Chapter II: Assessment of the Problem

A. Overview

This chapter provides an assessment of the nature and extent of child labor in the 16 countries studied for this report. This assessment provides a context for Chapters III through V, which focus on governmental efforts to address the problem. Section B of this chapter presents some general background on child labor, including the types of enterprises where children most commonly work and common physical and developmental hazards of their work, and discusses some of the reasons for children's premature entry into the work force. Section C presents quantitative data on the extent of child labor in each of the 16 countries. Section D contains a survey of the types of work children perform in these countries and the conditions under which they work in the agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, and service sectors.

As explained in the previous chapter, not all forms of child work are considered exploitative or abusive. Certain types of work, including legitimate apprenticeships or helping parents in a family business, can be formative learning experiences for children. Rather, the type of child labor that is the focus of current international eradication efforts is abusive commercial exploitation of children, which is either hazardous work or work that prevents young children from receiving an education. While the focus of this chapter is exploitative child labor, most available quantitative data, including that presented in Section C, do not make a distinction between abusive and nonabusive work.

B. Background

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 250 million working children between the ages of five and 14 in developing countries.¹ About half, or 120 million, work full-time, while the rest combine work with school or other activities.² Many millions of these children work under conditions that are clearly abusive or dangerous.³ According to the ILO, the majority of the world's working children (61 percent) are found in Asia, followed by Africa (32 percent), and Latin America and the Caribbean (seven percent).⁴ While Asia has the highest number of child workers, Africa has the highest proportion of children working, with 41 percent of children between five and 14 years old engaged in some form of economic activity.⁵

Child workers are found in a wide range of economic activities. The largest numbers work in agriculture, services, and small-scale manufacturing workshops that are generally not covered by national laws. Children are rarely employed in medium or large enterprises, except in commercial agriculture in some countries.⁶ However, it is common practice for larger enterprises to subcontract certain labor-intensive tasks to small workshops or home-workers employing children.

Current available data show that, on average, more boys than girls work. This gender difference, however, may be due to the fact that girls more commonly work in less visible forms of employment such as domestic service, which are often underestimated by statistical surveys.⁷

Many of the world's working children labor in occupations and industries that are dangerous or hazardous.⁸ In agriculture, large numbers of children are exposed to harmful pesticides during their formative years. Others work in occupations and industries--including mining, construction, manufacturing, and automobile repair--in which they are exposed to toxic and carcinogenic substances such as asbestos, benzene, and mercury.⁹

Working children often perform tasks that are beyond their physical capacity, such as lifting and carrying heavy loads or handling dangerous tools and equipment.¹⁰ For some child workers, including children working in domestic services, verbal and sexual abuse and physical punishment by adults are routine.¹¹ Other children, trapped in indentured servitude or similar forms of bondage, work in virtual slavery.¹²

Work hazards affect children to a greater degree than adults, in some cases causing irreversible harm to their physical development, with serious consequences for their futures.¹³ For one, children beginning work at a young age have a longer period of exposure to cumulative hazards. Carrying heavy loads or adopting unnatural positions during work can permanently distort or disable a child's growing body. Working children often grow up to be smaller than their counterparts who have attended school.¹⁴ Children are particularly vulnerable to accidents since they are often unaware of the dangers or precautions to be taken at work.¹⁵ Safety equipment designed for adults often does not fit children, and tools and equipment designed for adults are difficult for children to handle.¹⁶

In addition to the health and safety risks of beginning work at an early age, child labor perpetuates poverty.¹⁷ Children who are deprived of education and whose physical development is harmed from work at an early age are likely to have lower earning prospects throughout their adult lives. A working child often becomes an adult limited to unskilled and poorly paid jobs.¹⁸

Various factors contribute to children's early entry into the work force. In many cases, working children lack access to quality education. In addition, work that is based on a piece-rate or per-task pay structure often leads parents to call upon their children to contribute to family earnings. In some cases, employers and other adults perceive some of the most menial and labor-intensive processes as "children's work." Children are cheaper to hire than adults. But some major explanations for hiring children are noneconomic. Children are less aware of their rights, more compliant, and more willing to do monotonous work without complaining.¹⁹

C. Country Data on Child Labor

This section presents country-specific data on child labor in the 16 countries studied for this report. Identifying the extent to which child labor exists within a country is the cornerstone for developing an effective response to the problem. Quantitative measures of child labor are essential for setting national goals for its elimination and for measuring progress once programs are instituted. However, reliable national data on child labor are rare and, when available, often incomplete. Standard employment surveys are often not specially designed to capture child labor, and employers and households may be reluctant to report when children are working. Furthermore, since child labor is illegal in most countries, many governments do not collect employment data on persons below the minimum age.

