Child Labor is One of the Most Dehumanizing Forms of Exploitation

The 2024 World Day Against Child Labor was recently commemorated. In 2002, the International Labor Organization (ILO) established the day, which has been observed on June 12 every year since that time to help end child labor among children around the world. Article 32 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that “All children shall not be subjected to economic exploitation and shall be protected from hazardous work that endangers their health and development and interferes with their education. In the so-called “Third World” or economically impoverished countries, child labor is still tacitly accepted by employers who want cheap labor and livelihoods.

The ILO statistics on child labor (ages 5-17), released in 2020, show that the number of child laborers has risen again after a slow decline. The organization has been publishing statistics every four years since it began in 2000, and has seen a steady decline from 246 million to 151 million in 2016. However, in 2020, the number of children in labor rose again to 160 million. These numbers are in line with statistics from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which estimates that around 150 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are exploited in child labor. This means that one in ten children worldwide is working in the labor force. This is probably more likely to be children from poor families in Asia, Africa, and South America than in Western Europe or the Americas.  

In Asia, child labor is notorious in Nepal, where the World Social Forum (WSF) was held in last February. Nepal has one of the highest rates of child labor in South Asia. Socially, child labor seems to be considered normal and even part of the socialization process. Many children in Nepal are forced to work in brick factories and carpet factories, which are the country’s main industries. Children working in brick factories are exposed to some of the worst conditions in the world, including dust and flames, heavy lifting, and working at night. Poor families in Nepal and many other Asian countries like it see child labor as a way to make a living and a way out, and many seem unconcerned about the negative impact it has on children’s education and futures. The parents who send their children to work are often themselves victims of child labor for generations, perpetuating a vicious cycle. To make matters worse, the proportion of child labor that involves performing illegal and dangerous tasks is on the rise, from 47% to 49% recently.  

Furthermore, statistics from 2021 show that the number of children exploited in modern slavery is around 6 million, with half of them suffering from sexual exploitation. This shows that child labor is not just an economic issue, but a cultural, sexual, and moral exploitation by vested interests of the older generation. This is why child labor is an important topic for the religious community to be concerned about.

Pope Francis has called for the protection of children from labor exploitation, saying that “children are the future of the human family.” The Pope called this scourge “a phenomenon that robs boys and girls of their childhood and jeopardizes their essential development, with unjustified physical and psychological suffering.” “In other countries, many children and young people are forced to do work inappropriate for their age in order to help their families in situations of extreme poverty,” the Pope noted. He also pointed out that in many cases, child labor takes the form of slavery and imprisonment, resulting in physical and psychological suffering for the children. The Pope appealed to adults to take responsibility for the problem, by saying “I appeal to world organizations to make every effort to protect minors, overcoming the economic and social disparities that underlie the distorted dynamics in which children are unfortunately involved.”

The ALL Forum hopes to address the issue of “Poverty and Corruption” as a major theme at the Asian Youth Academy (AYA)/ Asian Theology Forum (ATF) in Manila this coming September. Child labor must be broken in order to protect the human rights and dignity of one of its greatest victims, the child, as well as the vicious cycle of poverty and corruption that inevitably emerges from Neo-liberalism-led capitalism that pushes all human beings into an endless competition to be sold as an expensive commodity. ALL Forum and all the Christian youth who participate in its programs are committed to that task.*