Everything from the brand new shoes on your feet, to the baseball cap on your head to the bad your caring around your shoulder is the work of the some of the biggest name brands in the fashion industry. They look appealing, comfortable and of course fashionable, but no one ever stops and thinks where they actually come from and how they got on your body. You didn’t know how many hours it took to make that one garment or what they working conditions were like that they had to sweat over so you could look good for a day, and the worst part of it is that they are simply children. Child labor is a growing industry, which employs millions of children across the globe. Big manufacturing countries outsource to third world countries thinking that they can get cheap labor in producing their products. How ever they don’t realize the effects on the kids that they are exploiting. From their everyday schedule to their gruesome living standards and limited pay, this is not the life that people should have to be living in. With these conditions, it’s amazing that they are able to survive at all with the extreme conditions. With child labor, human rights are being exploited and unnecessary actions are being used to exploit these children. Even with efforts from different universal organizations such as UNICEF, their needs and demands are still not being met; there is always more that can be done to end child labor. Through different efforts and causes to end child labor, their basic human rights are constantly being abused and violated as they are forced into labor.
Child labor, a growing problem around the world, is a violation of everyone’s basic human rights. Every person is granted certain rights that are not allowed to be violated or taken away in any circumstance. For example, when was it ever right to push hundreds of children into crowded workrooms with heavy machine for long workdays? They are given little food and are unable to function and are putting their young lives in danger. With so many countries around the world involved with child labor, the global society needs a wake up call to reevaluate what they are sentencing their kids to do. In the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states,
“ Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political of other opinion national or social origin, property, birth, or other status,”(Weston).
Everyone, including children, is given rights that every basic human being is granted. Many however, claim that children are not eligible for these rights simply because they are not adults and that they don’t get the same protection and rights that everyone else does. Since no specific age is mention with the rights, it gives them every opportunity to encourage and promote child labor across the globe. However, there are still activists trying to get child labor to become illegal. According to the International Labor Organization, it states “the ‘child labor’ of concern is generally employment that prevents effective school attendance, and which is often performed under conditions hazardous to the physical and mental health of the child” (United States Department of Labor). It is saying that children are allowed to do work, such as family businesses or work that does not interfere with school or harm them, but as soon as any of these conditions are violated and the child is put in danger, that is when child labor becomes a problem and needs to be stopped. However most companies don’t care about the regulations or rules that prevent child labor and keep kids safe. They don’t agree with the basic human rights law or the fact that they are violating children. Many people take for granted that the live in the United States where child labor is completely unacceptable, and they never truly think about how children in other countries are constantly working in unfair conditions just to survive. Acclaimed photojournalist David L. Parker stated that “250 million children worldwide still labour (sic) to sustain basic needs”(Parker). It’s amazing that as many human rights activists there are in the world, there are still so many children forced into unlawful working. It’s a practice that obviously needs to be stopped and fortunately there are organizations that are trying to prevent this terrible practice.
UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Education Fund, is an organization whose efforts include preventing child labor around the globe. Their efforts are numerous and are really targeted towards creating a better environment for the children, claiming that “child labour as the rising tide on the international agenda”(Fyfe, 31). They are involved in many different programs and organizations to help prevent children from entering child labor. They created projects such as the “Mou Project”, which protected kids in the garment industry, to Basic Education for Hard to Reach Urban Children (BEHTRUC) project in Bangladesh, which allows children to receive, and education instead of entering the work force (Dukess). These problems create opportunities for kids around the world to be educated and to feel safe and protected within their own environment. This organization gives children the opportunity to be relieved of child labor and be able to actually grow up as children. UNICEF’S Executive Director Ann M. Venema said, “Children who are compelled to work are robbed of childhood itself,” (qtd. Dukess). With these specific efforts made my UNICEF, they are essentially giving the children back their childhood, a human right that had been taken away from them. Children across the globe have benefited from their great effort to end child labor throughout the globe. In UNICEF’S facilitating position at the 2002 UNGASS (United Nations General Assembly Special Session) opening they made a statement saying, “education is a human right and a key factor to reducing poverty and child labour,”(Fyfe, 33). Whatever their efforts maybe, UNICEF puts forth their best effort in promoting and trying to end child labor.
Another important organization to help end child labor is that of the ILO (International Labor Organization) works to create new programs in efforts to educate the world on the issues and tries to put an end to the child labor. One of their main missions, in association with IPEC (International Progamme on the Elimination of Child Labour), is to monitor child labor and to prevent children from working in inhumane conditions. Under their program called CLM (child labouring monitoring) they “mobilize and train community members to monitor child labour and link the monitoring activity to local government and official enforcement systems, especially labour inspection, so that the information on child labour can be used effectively,” (International Labor Organization). With this system and work to prevent child labor, they are clearly making a difference in what they want and what they expect to regard child labor. This is one of the programs used to help prevent child labor. They even instated an ILO convention in which they came up with specific rights about child labor that is unlawful land not allowed to be violated. For example Article 3 of ILO Convention 182 states that:
(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;
(b) (b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;
(c) (c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;
(d) (d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children. (International Labor Organization).
With laws such as these, that specifically break down and give information on what counts as violating child labor laws, one would assume that these wouldn’t be broken, however that is rarely the case.
