ILO report says child labour highest in Sub-Saharan Africa

Child labour is at its highest in Sub-Saharan Africa with 29 percent of all children under 15 at work, compared with 19 percent in Asia and the Pacific, the International Labour Organisation said on Monday. The problem is not confined to developing countries with nearly 3 percent of children in the 10-14 year age group in developed countries economically active. Seventy percent of children who work are engaged in agriculture, fishing, hunting and forestry and most are in the informal sector which is unregulated leaving them most vulnerable, said the ILO report entitled "A future without child labour". Contrary to popular belief, only five percent of child labourers work in formal economy export-related jobs, and commercial exploitation of children was dominated by local, not foreign customers. In the agricultural sector, children's work varies from short periods of light work after school to long hours of arduous labour that may involve dangerous chemicals and work processes. Children's work in agriculture was often linked with debt bondage which the report called one of the worst forms of child labour. Poor families in debt often have little choice but to bond their children into agricultural or domestic labour to repay the debt. Child labour is often serious in commercial agriculture, associated with global markets for cocoa, cotton, rubber, sisal and tea. Studies in Brazil, Kenya and Mexico have shown that children under 15 make up between 25 and 30 percent of the total labour force in production of various commodities. The report said that children in the streets were often the most visible form of child labour with children vending food, shining shoes, scavenging or portering. The risks to them included violence, sexual exploitation and ill health. Large numbers of children are also forced into domestic service -most are between 12 and 17 and some are as young as 5 or 6. Though mining and construction involves the smallest number of child labourers, it poses the greatest risks, the report said. In different countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia, children work alongside their parents or independently in underground mines, open cast mines and quarries. In Madagascar, 53 percent of children in small scale mines and quarries were 12 or younger. While children may work just as hard as adults, they are paid far less, if at all. The "unconditional worst forms of child labour", the report said, are those in contravention of international law. These include child slavery such as sale and trafficking, debt bondage, serfdom and forced or compulsory labour. Rural poverty, coupled with population growth and rapid urbanisation, lead some parents to place their children with agents, sometimes also in the hope that the child will get an education at their destination. An estimated 1.2 million children fall victim to the billion dollar child trafficking industry annually, the report noted. Trafficking of young children for exploitation in agriculture and domestic service has only relatively recently been recognised as a problem in sub-Saharan Africa. In South-East Asia, trafficking for prostitution is a long standing source of concern. Another "worst form of labour" is child soldiers with the report showing that at least 300,000 children - 120,000 of them in Africa - are soldiers or work in the military as porters, messengers, cooks and sex slaves. Some are reported to be as young as 8-years-old. The report also focused on the estimated 13 million AIDS orphans under the age of 15. Even before their parents die, children, especially girls take on much heavier work loads in the household including caring for the sick. Children are also likely to be called on to find work to compensate for lost labour. This also leaves girls with more farming work. A study in 1998 in Zambia showed that deaths of teachers was two- thirds the number of graduates from teacher training colleges each year. Teacher absence - either because of their own or relatives' illness - leads to classroom disruptions and to parents questioning the value of education, increasing the chances of child labour.