitution. Not everyone agrees with this definition. Some child workers themselves think that illegal work (such as prostitution) should not be considered in the definition of "child labor." The reason: These child workers would like to be respected for their legal work, because they feel they have no other choice but to work. **.** To avoid confusion, when writing or speaking about "child labor," it’s best to explain exactly what you mean by child labor — or, if someone else is speaking, ask for a definition. This website uses the first definition cited in this section: "Child labor" is work for children under age 18 that in some way harms or exploits them (physically, mentally, morally, or by blocking children from education).

WHO ARE CHILD LABORERS? **AND HOW MANY ARE THERE?**
In 2000, the ILO estimates, "246 million child workers aged 5 and 17 were involved in child labor, of which 171 million were involved in work that by its nature is hazardous to their safety, physical or mental health, and moral development. Moreover, some 8.4 million children were engaged in so-called 'unconditional' worst forms of child labor, which include forced and bonded labor, the use of children in armed conflict, trafficking in children and commercial sexual exploitation." Unicef’s State of the World’s Children Report says only that although the exact number is not known, it is surely in the hundreds of millions. More information about who child laborers are, where they live; also, the US Dept. of Labor’s //By The Sweat and Toil of Children, Vol. VI: An Economic Consideration of Child Labor//.
 * For more information about individual child laborers, see stories produced by Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change.**

WHERE DO CHILD LABORERS LIVE?
61% in Asia, 32% in Africa, and 7% in Latin America, 1% in US, Canada, Europe and other wealthy nations In Asia, 22% of the workforce is children. In Latin America, 17% of the workforce is children. The proportion of child laborers varies a lot among countries and even regions inside those countries. See //Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable,// Geneva, 1998, p. 7; and other ILO publications. "In Africa, one child in three is at work, and in Latin America, one child in five works. In both these continents, only a tiny proportion of child workers are involved in the formal sector and the vast majority of work is for their families, in homes, in the fields or on the streets." -- Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report

IS THERE CHILD LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES?
Yes, if you are talking about "child labor" as defined by the US law. The Fair Labor Standards Act sets the minimum working age as 15, with some exceptions. In the United States: An estimated 290,200 children were unlawfully employed in 1996. Some — it’s not clear how many — were "older teens working a few too many hours in after-school jobs." About 59,600 were younger than age 14, and some 13,100 worked in garment sweatshops, according to an Associated Press series on child labor published in December 1997. by searching for "child labor" on IGC sites and IGC member sites.) Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report says "The growth of the service sector and the quest for a more flexible workforce in industrialized countries, such as the United Kingdom and the US, have contributed to an expansion of child labour." "Hundreds of thousands" of children work in US agriculture, according to a report by Human Rights Watch published in June 2000.

WHAT DO CHILD LABORERS DO?
Work ranges from taking care of animals and planting and harvesting food, to many kinds of small manufacturing (e.g. of bricks and cement), auto repair, and making of footwear and textiles. (See a list in US Dept. of Labor, //By the Sweat & Toil of Children, Vo. V: Efforts to Eliminate Child Labor,// Appendix C. A large proportion of children whom the ILO classifies as child laborers work in agriculture. See Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable (1998) "Every Child Counts" (2002) and other ILO publications . More boys than girls work outside their homes. But more girls work in some jobs: for instance, as domestic maids. Being a maid in someone’s house can be risky. Maids typically are cut off from friends and family, and can easily be physically or sexually abused by their employers. Note: Less than 5% of child laborers make products for export to other countries. Sources for this statistic include Unicef’s State of the World’s Children Report 1997.

HOW WAS CHILD LABOR REDUCED IN TODAY’S DEVELOPED COUNTRIES?
Four main changes took place: Sources of information about the history of include Hugh Cunningham and Pier Paolo Viazzo, eds, //Child abour in Historical Perspective, 1800-1985: Case Studies from Europe, Japan and Columbia// (Florence: Unicef, 1996). Other sources of information about history — and controversies about which of the four elements were most important.
 * 1) economic development that raised family incomes and living standards
 * 2) widespread, affordable, required and relevant education
 * 3) enforcement of anti-child labor laws (along with compulsory education laws)
 * 4) changes in public attitudes toward children that elevated the importance of education

WHAT CAUSES CHILD LABOR TODAY?
Poverty is widely considered the top reason why children work at inappropriate jobs for their ages. But there are other reasons as well -- //not necessarily in this order//: "The parents of child labourers are often unemployed or underemployed, desperate for secure employment and income. Yet it is their children - more powerless and paid less - who are offered the jobs. In other words, says UNICEF, children are employed because they are easier to exploit," according to the "Roots of Child Labor" in Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report. The report also says that international economic trends also have increased child labor in poor countries. "During the 1980s, in many developing countries, government indebtedness, unwise internal economic policies and recession resulted in economic crisis. Structural adjustment programmes in many countries accentuated cuts in social spending that have hit the poor disproportionately. " Although structural adjustment programs are being revised to spare education from deep cuts, the report says, some countries make such cuts anyway because of their own, local priorities. In many countries public education has deteriorated so much, the report declared, that education itself has become part of the problem — because children work to avoid going to school. This conclusion is supported by the work of many social scientists, according to Jo Boyden, Birgitta Ling, and William Myers, who conducted a literature search for their 1998 book, //What Works for Working Children// (Stockholm: Radda Barnen, Unicef, 1998)//.// Children do some types of low-status work, the report adds, because children come from minority groups or populations that have long suffered discrimination. " In northern Europe, for example, child labourers are likely to be African or Turkish; in Argentina, many are Bolivian or Paraguayan; in Thailand, many are from Myanmar. An increasingly consumer-oriented culture, spurring the desire and expectation for consumer goods, can also lead children into work and away from school." Other sources: Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable, published by ILO, Geneva, 1998. ILO information available using: www.ilo.org.
 * 1) family expectations and traditions
 * 2) abuse of the child
 * 3) lack of good schools and day care
 * 4) lack of other services, such as health care
 * 5) public opinion that downplays the risk of early work for children
 * 6) uncaring attitudes of employers
 * 7) limited choices for women