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International conventions and working children: Many international agreements have been made to protect the rights of working children, who are deprived from protection because of their work, and whom the international institutions care about. The most important of these international agreements was the agreement on “Child Rights”, which was based on the necessity to protect children rights in an integrated way, and which committed governments to provide a safe environment to ensure the growth and prosperity of children. The Child Rights agreement calls for a comprehensive and integrated approach to fulfill the basic rights of children, such as education, health and comprehensive protection. The unanimous ratification of the Child Rights agreement reflects the global commitment to protect children's rights, but the actual reality reflects various violations of children's rights in many countries. The Child Rights agreement includes the protection of the rights of a child to be comfortable, have leisure time, play, and fully participate in cultural and art life. The agreement showed the government's role in providing the appropriate atmosphere for the physical, mental, emotional, cognitive, social, and cultural growth of children, and its role in protecting them from various forms of exploitation, including hazardous work which is harmful to their health, their physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social growth, or to their right to education. There are more than 250 million children working around the world, deprived of proper education, good health and basic freedoms. Each of these children pays a high price from his development and his life. Also, these countries lose the strength of their youth, and their capacity for growth and development due to the work of these children. The conditions of children working in Egypt However, the studies and the actual reality show that the labor law is not applied. Children were found to be working more than eight hours. They were also working without contracts, or social or health security and they were working in hazardous conditions and under poor work conditions. How can child labour be eleminated? Children’s work leads to physical, psychological and mental damage which lasts for life for the child and the society. Our efforts must go beyond trying to stop child labor to calling for the provision of alternatives that ensure that girls and boys enjoy health, education, play and fun, and giving the opportunity for their families to obtain proper incomes and cultural, economic and social security. Policies and priorities must be amended in order to provide these alternatives either at the international or the local level. This will not be done except by providing decent jobs opportunities and a decent human life for the families of the children, to enable them to educate their children and develop their economic, social and cultural level. These alternatives and policies require, at the begging, a just redistribution of wealth between rural and urban areas, or between employees and employers who own large farms, in order to ensure balance and social security for all Egyptians. It is in this context the legislative defects of some Egyptian laws must be addressed, especially the laws which do not guarantee the participation of working children in a trade union which defends them, exclude them from health and social care, or deprive them from legal protection. The LCHR offers free legal support, and receives all complaints concerning the rights of farmers, workers, fishermen, women and children in the Egyptian countryside at the following address: 122 El Gala’a St. -Ramsis Tower-Cairo
Law No. 12 of 2003 organizes the working of children in Egypt. The law prohibits the work of children under the age of fourteen, yet it allows governors to hire children between twelve and fourteen to do seasonal jobs, especially in the agricultural sector. The law stipulates that the working hours of children from the age of fourteen should not be more than six hours a day, with an hour of rest at least. The law prohibits children under the age of seventeen from working in the hazardous jobs which are mentioned in the regulations, such as working in mines or under the ground.