The number of children engaged in child labour around the world fell by 94 million in the past two decades. This positive achievement represents significant efforts by governments, international organisations and civil society. Nonetheless, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that 152 million children remain in child labour, almost one in ten children worldwide, with 72 million in hazardous work.
Child labour is “work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and/or interferes with their schooling”. The food you eat, the clothes you are wearing and the device you are reading this on are likely products of child labour which runs through global supply chains. 108 million child labourers work in agriculture alone, producing food and raw materials for other products.
The protection of children from child labour is enshrined in the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child and various ILO instruments. With part of target 8.7 of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals being to “end child labour in all its forms” by 2025, the UN General Assembly declared 2021 the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.
The economic shock created by lockdowns in response to the Covid19 pandemic in many countries around the world is likely to reverse the gains made. Global working hours in the second quarter of 2020 fell by an estimate 14% compared to the last quarter of 2019, “equivalent to 400 million full-time jobs”. Millions of children are expected to enter extreme poverty in 2020 – less than $1.90 per day – on top of the existing 386 million in 2019.
The most immediate direct impact, along with the fall in household income, is the closure of schools and educational institutions, affecting more than 1.5 billion children and young people in 188 countries. The transfer of education online excludes the majority who lack internet access. Uncertainty over when schools will reopen, coupled with household income uncertainty affecting the ability to pay school fees, has pushed young people to join the labour market. Some accompany their parents to work and can end up involved in hazardous work.
Children in rural areas, who usually work on family farms during school holidays, are working earlier and doing hazardous tasks carried out by adults. Beyond agriculture, lockdown conditions have seen children worldwide working in family businesses. Children who have lost their parents to the coronavirus may have become breadwinners to younger siblings and other family members.
Children already in child labour have been badly affected by lockdowns too. In India, where 10.1 million child labourers are aged 5 to 14, children trafficked to work in factories in cities were locked in factories or otherwise prevented from leaving by employers eager to retain their labour once work resumed. A 12-year old girl was one of at least 200 fatalities among millions of Indian migrant workers forced to walk thousands of kilometres to their home villages once the lockdown was announced. Street children, earning their living from begging and scavenging, are at risk not only of hunger but of arrest for breaking curfews and lockdown rules they simply cannot abide.
As well as providing shelter places to street children in some countries, some states are taking measure to deal with the current risk. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the authorities are taking measures to prevent children turning to work in mines.
As hunger and poverty increase worldwide, so does the risk of child labour. In Italy, there is a risk that many young people will drop out of school and look for work instead or continue working in family businesses. With schools closures leaving vulnerable children beyond the reach of the authorities, children in Europe are also at risk of child labour involving sexual exploitation, “modern slavery or recruitment for criminal activity”. With such activities already growing pre-pandemic, activists fear that criminals are taking advantage of the situation.
Child labour is complex, with varying causes and solutions. The fall in demand and wages with factory and shop closures and the increase in food prices turns children into a necessary source of income for families, and are easier and cheaper for companies and employers to exploit. The relaxation of labour laws in India, for example, could see millions of child labourers work longer hours in more hazardous forms of work for lower wages.
The problem is double-edged: on the one hand, child labourers have fewer skills and end up in a perpetual life-long cycle of poverty, exploitation and even modern slavery. On the other hand, the use of child labour leads to “lower wages and higher unemployment among adults”, which will prolong the economic shock, expand the informal economy and exploitation.
Solutions have been proposed by international organisations and agencies and governments are not unaware of the challenge, but poorer states in particular are also badly hit by the financial crisis, affecting public services and monitoring mechanisms.
Exclusion from education will have to be addressed in order to tackle increasing child labour. UNESCO’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report found that fewer than 10% of countries have laws that ensure full inclusion in education. Pre-pandemic, 258 million children and youth were excluded from education, largely due to poverty or discrimination, two major factors pushing children towards child labour. Who returns when schools reopen will be an important indicator of the actual situation.
Child labourers are more likely to come from impoverished and marginalised families – with or without parents – and communities where the work of each individual is necessary for survival. More support needs to be given to such communities, particularly in rural areas, not just by governments but the multinational corporations that own or exploit the land, mines or fishing resources where such communities work. These corporations may claim to be fighting child labour when in truth they perpetuate the poverty of whole communities by keeping wages low and working conditions questionable, denying children the opportunity to have a better future and securing future unskilled wage slaves for themselves.
Consumers around the world need to act, insist that child labour is removed from their shopping bags and that corporations make good on pledges to act. Consumers must demand that child labour does not feature in corporate recovery plans. Bangladesh’s garment industry has seen demand fall, leading brands to not honour the payment of over $3 billion of orders and cancelling future orders, leaving mainly female workers unpaid. Many of these poorly-paid women already take their children to work with them. This increased pressure on household incomes is likely to see more children in work.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed existing inequalities around the world. It is these inequalities, perpetuating poverty and discrimination, that lead to refugee, migrant, indigenous, tribal and children from minorities being prominent in child labour. The marginalised communities these children are from will be worst affected by rising unemployment everywhere, as well as those working in the large informal sectors in South Asia (80-90%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (66%). Child labour is exploitation, not child work. It offers no short or long-term solutions to the current crisis. Its sole contribution is to perpetuate existing inequalities and the rise in modern slavery, setting the world back by centuries, not decades.
one small window... 
Thank you. This is an excellent, well researched piece. This system does not spare children from from poor families from exploitation