In recent years, the ILO's Bureau of Statistics has worked to improve child labor data collection and reporting methods. It has designed a child labor survey methodology and provided technical assistance to several countries, including many members of the ILO's International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC).²⁰ With technical expertise provided by the ILO, 15 countries have completed or are in the process of completing national child labor surveys and a number of others are in the process of doing so.²¹

Table II-1 below contains the best available official estimates of the size of the child labor population in the 16 countries studied for this report for the most current year available (usually 1991 to 1996). For five of these countries (Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan the Philippines, and Turkey), data are from ILO-sponsored national surveys. These surveys are generally considered to provide the most comprehensive, high-quality data on the number of working children ages five to 14 years old.²² Data for Brazil, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and South Africa are from recent government estimates taken from national census or labor force surveys covering various ages. Finally, in countries where no recent official estimates are available (Kenya, Tanzania, and Thailand), statistics are from 1995 estimates for children 10 to 14 years old, as published in the ILO's Economically Active Population.²³ For a detailed description of the survey characteristics and coverage for statistics cited in Table II-1, see Appendix B.

Table II-1: Child Labor Data

Country	Total Population 1996 ^d (millions)	Age Range	Number of Children in Age Range (millions)	Estimated Number of Child Workers in Age Range (thousands)	Percentage of Children Working in Age Range
Bangladesh^a	122	5-14	34.5	6,584	19.1
Brazil^b	161	5-14	33.9	4,349	12.8
Egypt^b	59	6-14	10.9	1,309	12.0
Guatemala^b	11	7-14	3.7	152	4.1
India^b	945	5-14	210.0	11,285	5.4
Kenya^c	27	10-14	3.8	1,558	41.3
Mexico^b	93	12-14	6.6	1,137	17.3
Nepal^a	22	5-14	6.2	2,596	41.7
Nicaragua^b	5	10-14	0.6	60	9.9
Pakistan^a	134	5-14	40.0	3,313	8.0
Peru^b	24	6-14	4.8	196	4.1
Philippines^a	72	5-14	17.5	1,863	10.6
South Africa^b	38	10-14	4.6	200	4.3
Tanzania^c	30	10-14	3.9	1,523	39.5
Thailand^c	60	6-14	5.6	1,495	12.6
Turkey^a	63	6-14	11.9	1.495	12.6
Sources: See Appendix B for a description of individual statistics and sources by country. ^a ILO-Sponsored Child Labor Survey. ^b National census or labor force survey. ^c ILO's Economically Active Population. ^d World Development Indicators 1998 (Washington: World Bank, 1998) 12-14. Notes: While total population estimates are for 1996, child labor data are from various years.

When conducting national surveys, each country chooses its own definition of what constitutes a "child" and what it classifies as "labor." Therefore, government estimates may grossly over- or underrepresent the true number of child laborers simply due to the definitions used. Some countries, for example, include children working in either paid or unpaid work, while others count only full-time paid labor. Additionally, certain countries do not classify students as child laborers no matter how many hours they work outside the home, while others count students working even one hour a week as "employed." As a result, the number of working children reported by one country may be higher or lower than the number reported in another simply because of which children and which activities are included in the data.

Furthermore, factors such as child homelessness, lack of birth registration, informal sector employment, or a large refugee population can also increase the probability of significant underreporting. Considering the prevalence of these characteristics in many of the countries studied for this report, the statistics included in Table II-1 are likely to underestimate the true extent of child labor. It should also be noted that since children in the upper age bracket have a much higher probability of working, countries that only report data on older children (10 to 14 years old) will tend to have higher percentages of children in the work force in the age range reported than those with estimates extending below 10 years old. See Appendix B for a detailed discussion on the limitations of child labor statistics and methodology, as well as a description of the specific estimates reported in Table II-1.

Many factors, including those discussed above, can lead to wide-ranging estimates of the numbers of child laborers within any one country. In general, official government estimates tend to underreport the extent of child labor, while data from other sources, such as NGOs and trade union groups, in some cases overstate the number of working children. The following are some examples of such discrepancies, all of which are also discussed in Appendix B.

In Guatemala, despite a 1994 official estimate of 152,000 working children (seven to 14 years), other estimates are as high as 900,000 to two million (10 to 17 years).²⁴

Estimates of the number of working children in India vary widely. While the 1991 national census estimated that 11.28 million children were working,²⁵ some NGOs claim that any child between the ages of five and 14 who is not in school is most likely a child laborer. Unofficial child labor estimates are as high as 100 million, which is roughly equivalent to official estimates of the number of out-of-school children (five to 14).²⁶ The actual number of child workers is likely to be somewhere between the official estimate and the highest unofficial figures, with many NGOs and international organizations using 44 million to 55 million as a working figure.²⁷

While the ILO-sponsored survey in Pakistan reported 3.3 million economically active children, the Pakistani Federal Bureau of Statistics and the ILO have acknowledged that this figure is low.²⁸ Various sources have maintained that the number of working children in Pakistan is much higher. A 1990 UNICEF and Government of Pakistan publication estimated the number of child workers under 15 to be "not below eight million."²⁹ Another estimate, based on the number of children not enrolled in school in 1989-1990, puts the number of child laborers in Pakistan (five to 14 years old) at 19 million, including 12 million working children ages 10 to 14 and seven million five to nine years old.³⁰

In Peru, despite the 1993 official estimate of 196,000 working children reported in Table II-1, a 1995-96 survey on urban employment found 4.3 million urban child workers from six to 17 years old, including 600,000 in the six to 11 age group alone.³¹

While the most recent available labor force survey in Egypt found only 361,300 working children ages six to 14,³² the Egyptian Minister of Manpower estimated two million working children (age range unknown) at a 1995 Cairo seminar on child labor. Other estimates have placed the number of child laborers as high as three million.³³

D. Children in Hazardous Work

This section provides a survey of the types of work performed by children and the hazards they face. It focuses on abusive child labor situations where children work under dangerous conditions and are often denied an education. Examples drawn from the 16 countries visited by U.S. Department of Labor officials illustrate working conditions in agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, and various service sectors.³⁴ An extensive listing of industries and occupations that employ children in the 16 countries studied is provided in Appendix C.

