Submitted by crinadmin on
Children in hazardous work are in many respects the silent majority within child labour. Although they appear in photos, when it comes to action they are often eclipsed by forms of child labour that have captured the public eye, such as child soldiers or trafficked children, or they are subsumed within general child labour efforts. Still too few policies or programmes are geared to the special needs of children who do hazardous work. There are solid reasons for giving this issue urgent attention: (1) the scale of the problem – estimates place the current total of children in hazardous work at 115 million; (2) the recent rise in hazardous work among older children – an increase of 20 per cent within 4 years; and (3) the growing evidence that adolescents suffer high rates of injury at work, in comparison with adult workers. The report is divided into three parts. The first provides a general overview of the issue. It discusses hazardous work of children in terms of how it is defined (Chapter 1), how many children are affected (Chapter 2), and why, from a health and a legal standpoint (Chapters 3 and 4, respectively), children require special protection. The second part considers the research evidence regarding the problem and positive initiatives in addressing it. The research summary (Chapter 5) looks at the scientific data with respect toseven sectors: crop agriculture, fishing, domestic service, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, construction, and street and service industries. These were selected not because they are necessarily the “worst”, but in order to demonstrate the importance of knowing and understanding the risks inherent in an industry, the importance of conducting a “risk assessment” as to how the risks manifest themselves in a particular situation or locality, and the importance of using this information to identify which activities are age appropriate and which are not. Also within this part, Chapter 6 presents a sampling of concrete activities that have potential for addressing hazardous work of children on a wider scale. They are offered for consideration as potential models because each embodies an approach that has been used successfully in a variety of countries. They approach the problem of hazardous work of children from different angles and under the leadership of different parties: the government, trade unions, employers and the community. The third and final part gathers the threads from the previous parts together into a conceptual framework that aims to show what a coordinated, comprehensive effort to stop hazardous work of children should look like. Instead of seeing child labour as a problem specific to a rather narrow age group, it urges that we take a life-cycle approach. This involves a stronger focus on ensuring that education and training policies prepare children for work life so as to achieve an effective school-to-work transition. It also requires that when adolescents move into the labour force there are adequate safeguards for their safety and health.