Child Labor

In the latter part of the 20th century, child labor remains a serious problem in many parts of the world. Studies carried out in 1979, the International Year of the Child, show that more than 50 million children below the age of 15 were working in various jobs often under dangerous conditions. Many of these children live in underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Their living conditions are crude and their chances for education minimal. The small income they bring in, however, is necessary for the survival of their families. Frequently, these families lack the basic necessities of life—adequate food, decent clothing and shelter, and even water for bathing.

In some countries industrialization has created working conditions for children that are comparable to the worst features of the 19th-century factories and mines. In India, for example, some 20 000 children work 16-hour days in match factories.

Child-labor problems are not, of course, limited to developing nations. They occur wherever poverty exists in Europe and the United States. The most important efforts to eliminate child-labor abuses throughout the world come from the International Labor Organization (ILO), founded in 1919 and now a special agency of the United Nations. The organization has introduced several child-labor conventions among its members, including a minimum age of 16 years for admission to all work, a higher minimum age for specific types of employment, compulsory medical examinations, and regulation of night work. The ILO, however, does not have the power to enforce these conventions; it depends on voluntary obedience of member nations.