Child Labor and Trafficking

Since 2002, World Education has been using education to address abusive forms of child labor. The International Labor Organization defines child labor as "work situations where children are compelled to work on a regular basis to earn a living for themselves and their families, and as a result are disadvantaged educationally and socially; where children work in conditions that are exploitative and damaging to their health and to their physical and mental development; where children are separated from their families, often deprived of educational and training opportunities; where children are forced to lead prematurely adult lives."

The worst forms of child labor are those situations where children work more than nine hours in a day; earn less than a minimum wage or no wages at all; work in hazardous conditions for health and safety; have no access to education; and, work outside of their family's home. World Education and its partners are reaching those children in the worst forms of child labor, including those exploited for the commercial sex industry and other forms of bonded labor in Africa and Asia. World Education is also working with children at risk of becoming child laborers, which means they are not enrolled in school; they are victims of domestic violence; they are orphaned or have only one parent; and, they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

To reduce child labor, World Education and its NGO partners are equipping children, aged 8-14 years old, in labor situations or at risk of being put into a labor situation with the basic skills and life skills boys and girls need to protect themselves and create opportunities for the future. From vocational and practical skills training to basic literacy classes for children, World Education helps girls and boys learn about personal safety, opportunities to enter or reenter the formal school system, and equips them with practical vocational skills.

Child Labourguide

Zambian child labour in the stone quarry Manoocher Deghati /IRIN News

Consumers in affluent countries are appalled to think that their clothes or household goods might be the products of child labour. Strong international treaties are in place to outlaw the practice. But deep-set cultural traditions and impoverished economies do not respond readily to moral lectures from afar. Resistant to all but the most comprehensive development strategies, child labour shows little sign of becoming history.

updated February 2011Definitions and FactsCausesLawsDevelopment SolutionsConsumer CampaignsChild Soldiers

Definitions and Facts

In 2008 there were 215 million children working illegally in the eyes of international law, almost 14% of all the worlds children under 18. In sub-Saharan Africa, this proportion rises to 25%. Countries with a particularly high incidence of child labour includeNigeria, Malawi, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Brick kiln labour in Pakistan Kamila Hyat /IRIN News

The global total includes 115 million children under 18 engaged in "hazardous work" which could threaten their safety or health, such as handling chemicals, carrying heavy loads, mining, quarrying or enduring long hours.

The remaining 100 million child labourers are those aged under 15 - the international minimum age for legal employment whose tasks are not hazardous but are more substantial than permitted light work.

Almost all child labour occurs in developing countries, with about 60% engaged in agriculture. Other occupations includedomestic service, factory production and backstreet workshops.

The darkest category of child labour relates to those children caught up in criminal activities such as prostitution, military enrolment, slavery (such as bonded labour), or trafficking (which involves the removal of a child from its home, often involving deception and payment, for a wide range of exploitative purposes).

These categories are beyond the reach of statistical surveys but the numbers are likely to be over 10 million. Together with hazardous work, they are described as the "worst forms of child labour."

The small decline in the overall incidence of child labour in the four-year reporting period to 2008 is inconclusive and disappointing. The most significant change is a 31% drop in hazardous work for children under 15, but this is countered by a 20% rise amongst the 15-17 age group. Figures are gender-sensitive for the first time and suggest that child labour amongst girls fell by 15% over the four years.

The accuracy of this child labour data is improving but is based on national surveys conducted over the period 2005-2008. The impact of more recent economic instability and rising food prices on poor households is therefore not yet reflected in the figures.

The International Labour Organization Reports on Child Labour statistics and trends published in the 2010 progress report, from ILO TV.topCauses of Child Labour

Poverty is the main cause of child labour. Poor parents send their children to work, not out of choice, but for reasons of economic expediency. The hunting grounds for child traffickers are invariably areas of the most extreme poverty where families have exhausted all other strategies for survival.

Poverty is also a symptom of child labour. Denial of education blocks the escape route from poverty for the next generation of the household.

Charikar High School, Afghanistan Beth Bolitho

Other factors may provoke this cycle; for example, schools in poor countries are often inaccessible or prohibitively expensive, with inadequate teaching and classroom resources.

Many agricultural economies involve seasonal migration for whole families, to the detriment of schooling and inevitable employment of children. Cultural pressures too can undermine perception of the long term value of education, especially for girl children.

Economic setbacks arising from recession, climate disaster, conflict or family bereavement will therefore regenerate the supply side of the child labour equation. This has been one consequence of HIV and AIDS in Africa - household resources have been depleted by prolonged absence from work and by medical expenses.

This supply of child labour is matched by the demand of unscrupulous employers for a cheap and flexible workforce. This attribute appeals especially to small-scale enterprises, including those whose owners exploit their own family members.

There is perceived value in the particular skills that childrens dexterity can offer; for example in weaving or intasks involving crop seeds. Girl children are in demand for domestic service, the invisible nature of which adds to theirvulnerability to abuse. Absence from official statistics is also the fate of those girls kept away from school in order to work for their own families in the home or on the land.

