For Karl Hanson, director of the Interfaculty Center for Children’s Rights at the University of Geneva, it is not realistic to think of being able to eliminate child labor in the world. Some abolitionist policies can push children into more precarious forms of work.
One hundred and sixty million children work in the world, that’s about one child out of 10. Half of them are between 5 and 11 years old. After several years of decline, the number of working children has started to rise again in 2020, according to the latest report from the International Labor Organization (ILO). The Covid could have pushed this figure even higher by several million.
In 2015, the UN adopted the Sustainable Development Goals to fight poverty and inequality. Among these intentions, that of “prohibiting and eliminating the worst forms of child labor, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers and, by 2025, ending child labor in all its forms” .
With less than two years to go, the task is far from being achieved. For Karl Hanson, director of the Interfaculty Center for Children’s Rights at the University of Geneva, and guest of Geopolitisthis objective is simply not realistic: “we cannot abolish child labor in a short time. There are nevertheless socio-economic conditions that push children to work.” He believes that it would be more appropriate to turn to an intermediate route, for example by allowing legislation on child labor to improve the conditions in which they carry out these activities, or their wages. Currently, half of working children do so in conditions that endanger their physical and mental health.
Boycott and casualization
Some countries are taking action against child labour, such as the Netherlands which passed a law to eradicate the products of child labour. Companies that sell goods and services in the country must ensure that there is no child labor in their supply chain. Karl Hanson takes a critical look at this type of policy and on boycott campaigns against companies that are suspected of using children. “Sometimes wanting to abolish child labor is not necessarily always to the benefit of the people who are at work today”, he underlines.
“If we look a little more coldly at what is really happening, the result is that the factories are no longer going to employ the children. They kick them out and that does not mean that they will find themselves so directly school and that they will have a peaceful life. On the contrary, often the children who no longer have access to organized work will find unorganized work, under the radar and which ultimately is often less well paid”, estimates Karl Hanson . For this professor of public law, these approaches are too little rooted in the local realities of the populations directly concerned.
87 million in sub-Saharan Africa
Currently, more than half of the world’s working children – 87 million – live in sub-Saharan Africa. In Europe and North America, there are 4 million.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected by child labour. [Géopolitis – RTS]
The 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by 192 countries, provides that children are protected against any work endangering their health, education or development.
Some children are victims of the worst forms of exploitation, slavery or prostitution. But according to Karl Hanson, these extreme situations should not make us forget that “child labor can also be work with the family, in the fields, in the markets. Work that is often also combined with ‘school”. Three quarters of working children do so within the family circle. Just over a third are not in school.
Elsa Anghinolfi
2023-08-26 07:29:06
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