Small hands carry big burdens: Why child labour has only gotten worse

That call gets louder each year on 12 June, designated by the UN as World Day Against Child Labour.

There is a different story or tragedy behind every single case of underage labour. Everyone one of them has deprived someone of their childhood, exploiting a vulnerable young person for greed.

In many cases, the economic systems involved in effect sides with the powerful, turning away from an obvious need for social justice. Many societies lack rules to protect children and their access to learning, leisure time and freedom.

Instead, when put to work, their childhoods are marked by misery and exploitation.

According to Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, Covid-19 made child labour more of a problem. Schools closed and prices rose, and the economic shock stoked widespread poverty and reduced purchasing power in most low- and middle-income countries.

The number of children engaged in hazardous work has risen by 8.4 million since 2016. And Unicef found there are around 9 million more children at risk of exploitation since they have not enrolled in school.

Economic shockwaves from the pandemic – still spreading through poorer countries, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America – could make matters worse.

Worst places

The problem is particularly acute in three densely populated areas: India, Pakistan, and Nigeria

In India, more than 33 million children between the ages of seven and 14 are engaged in various forms of work, without any social rights. That number is 15 million in Nigeria and 3.3 million in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In Ethiopia, around 14% of children under 14 are at work. In Liberia, around 358,000 are working. There are over 1 million employed children in Somalia or about 39%. Most of these children will have no schooling.

Child labour is on the rise in an area stretching from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. It covers Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and Afghanistan.

In this region of the world, it is known that small hands are cheap. There are companies that employ children to make consumables and clothing sold within European markets. Consumers in rich countries, which so often claim to defend human rights, are not asking themselves questions about these products, such as where they are being produced and how.

Criminal element

Elsewhere in the world, criminal groups are exploiting children, involving them in smuggling, trafficking in arms and drugs, and even terrorism.

This is especially the case in the Sahel-Sahara region, where young children are recruited, trained to fight, and pushed into armed separatist conflicts. Some children are being sold to gangs as slaves or for sexual exploitation.

According to the UN reports, child exploitation is on the rise alongside widespread poverty, which is also making its 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) harder to reach.

According to official figures, in the poorest countries, one in every four children is in the labour market. That is likely to be an underestimate, especially for areas where disruption to schools is frequent in rural or remote areas. 

Child labourers accounted for 9% of all children in middle- and low-income countries; the figure drops to 7% in high-middle-income countries

The United Nations is questioning the ability of some countries to eliminate child labour by 2025 in line with the SDGs. But there is some hope, in many of these countries there has been a limited decline, thanks to updated laws, which are estimated to have protected around 94 million children from working.

Arab Spring increases child labour

In the Arab region, there are about 13.4 million children engaged in various economic activities after dropping out of school at a very young age. Unicef estimates that to be about 3% of the total population.

The number has grown in line with turbulence over economic and security matters. The Arab Spring was one of the immediate causes. The disruption it caused increased the flow of displaced people from countries including Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Tunisia.

The UN puts the increase down to the millions of people who have been displaced, depriving them of social safety nets and pushing them into poverty, creating a critical need for income, and opening the way for child labour.

Climate change

There are other causes. Data from Morocco's High Commission for Planning shows that the number of children working is dominated by areas hit by climate change, where there is drought.

The country's total number of economically active children is estimated at 138,000, or around 2% of the 7 million children enrolled in school and aged between seven and 24.

Of that 138,000, there are 119,000 children from rural areas or villages, showing that the need to resort to jobs for children is more acute in the countryside, especially in areas that are short of water.

Young girls are often brought to work as domestic workers in urban homes – a very old Moroccan phenomenon that reflects social and cultural differences.

Statistics show that 81% of males among child labourers work in agricultural activities and live in rural areas. Of these children, 12% work in parallel with their education – most of them urban dwellers – while 86% of working children left school early and 2.2% have never had any education before.

School interruption is one of the biggest social problems associated with children and young people in Morocco – they can't obtain sufficient education or vocational training to facilitate their access to the organised labour market.

This makes them vulnerable to economic or even physical exploitation. About a million children have left school early in the last 10 years and are called NEETs – not in employment, not in education, and not in training.

A miserable childhood

The exact figure that child labour contributes to the global economy is not known. But it is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

The children whose lives are blighted by it are spread all over the world and come from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures. But they all share poverty and exploitation.

They are all let down by the governments and societies that should be protecting them. And they are the victims of the companies, brands and consumers that exploit them, directly or indirectly.

In a modern world, there are still too many children toiling in conditions that would be recognised by Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens, writers chronicling the scandal of child labour hundreds of years ago, a stain on humanity made all the worse because it has still not been consigned to history.