While children work in many sectors, according to data assembled by the ILO from 26 developing countries, the majority of economically active children (70 percent) work in agriculture, fishing, forestry, and hunting. The remainder work in manufacturing (eight percent); wholesale and retail trade, restaurants, and hotels (eight percent); community, social, and personal services (seven percent); transport, storage and communications (four percent); construction (two percent); and mining and quarrying (one percent).³⁵ The following sections describe working conditions in the sectors where children are most frequently employed.

1. Agriculture

More of the world's working children are employed in agriculture than in any other sector. Common systems of pay tend to encourage the use of child labor. Arrangements for paying workers based on tasks completed or the amount of product harvested provide an incentive for parents to supplement their own labor with that of their children to augment the family income. In some cases, parents take their young children to work in the fields because they lack a safe place to leave them.

Children often begin work in the agricultural sector at a very young age and perform a variety of tasks related to the planting and harvesting of crops. They work, often along with their parents, in subsistence (purely family-based), small-holder, and commercial farming.³⁶ As described below, the dangers faced by children working in agriculture are manifold. Their work frequently interferes with their education, and despite long hours of work, children generally receive little or no compensation.

In some countries, children make up a significant percentage of the agricultural work force. A survey of 12 states in Mexico indicated that children from seven to 14 years make up 30 percent of day laborers in the agricultural sector.³⁷ A similar reliance on child labor is found in Kenyan agriculture. During peak seasons, Kenyan children account for close to half of the work force planting, weeding, and harvesting on sugar estates,³⁸ and between 50 and 60 percent of the work force on coffee plantations.³⁹ In Egypt, tens of thousands of children harvest cotton, the country's second largest export product.⁴⁰

Some children, while not directly engaged in planting or harvesting, instead perform smaller tasks on farms and plantations. In Guatemala, for example, since the work of cutting sugar cane requires strength, younger children are employed in less physically demanding, complementary activities such as helping to trim the cane after it has been cut and collecting loose stalks that have fallen off loaders and trucks.⁴¹

For the many children employed in agriculture, exposure to health and safety risks is a regular part of their daily work life. They face numerous hazards such as sharp and unwieldy tools, bites from snakes and insects, transportation in unsafe vehicles, and regular exposure to toxic substances such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They often work without protective clothing, are exposed to extreme temperatures, and carry heavy loads.⁴² As the following examples illustrate, such hazards vary, depending on the crops farmed and the equipment used.

In sisal cultivation in Brazil, children frequently suffer eye, hand, and arm injuries from cutting the pointy-ended plant and processing or shredding the plant with sharp tools.⁴³ The harvesting of oranges also presents its own unique dangers. According to Brazilian welfare groups and unions, close to 150,000 children are employed during the country's six-month orange harvesting season. They pick oranges in severe heat for as long as 12 hours a day. The children's hands are dyed green and their fingertips are sometimes eroded by citric acid from the oranges and toxic pesticides sprayed even while children are in the orange groves. In some cases, damage to their fingertips is so severe that children are later refused identification cards due to a lack of fingerprints.⁴⁴

In Mexico, where children cultivate and harvest a variety of fruits and vegetables, they often handle toxic pesticides and other agrochemicals without adequate protective equipment or training. In some cases, fumigation is carried out while the workers are still in the fields.⁴⁵ Extreme heat and heavy workloads frequently cause dehydration, sunstroke, and injuries among workers.⁴⁶ The exhausting physical labor, combined with poor nutrition and living conditions, drains children's energies, making it difficult for them to participate in school or recreational activities.⁴⁷

On rice plantations in Kenya, children make up as much as 90 percent of the work force during periods of rice transplanting, an activity involving long hours of walking backward and bending to pick and replant rice.⁴⁸ Working in rice fields, children are bitten by snakes and exposed to diseases such as malaria, influenza, and pneumonia.⁴⁹

Most children work in agriculture on a seasonal basis--full-time during the harvesting and seeding seasons and on an irregular or part-time basis during the remainder of the year. Seasonal agricultural work often conflicts with children's school attendance during the regular academic year. Children frequently miss classes, and some are even forced to give up years of their education.

