Essay on Human Rights for Child Labour

Submitted By gracehore
Words: 768
Pages: 4

Child labour:
The full scope of human rights is very broad. They mean choice and opportunity. They mean the freedom to obtain a job, adopt a career, select a partner of one’s choice and raise children. They include the right to travel widely and the right to work gainfully without harassment, abuse and threat of arbitrary dismissal. They even embrace the right to leisure. But the major aspects of human rights universally is that every person has the right to always feel safe physically and mentally & have the basic needs such as food, water and shelter at all times. In many countries these fundamental rights are not being met.
Child labour is a curse to our society and a crime against humanity. With causes such as extreme poverty and pressure from society and families in third world countries such as India and China to force children into working at an age of 11 plus, it is a major issue in our world today. It is an immensely dangerous environment that these children are generally placed into, usually working in sewing/making factories for women and digging/ building for men.
In India many cases have been found where children have had serious injuries and sometimes death. In the brass industry children are employed to fan the furnace and remove the molten from it. If the crucible molten metal slips from the tongs, the child is left with no feet. In the sericulture industry, children are employed in the hazardous process of bolding the cocoons in water. Doctors do not treat the accidents victims for fear of getting involved in legal case; the children are left to their own fate.
The garments industry employs children to work on looms up to 10 hours a day, inhaling cotton dust and exposing them to disease. Leather industry too employs children who are required to work with chemicals and acids. Jewellery and zari work too employs children. Factories of stainless steel employ children, who work with dangerous chemicals. Children also find employment in pottery and slate units and toil in conditions that give them tuberculosis and asthma. Other ways that support child labour is construction and brick making industries. Often, children work as bonded labour in these industries. This is happening to hundreds of thousands of children in the world.
Child labour is recognised in most of the main third world countries and is in most countries illegal. This does not mean that child labour is being tackled very well at all. Most factories in China have girls who claim to be 18+ working in harsh conditions at a lower rate to others. International Labour Organisation (ILO) was created to help towards stopping Child labour and take data in finding out how prevalent it is.
According to the World Labour Report, the child labour is considered as 'forced labour' because children are rarely in a position to give free consent to any activities performed by them as most aspects of their lives are determined by adults. Though poverty forces families to send their