Young people's views on Child Labour

2010 soccer world cups influence on child trafficking

With an estimated 247 000 children in South Africa doing exploitive labour, including prostitution the campaigners of the Child Protection Action Plan for the world cup worry that this number would increase.

Due to the soccer world cup to be hosted by South Africa, the South African schools will be closed from 11 June- 11 July. With the increase in the amount of tourists coming in, children will often be left unattended during the day. The holidays could add onto the problem of more child trafficking cases. Placing the children at high risk of being trafficked or possibly sexually exploited. There are many dangers that can be faced during this soccer season as it is known as, therefore theatre programmes have been put into play for people in rural communities. It was created as a prevention campaign to educate people about the danger of trafficking.

It is expected that the world cup would bring in over four billion dollars and everyone is going to want to benefit from it. Including child traffickers that prey on innocent, unsuspected children. Numbers of such cases are bound to increase during this time. As from next year parliament is due to consider a trafficking law, aiming to prevent children from getting recruited to beg or hawk souvenirs on the streets, or more dangerously being forced into prostitution. It is advised that children attend care centres or youth clubs while their parents are at work.

Many do not realise how bad the affect of trafficking is, it’s something that can have long term effects on an economy. Once the children are released by their captives they are released into a fast paste world with no skills or source of employment. This crippling effect on the economy isn’t the only effect. Families are left broken and damaged with no hope of ever seeing their relatives.

Trafficking isn’t the only thing the children would experience. Commercial sexual exploitation of children can take on many forms. It includes child prostitution or pornography.
They could be forced into labour or services,slavery is yet another form.

To conclude this article I want to end off by saying that we cannot sit back and allow this to continue while the rights innocent children are being taken away.

Child Labour and Exploitation in the UK

Coming from Belfast in Northern Ireland I have not had any first hand experience of child labour but I do realize that it is a major issue worldwide.

Child labour is often used throughout the high street in the United Kingdom despite many retailers promising that they are adhering to the strict codes of conduct put in place by the government. However this has been proven not to be the case with shops such as Primark (Pennys) having their clothes made by young children in Indian factories. The undercover investigation which was carried out by the BCC’s Tonight programme showed an 11-year-old Tamil girl at the Bhavani Sagar refugee camp sewing sequins onto a shirt for Primark’s Secret Possessions range. The pressures that we as consumers are putting on retailers to supply fast fashion at rock-bottom prices has ultimately made sweatshop labour abroad inevitable. Therefore we must take responsibility for this! Why should children as young as 5 years old be forced to give up their education to provide us with clothes, which we will probably only wear a few times and then throw them away?

Before coming to South Africa to work at the Media Kidocracy Konference 2009 (MKKO9) I could not have imaged that this was a reality for so many young people. Back in the UK young people are really privileged and so going out to work to provide for their family is not a common reality. After all most young people in Northern Ireland get their part time jobs to have extra money to spend so that they can have the latest phone and go out with their friends at the weekends…we don’t think about what life is like for those who don’t have this luxury!

I suppose we are in the fortunate position to have a state welfare system than often ensures that families are not living on wages that are too low and provide extra financial support for those who are. We don’t realize that this is not the case worldwide and so children are forced to go to work to provide this extra financial support to feed their families.

My stay in South Africa has made me realize that young people in the UK take for granted that they by law are required to have and are provided with an education until they are 16 years old and also that they will have food on that table when they come home from school. We are often very ignorant to others misfortunes and the realities in other countries – we need to step out of our bubbles and realize that not everyone is as privileged to be in our position.


I suppose that although we are very privileged there is to some extent exploitation of children in Northern Ireland. I am looking at this from the perspective that paramilitaries in Northern Ireland are allegedly recruiting children as young as 12 years old to sell drugs for them. The children are then given punishment beating if they do not comply with what they are being asked to do. Many young people are therefore instilled with fear from paramilitaries and often agree to sell drugs and other things as they feel this is the only way to protect themselves. This exploitation of children is completely wrong and should not be happening within our communities, or anywhere in the world! The paramilitaries do not have the popular public support so now they are turning to the most vulnerable in our society, the children, to try and build their support to what it was. This should not be happening! We should be instilling in our children that they are beyond this and that they are better and stronger than this.

Below is a link to a forum discussion that we have started. Please go on and give your views and opinions!

http://www.wimps.tv/index.cfm/go/ectopic/BBCat_Key/9/BB_Key/26/Thread/808

CHILD LABOUR

Significant levels of child labour in Africa appears to be found in Lesotho, the Lesotho labour force survey found that 4.6% of males who were working full time, 14% of males who were working part-time and 1.3% of male job seekers in Lesotho were aged between 10 and 15 years, many of these would have been involved in herding and those with part-time work were


(Necessarily earning an income) but may well have been working of family land in subsistence agriculture (i.e. they were economically active but not earning an income) boys are most likely to be engaged in paid work, usually herding, girls who are paid are primarily engaged in domestic work, it is likely that both boys and girls are engaged in seasonal agricultural work across the border in South Africa, and Lesotho is in the process of formulating an Action Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (APEC) with assistance of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)

Child Labour

Brief definition:

Child labour refers to the employment of children, mainly from the ages of 5-14, at regular and sustained labour.

The incidence of child labour in the world in the world decreased from 25 to 10 percent between 1960 and 2003 according to world bank.



Present child labour worldwide

Child labour is still common in some parts of the world, namely farming, factory work, mining, prostitution, agriculture and some are even tour guides for tourists. It’s most common in poor communities because many poor families rely on the labours of their children for survival.

According to the United Nations and International Labour Organisation (UNICEF) estimate 158 million children aged 5-14 in child labour worldwide.


Efforts againsed child labour

An organization such as (EPIC) International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour was created in 1992 which is a worldwide movement in combating child labour.



Child labour workforce accounts:

Asia - 22%
Africa - 32%
Latin America - 17%
US, Canada, Europe - 1%

What is child labour?

Child labour is the employment of children to carry out hard labouring tasks. The children are often exploited and suffer terrible conditions, they are often forced to work long hours for very little money. Many poor families rely on the labour of their children for survival as this is the only source of invoice. Some families are even forced into selling their children to child traffickers for a once of payment to help feed the rest of the family.