In Guatemala, for example, coffee harvests do not uniformly coincide with the end of the school year. A large number of children withdraw from school and migrate with their families to assist in the harvests. Once on a coffee farm, it becomes impractical for parents to enroll their children in nearby schools for the two to three-month harvest season. Lack of classroom space also limits options open to migrant families. Rather than have their children sit idle, parents often choose to have their children join in the harvest and contribute to family income.⁵⁰

In Mexico, educational opportunities for children of migrant farmworkers are inadequate, and the typical school year is not adapted to address their families' constant movement. The Mexican government's National Migrant Farmworkers' Program (PRONJAG) estimates that one in every five migrant children of school-going age (six to 14) has never attended school and that two out of three children over the age of 12 have at some time abandoned primary studies in order to work in the fields.⁵¹

In Peru, children frequently miss classes during the school year to harvest crops such as coffee,⁵² cotton, rice, fruit, and asparagus.⁵³

Despite the dangers of agricultural work and the sacrifices children make in terms of their education, child agricultural workers often receive little pay for their long hours of labor.

Working from morning to dusk in Egypt's cotton fields, children earn between US$ 0.03 and US$ 0.09 for every two pounds of cotton picked--most earn US $1.00 a day or less.⁵⁴

Harvesting sugar cane in Brazil, children begin work at 5:00 a.m. and continue for eight hours under the burning sun for five reais (US$ 4.50) a day.⁵⁵

In Guatemala, children pick and sort beans and carry heavy sacks of coffee for eight to 12 hours per day. The father and male children harvest the beans. For their long hours of work, the family unit earns about US$ 4 to US$ 5 per day.⁵⁶

In the tea estates of Nepal, child workers generally earn 10 to 25 rupees (US$ 0.16 to US$ 0.40) per day, while adults make roughly twice that amount.⁵⁷

Working alongside their parents on Nicaraguan banana and coffee plantations, children age 10 and older earn less than US$ 1 per day.⁵⁸

Finally, there are reports of bonded child labor in agriculture, particularly in small-scale agricultural operations in rural India, Pakistan, and Nepal. Bonded labor in the farm sector occurs when poor, landless peasants and tenant farmers have no choice but to turn to landlords for loans in the form of cash or food, to be repaid with labor. Instead of decreasing with the time worked, however, the loans often increase, and bondage becomes a way of life for generations.⁵⁹

2. Fishing

Significant numbers of children work in the fishing industry. Children dive for fish, work on fishing platforms and boats, collect shellfish and shrimp larvae, peel shrimp, and clean fish. In performing these tasks, they often spend long hours in the water and face hazards such as drowning, skin diseases, and attack by sharks or other dangerous fish. They also risk injury from the sharp tools used for cutting and cleaning fish and seafood.

According to the 1995 Philippines National Survey of Working Children, almost seven percent of Filipino working children from five to 15 years old are engaged in fishing.⁶⁰ It used to be common practice to employ children in deep-sea fishing operations, where they worked without protective gear in water for up to 12 hours a day. Boys as young as age 10 dived to depths of 100 feet to maneuver nets around coral reefs, risking drowning, ruptured eardrums, decompression sickness, and attack by predatory fish.⁶¹ A concerted effort by Filipino NGOs, the ILO, and UNICEF and stepped up enforcement by the Government of the Philippines resulted in a reduction in the employment of underage children in deep-sea fishing.⁶² It is unclear, however, whether the practice has been completely eradicated.⁶³

In countries such as Bangladesh, Peru, and Thailand, children perform labor-intensive tasks related to farming and processing shrimp and other shellfish.

In Bangladesh, children as young as six years old work alongside their parents in tidal streams and rivers collecting shrimp fry--shrimp larvae that are sold to shrimp farms for growth and harvest.⁶⁴ Fry collection occurs in the mornings from 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and in the evenings from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., as tides permit.⁶⁵ Children are also reported to perform tasks such as peeling and cleaning shrimp.⁶⁶

In northern Peru, children spend long workdays submerged in the sea, extracting shrimp larvae for cultivation and eventual export.⁶⁷

Children in Thailand clean and shell seafood, at constant risk of injury from sharp knives and tools. Cuts and scrapes, sometimes leading to infection, are common. Most workers also suffer from skin diseases as a result of long hours exposed to salt from the water and fish. Despite the troubles associated with exposed hands, most workers do not wear gloves, since this would slow down their work.⁶⁸

3. Manufacturing

Where child labor occurs in the manufacturing sector, most often it is in small workshops or home-based work. Employment of children in medium-sized or large enterprises is rare, but such establishments sometimes contribute indirectly to child labor by subcontracting out certain production tasks to small workshops or home-workers who make extensive use of child labor.⁶⁹

Children who are employed in manufacturing work long hours, often without proper safety gear. They face numerous hazards, including exposure to excessive heat, insufficient lighting, poor ventilation, loud noise, and toxic substances. While the number of children working in manufacturing generally represents only a small portion of the overall population of working children in a given country, they sometimes make up a significant percentage of the work force in a particular industry. In such cases, children are generally used intensively for specific tasks in the chain of production for which they are perceived to be especially well suited.

Manufacturing involving child labor frequently involves subcontracting arrangements whereby children work out of small shops or private homes. Such arrangements enable producers to skirt child labor laws in countries where such worksites are exempt from existing legislation.

