What Is Child Labour?

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Child labor is defined by the International Labour Organization as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and mental development. This practice is a direct violation of a child’s freedom and basic human rights, which are stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everyone has the right to life and to live in freedom and safety, no one has the right to treat you as a slave, no one has the right to hurt or to torture you, everyone has the right to go to school; these are just some of the universal human rights that child labor infringes upon. Though there is a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that has been created by the United Nations, with the wide …show more content…
Child labor being present today in many foreign nations is primarily due to poverty. This is especially true in India, where people are “systematically under-paid,” leading to parents not being able to make enough of a living to sustain their families. In order to put food on the table for everyone, all members of the family must be put to work, including the children. The relationship between the two- child labor and poverty- is a sort of circle, where child labor is both a result and a cause of poverty. When parents are forced to send their children to work every day, those children are not able to go to school to get an education. This results in more and more children growing up uneducated and unable to get good paying jobs, thus perpetuating the poverty cycle further; resulting in this cycle of poverty, child labor, and lack of education becoming ingrained into society in many parts of India. Lack of education is a serious problem in many nations such as India because there isn’t much of a reason for parents to send their children to school when useful things are not being taught at them. Many schools In India “tend to teach things that aren’t always very useful to kids once they get back home, let alone to find a low-skilled job,” a fact that has been caused by education and schools never really being a big …show more content…
International conventions on child labor set forth by the International Labor Council are a part of the beliefs held by the U.N. Conventions No. 182 and No. 132 are the core conventions that apply to child labor, with the former focusing on the worst forms of child labor as top priority and the latter holding the long-term objective of effectively abolishing child labor. While these conventions have been agreed on by members of the United Nations, child labor is still practiced widely throughout the world and more action needs to be taken. The United Nations Human Rights Council should work with Free the Children and other organizations such as the International Labor Organization that work towards combatting child labor around the world and specifically in India. Realistically, child labor in India would only really put to an end if poverty was eradicated in India, an implausible feat. But with more people focused on the issue and focused on combatting it, more progress can and will be made in efforts to abolish child

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