Since the enactment of India's 1986 Child Labor Prohibition and Regulation Act, large sporting goods factories generally employ only adult workers. Children are still found, however, stitching and assembling soccer balls, volleyballs, and boxing and cricket gloves in their homes or small stitching centers, where their work will not violate Indian child labor law.⁷⁰ Similarly, in India's gemstone industry, children commonly work out of private homes in smaller villages.⁷¹ In small shops on the back streets of Jaipur, children sort, sift, and clean semiprecious stones. Older children and young teenagers grind, polish, and set stones. Most work in these shops appears to be done by children and teenagers ages 12 to 18, and many of them operate either manual or powered grinding stones.⁷²

In the sporting goods industry of Pakistan, children stitch soccer balls in their homes.⁷³ In the surgical instrument industry, manufacturers who have expelled most child laborers from their factories still rely on children working off-site in small polishing and filing workshops.⁷⁴ Children as young as eight work crouched in cramped workshops, without protective clothing, grinding scissors and polishing, cutting, and filing other surgical instruments.⁷⁵

In Mexico's manufacturing sector, children most commonly work in small, family-run or artisan workshops, where constitutional and federal labor laws are not applied.⁷⁶ There are also reports of children performing home-based and subcontracting work for the country's apparel industry,⁷⁷ and of extensive use of child labor in the household production of leather footwear.⁷⁸

Hazards associated with child labor in manufacturing result from poor work environments that contribute to illness and inadequate safety measures to protect children from work place accidents.

In the production of firecrackers in Guatemala, children as young as seven, mostly boys, insert fuses into firecrackers and perform other related tasks. The work is highly dangerous, as evidenced by the number of accidental explosions. Children risk burns, amputations, and even death. On-the-job exposure to gunpowder leads to respiratory illness and eye irritations that cause itching, tearing, and burning. Many children are malnourished, and their long hours of work make it virtually impossible for them to attend school.⁷⁹ Similar conditions have been reported in the fireworks industries of India,⁸⁰ Peru,⁸¹ Mexico,⁸² and the Philippines.⁸³

It is estimated that 50,000 children work under hazardous conditions in the glass industry of Firozabad, India.⁸⁴ These children regularly work in front of furnaces where temperatures reach 1500 to 1600 degrees Celsius.⁸⁵ Children carry molten glass on long rods to different stages of glass production. They help adult workers pour molten glass into molds and take the glass to other workers, who cut the molds away. Common injuries include burns from molten glass and eye damage caused by flying specks of broken glass. Workers also suffer vision damage caused by straining to look continuously into the blinding light of furnaces.⁸⁶Even the air presents a constant hazard. Workers regularly inhale dust from coal and silica, and fumes from the various chemicals used in the production of glass. Poor air quality results in a high incidence of respiratory illnesses such as tuberculosis, bronchitis, and asthma.⁸⁷

In the leather tanning industries of several countries, including Bangladesh, India, Egypt, and Pakistan, children endure appalling conditions, including exposure to corrosive chemicals and bacterial contamination from hides.⁸⁸ Children constitute about 25 percent of the labor force in the leather tanneries of old Cairo in Egypt.⁸⁹ In the leather tanneries of old Dhaka in Bangladesh, virtually all of the more than 300 tanneries in operation employ boys.⁹⁰

In the leather footwear industry, children work with sharp knives and cutting tools and are exposed to toxic fumes, solvents, and other dangerous chemicals which can cause skin and respiratory diseases.

In the footwear industry of Agra, India, while children are reportedly not employed by companies producing shoes directly for the export market, they do work in smaller workshops and homes.⁹¹ Children employed in these smaller units work up to 12 hours per day and are exposed to glue fumes and other chemicals used in production.⁹²

In Turkey, children working in the leather footwear industry are exposed to harmful solvents such as hexane. Following the administration of medical and neurological exams to 250 children working in Istanbul's leather footwear industry in 1996, 19 children were hospitalized and treated for the deleterious effects of exposure to hexane.⁹³ A majority of these children were 12 years old and worked an average of 10 to 12 hours per day.⁹⁴

In Brazil, children working in small workshops and homes producing leather footwear parts are exposed to glue and other solvents that have been demonstrated to cause respiratory ailments, nausea, lethargy, and sometimes irreversible damage to the immune system, nervous system, and the liver. Dangerous working instruments contribute to cuts, bruises, and punctures. Injuries sometimes result in amputations.⁹⁵

In certain cases, children perform specific tasks within an industry. These tend to be the most menial and labor-intensive tasks that are sometimes viewed as well-suited for child labor.

In brick-kiln operations outside of Lima, Peruvian children work making bricks along with their families. Most are recent migrants from the provinces. Children as young as three and four years old toil turning over row after row of bricks that are laid in the sun to ensure even drying.⁹⁶Children also work in brick-kiln operations in India,⁹⁷ Pakistan,⁹⁸ Nepal,⁹⁹ and Mexico.¹⁰⁰

In the glass industry of India, children eight years old and younger weld the ends of glass bangle bracelets in small workshops or private homes. The rooms where they work are dark and have no ventilation because the kerosene flame used to heat the glass would flicker in a breeze. According to some estimates, roughly 50 to 60 percent of this work is done by children and women.¹⁰¹

The use of child labor in the labor-intensive hand-knotted carpet industries of India, Pakistan, and Nepal has been widely documented. Children employed in this industry often work in confined, dimly-lit workshops. Many develop respiratory illnesses and suffer spinal deformities and retarded growth from long hours of work crouched in dust-filled rooms. Cuts and wounds from sharp tools are common. Some children in the industry work as bonded laborers, working to pay off money borrowed by their parents.¹⁰²

4. Mining and Quarrying

Child labor is used in small-scale mining and stone-quarrying operations in many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The number of children working in mining and quarrying is relatively small, but the incidence of injuries and illness is high. According to the ILO, more than one in every five girls and one in every six boys employed in mines and quarries are affected by serious injuries and illnesses.¹⁰³

In small-scale mining, there are no limits to the hours a child may work. Children work without adequate protective equipment, clothing, or training. They handle dangerous tools and carry heavy loads. Working conditions include extremes of heat and cold and exposure to high levels of humidity and hazardous dusts and materials, including mercury. The examples below illustrate some of the hazards child miners face and the negative impact of mine work on child development.

In Guatemala, children work in the mining and refining of lime, a mineral compound used in the construction industry and the fermenting of local alcoholic beverages. According to a 1996 survey, children lift and crush heavy rocks. They are in constant danger of landslides and suffer from bone fractures, burns, and respiratory ailments.¹⁰⁴ Children are also employed in stone quarries along the Samalá River in Retalhuleu, Guatemala. There, children, some as young as five years, chip and haul stones. Many are forced to work in order to pay off debts incurred by their parents. The work is both strenuous and dangerous. Children risk contracting various lung and skin diseases, loss of eyesight, and physical deformities or loss of a limb. Children frequently do not attend school and child illiteracy is common.¹⁰⁵

Children also quarry and cut stones in the Philippines.¹⁰⁶ They have been observed blasting rocks, breaking up stones with pick axes, and carrying and loading stones into trucks, all without protective clothing.¹⁰⁷

In the Mererani tanzanite mines of Tanzania, young boys--called "snakeboys"-- compromise their physical and mental health by engaging in exhausting work in deep and weakly constructed pits. Respiratory problems due to dust and harmful gases are exacerbated by poor ventilation. Child miners endure loud noise and excessive heat. The boys place themselves at further risk by remaining in mine shafts far below ground while explosives are detonated in hope of being the first to recover newly exposed gems.¹⁰⁸ In Tanzanian stone quarries, children work in bare feet, wielding crude hammers to break rocks.¹⁰⁹ An unknown number of children also work in hazardous small-scale gold mining operations in several parts of the country.¹¹⁰

In the stone quarries of Tamil Nadu, Indian children break stones into small pieces and carry tools and explosives.¹¹¹ Accidents are frequent, as are reports of workers losing limbs and being killed.¹¹² Outside New Delhi, in the stone quarries of Faridabad, thousands of migrants work, some bonded, and many assisted by their children. Working seven days a week under hazardous conditions, most children are unable to go to school.¹¹³

In communities in south-central Peru, children help their families in informal gold mining operations.¹¹⁴ Most work as nonremunerated family workers, helping their parents with mining and household chores. They perform hard physical labor for many hours a day and walk long distances carrying heavy loads. Children who work in the mine shafts risk cave-ins and injuries from working with picks and other tools in the narrow shafts.¹¹⁵ Children who help process the gold using a quimbalete¹¹⁶ often come into direct contact with mercury.¹¹⁷ Studies done by NGOs at several of these mines found high levels of mercury in the children's systems. Psychological examinations found that 60 percent of children and 78 percent of adolescents tested below normal levels for intellectual performance.¹¹⁸

5. Services

Children in the service sector work in a variety of occupations and situations. A large number of children, especially girls, work as domestic servants. Both boys and girls of increasingly young ages are recruited or trafficked into the commercial sex industry. In urban areas, children work as street vendors, car washers, and porters. Children are also employed in markets, bakeries, restaurants, cafes, and train and bus stations. The conditions of work of child domestic servants, commercial sex workers, and other child laborers in service occupations in the 16 countries studied for this report are described below.

a. Domestic Workers

Domestic service remains one of the most common forms of child labor. In many countries, the use of children as domestic servants is regarded as a socially acceptable traditional practice.¹¹⁹ Child domestic servants typically perform household services and chores for their employers in exchange for pay and/or room and board. They run errands, shop, provide child care, fetch water and firewood, clean, do laundry, cook, and perform other household chores. Child domestic servants are frequently expected to work at all hours of the day, with few days off.¹²⁰

In many developing countries, it is common for poor families to send their young children, particularly girls, to work as domestic servants in the households of more well-to-do families or relatives. Sometimes parents send their children away to gain extra income or with the hope that they will receive better lodging, nourishment, and an education. In some cases, children work as domestics to repay debts incurred by their parents. Often, child domestics receive harsh treatment at the hands of their employers.

The informal and hidden nature of domestic work makes it difficult to accurately estimate the number of child domestic workers around the world. However, the ILO believes that child domestic service is a widespread practice in many developing countries.¹²¹ This is the case in all of the countries studied for this report. In some countries, the number of children working as domestic servants is large.

In the Philippines, over 300,000 children and adolescents are believed to work as domestic servants.¹²²

In 1995, almost 260,000 Brazilian children between the ages of 10 and 14 (or close to eight percent of child workers in that age group) were employed in domestic service.¹²³

The majority of domestic workers tend to be between 12 and 17 years old, but in some instances, much younger children are reported to work in this sector.

In Bangladesh, a survey of child domestic workers found that 24 percent were between five and 10 years old.¹²⁴

There are similar allegations of young girls working as domestic servants in Nepal, where some domestic workers are as young as seven,¹²⁵ and in Kenya, where over 10 percent of child domestic workers are estimated to be 10 years old.¹²⁶

Children who work as domestic servants often suffer physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Many work for little or no pay. They endure isolation from their families and are frequently deprived of opportunities to play with peers and attend school.¹²⁷

In Peru, roughly 80 percent of child domestic workers are girls,¹²⁸ many working under the guise of protective, family-like arrangements.¹²⁹ In reality, however, they are often assigned all the household chores and denied an opportunity to attend school. They work long hours, often for no compensation other than meals, lodging, and clothing, and are maintained in dependent relationships.¹³⁰ Adding to their plight, these children are vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse by family members.¹³¹

Similarly, in Kenya, girls who work as domestic servants are frequently denied time for play, lack the emotional support of their families, and often have no access to education.¹³² According to one study, 70 percent of employers actually show a preference for child domestic servants who are semi-literate or illiterate.¹³³ Of children surveyed, most are paid in kind. Where cash is involved, it is generally paid directly to the child's parent or guardian.¹³⁴ Sexual and verbal abuse of these children is common.¹³⁵

It is estimated that over 31,000 Nepalese children and adolescents work as domestic servants. Demand for these children appears to be growing since they are seen as a cheap and obedient source of labor.¹³⁶ As in other countries, these children often have little or no contact with their families. They have few opportunities for play, and many have never been to school. Child domestics also rarely receive proper medical attention. Some girls regularly face sexual abuse, in the form of physical contact or verbal harassment. Some child domestic servants work to repay the debts of their parents. In such cases, the child's pay is either kept by the employers or taken directly by the parents.¹³⁷

Bonded domestic service has also been reported in the Philippines, where children have been known to work for months for urban employers without remuneration to repay loans incurred by their indigent families.¹³⁸

Many child domestic servants suffer psychological trauma and impairment, physical injury, and exhaustion; some become pregnant at a young age.¹³⁹ Unfortunately, more often than not, the suffering of these children goes unnoticed and unreported.

b. Commercial Sex Workers

Child prostitution, often described as one of the worst contemporary forms of slavery, has been defined as "the act of engaging or offering the services of a child to perform sexual acts for money or other consideration . . ."¹⁴⁰ This definition stresses that child prostitution is not committed by children but by the adults who engage in prostitution or offer a child's sexual services to others.

Large numbers of children work in the commercial sex industry in an increasing number of countries. These children are often recruited under the false pretense of marriage or a good job in the city. Others are kidnaped or sold by their parents, and some are trafficked across national borders. The prostitution and trafficking of children is common in Asia, but also occurs in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe.¹⁴¹

Every year, thousands of sex tourists flock to Thailand, which among other countries in Asia and Africa has earned an international reputation for child prostitution.¹⁴² Reports indicate that girls from Cambodia, China, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam are being sold to brothels in Thailand.¹⁴³ Such girls face serious health risks as evidenced by one Bangkok hostel that shelters former child prostitutes where half the girls between the ages of 14 and 18 tested positive for HIV.¹⁴⁴

In Bangladesh, there is extensive trafficking of children for prostitution within the country and to other countries, including India and Pakistan. Traffickers commonly bring the children across borders illegally or falsely represent them as their own.¹⁴⁵

The trafficking of Nepalese girls to major cities in India and other countries is widespread. It is estimated that thousands of young women and girls, some as young as seven years old, are trafficked to Indian cities each year.¹⁴⁶ According to some estimates, the total number of Nepalese prostitutes in India is nearly 200,000.¹⁴⁷ Once confined to brothels, the girls may be subjected to multiple gang rapes, beatings, food deprivation, and cigarette burning.¹⁴⁸ Many sex workers in India are forced to have unprotected sex. According to a study conducted in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), 40 to 85 percent of sex workers in that city are HIV-positive. Those girls who manage to escape and return to Nepal are often rejected by their communities.¹⁴⁹

Recent estimates indicate that about 75,000 children are engaged in prostitution in the Philippines. Children sell sexual services on the streets or work through pimps, brothels, and parent-contractors.¹⁵⁰

In South Africa, children work in the sex industry in urban areas and rural townships.¹⁵¹ Organized child prostitution can be found in and around taxi and trucking routes, around harbors, in domestic service, and on the street. Sex tourism using children is reportedly increasing, fed in part by the myth that sex with a virgin or young girl will either cure or prevent AIDS.¹⁵² Rural to urban migration also leads children into prostitution.¹⁵³

In Kenya, child prostitution mainly involves young girls and is on the rise, especially among street children.¹⁵⁴ Most children working in the commercial sex industry eventually contract sexually transmitted infections, including AIDS, from local adults and tourists.¹⁵⁵ In addition to health risks, many of these children suffer from serious psychological disorders due to the prisonlike conditions in which they are held and the fact that they have lost all contact with their families.¹⁵⁶

In Brazil, child prostitution has been reported in the tourist areas of Bahia and Pernambuco, as well as in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.¹⁵⁷ According to an NGO survey, more than 1,000 girls were working as prostitutes in Recife in 1991. Although more recent estimates are not available, researchers believe that child prostitution in Recife is on the rise.¹⁵⁸

In Mexico, an increase in child prostitution in Mexico City, mostly involving girls, has been observed since 1994.¹⁵⁹ These girls are lured away from their families, sometimes with the family's consent, by middlemen who promise employment or marriage. The middlemen often loan substantial amounts of money to the girls, creating a dependent relationship.¹⁶⁰

Commercial sexual exploitation is one of the most brutal forms of violence against children. As described above, child prostitutes suffer extreme physical, psychological, and emotional abuse.¹⁶¹ They risk drug addiction, early pregnancy, social alienation, and deadly sexually transmitted infections.¹⁶²

c. Other Forms of Child
Labor in the Service Sector

In addition to the service sectors already discussed, children work in myriad other occupations in the 16 countries studied for this report. These occupations range from street vending and hotel and restaurant work, to car repair and construction. Many children live and work on the streets, exposed on a daily basis to harsh weather, crime, and street violence. Earnings vary widely, but most of these children are extremely poor, making barely enough money to survive. The following examples illustrate some of the many services children perform and the conditions of work they endure.

In Mexico City's Central Market (Centro de Abasto), the city's largest public wholesale and retail market, children work long hours, often beginning before dawn, performing tasks that in many cases exceed their physical capacity. A study published in 1997 by UNICEF and the Government of Mexico City found 400 to 500 children, many under 14 years old, working in the market.¹⁶³ A more recent report estimates that as many as 2,000 youths from age seven to 18 work in the market.¹⁶⁴ Boys most commonly work as diableros, loading and carrying heavy merchandise on small carts through the market. They also work as vendors, cashiers, and car washers. Girls assist in café kitchens, sell produce, clothing, and prepared foods, and perform commercial sex services.¹⁶⁵ Most of the children are illiterate and come from rural areas of Mexico; many of their parents are unemployed.¹⁶⁶

In India, small hotels, restaurants, and tea shops commonly employ children. Interviews with children in Dindigal, Tamil Nadu, reveal that children work in kitchens, clean dishes and utensils, serve customers, and perform menial tasks. They work six days a week, usually for about 12 hours a day, and earn 300 to 600 rupees per month (US$ 7.50 to US$ 15).¹⁶⁷ Child workers in the tea shops of Nepal endure similar conditions.¹⁶⁸

Hundreds of children in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, work as porters. Independently employed, they manually carry heavy loads of goods and luggage through narrow streets and alleys that vehicles cannot access.¹⁶⁹ Child porters carry loads up to 150 pounds and seldom earn more than 100 rupees (US$ 1.60) a day.¹⁷⁰ Working hours vary from six to 14 hours a day.¹⁷¹ Adequate shelter is a problem for child porters, with many sleeping on the street or underneath temples and others sharing overcrowded rented rooms for the night. Child porters frequently suffer from ailments and injuries directly related to their work, including backaches, chest aches, and fractures.¹⁷²

In Peru, an estimated 800 children and adolescents work on weekends and holidays helping their parents pick through and sell trash after pigs have eaten the edible garbage. They reportedly earn 50 cents per bag of garbage--typically five soles (US$ 1.85) a day. These children are exposed to tetanus and other infections.¹⁷³

Children in the Philippines work on docks in port areas, often at night, carrying and loading heavy bags of cement. They constantly inhale dust from the bags they carry.¹⁷⁴

In South Africa, children park and wash cars and work as taxi fare collectors. This is becoming an increasingly hazardous occupation since the advent of the so-called taxi wars, a reference to the gun violence surrounding competition among taxi companies for service routes.¹⁷⁵

Children also work in the construction industries of many countries, including Brazil,¹⁷⁶ Guatemala,¹⁷⁷ India,¹⁷⁸ Mexico,¹⁷⁹ Nepal,¹⁸⁰ Pakistan,¹⁸¹ and Thailand.¹⁸² Children in construction perform various tasks, including digging earth, carrying heavy loads, breaking stones or rocks, and shoveling sand and cement. They face tremendous safety and health hazards, including falls, exposure to dust, heat, and noise, and numerous accidents and injuries.¹⁸³ In some cases, the burden is even greater when the work is performed under bonded conditions. In India, for instance, there are allegations of bonded labor in the construction industry of Tamil Nadu.¹⁸⁴

Although some of the work performed by children in the service sector is highly visible, such as that of street vendors and shoeshines, the plight of many others goes largely unnoticed and unaddressed. The informal nature of children's work in the service sector makes it difficult to document the full extent of this problem, and in many countries, labor legislation fails to address such forms of child labor.

This report was produced by the staff of the International Child Labor Program and is published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs.
Acknowledgements.

Chapter II: Assessment of the Problem

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