Extreme family poverty and the lack of free education drives young children on to the streets of Karachi to work as best they can, from Al Jazeera English.topChild Labour Laws

Global political initiatives to combat child labour are undertaken by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Technical support for governments, together with the production of internationally recognised statistics, is provided by the ILOs International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

Child labour ILO /International Labour Organisation

The ILO has sponsored the two key instruments of international law. First, the 1973 Minimum Age Convention 138 establishes the obligation for countries to work towards a minimum age of 15 for legal employment. Secondly, the1999 Convention 182 for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labourcalls on governments to identify and quantify the incidence of such child labour, backed by national plans for its elimination.

The ILO aims to achieve this goal by 2016, backed by its ten-year Global Action Plan drawn up in 2006. Unfortunately, the ten countries yet to ratify Convention 182 as at February 2011 included India, Burma and Sierra Leone, countries with high incidence of the worst forms of child labour.

Furthermore, many countries which have ratified the Convention are failing to set themselves time-bound objectives, the essential driver for introducing national legislation and policy initiatives. A major review published by the ILO in 2010 says that the pace of progress is not fast enough to achieve the 2016 target."

Although almost every country has laws prohibiting the employment of children below a certain age,legislation is difficult to draftand too often proves ineffective. New laws periodically introduced in South Asia are shrugged off by hardened business owners and disillusioned campaigners alike.

Laws tend to be particularly impotent where the state itself is economically dependent on child labour. As the worlds third largest cotton exporter, the Uzbekistan government becomes an active agent in child labour by closing schools at harvest time. Laws introduced under international pressure havefailed to break up this institutionalized abuse of children.

Malawi is dependent on the labour-intensive tobacco crop for most of its foreign exchange. Here too legislation for a minimum working age had made little difference to widespread engagement of children on the farms.

Extra-territorial laws which attempt to overcome the weakness of Convention 182 on the special vulnerability of girl children have had greater success. Nationals from many European countries and the US can now be charged at home for engaging a child prostitute in countries such as Thailand.

A combination of ineffective laws and crippling poverty ensure that children continue to work for Indias carpet industry, from AlJazeera English.topDevelopment Solutions to Child Labour

A rights-based approach to child labour, relying on laws and their enforcement, is a necessary but insufficient solution to child labour. Broader human development interventions relevant to the underlying causes must play a role.

Child fruit seller in Zambia Manoocher Deghati /IRIN News

The fight against child labour therefore shares common ground with poverty reduction programmes, and would benefit from greater recognition by them.

The connection is most apparent in the strategy of conditional cash transfers (CCT), payments to poor households made on condition that children attend school and health clinics. The success of Brazil in greatly reducing the incidence of child labour is in part attributed toBolsa Familia, recognised as the worlds largest CCT programme.

Progress towards education for all children is the development indicator most closely linked with child labour. Every full-time student is one less potential full-time child worker. There is correlation between those countries lagging behind education targets and those in which child labour thrives, such as Pakistan and Nepal.

Unfortunately, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for primary school enrolment aims for a total of only five years of education, far less demanding than implied by the Minimum Age Convention. Countries will be encouraged to follow the example of the Indian government which, in 2009, introduced a law backing the right of children to free and compulsory education from age 6 through to 14.

The integration of child labour concerns into national development strategies, backed by effective legislation, is therefore the preferred route to a lasting solution.

Indias Midday Meals scheme illustrates how getting children into school keeps them away from illegal labour, from ILO TV.topConsumer Campaigns

Failure to deal with child labour is an emotive issue in rich countries. Consumers are sensitive to the track record of globalisation in driving labour costs and standards to the bottom.

Disclosure of the use of child labour in a supply chain represents amajor public relations disasterfor both multinational companies and the host countries concerned. Even Apple, one of the worlds most respected corporations, faced a crisis in 2010 in admitting the presence of child labour in a Chinese factory producing the iPhone.

Child labour in Pakistan David Swanson/IRIN /IRIN News

The 2010 World Cup re-awakened old controversies over the role of children in sewing soccer balls. Although doubts linger, the long-established partnership between ILO, the world football authority - FIFA, and factory owners in the region of Sialkot in Pakistan is generally regarded as a success.

However, general attempts to develop a certification label to reassure consumers that goods are child labour free have struggled to establish credibility.

Manufacturers in developing countries often subcontract labour-intensive segments of the product to backstreet producers which are very difficult to trace. And there is confusing overlap with standards that are equally important for adult workers.

One of few successful certification schemes is the GoodWeave label which protects the carpet industry and focuses largely on child labour issues, including rehabilitation. GoodWeave International claims that more than half a million weaving jobs previously occupied by children in South Asia have been replaced with adult labour.

A much less convincing example is the cocoa industry in West Africa, with particular focus on the troubled country of Cote dIvoire. As long ago as 2001, US Senators Harkin and Engel drew up an agreed programme to certify chocolate products but thedeadlines have been missed repeatedly.

Hershey, the leading retailer of chocolate in the US, has been singled out for making insufficient efforts to support poverty reduction programmes in the countries concerned. Almost 300,000 children are believed to perform hazardous work on the cocoa farms, many of them trafficked from Mali and Burkina Faso in conditions of bonded labour.

Many governments respond to public opinion by introducing conditions relating to child labour in trade agreements or laws. A leading example is the2008 US Farm Billwhich includes a voluntary directive for companies to establish whether an imported agricultural product has been associated with child labour.

Many campaigners are uncomfortable with these linkages which some interpret as protectionism. They prefer that child labour be addressed by explicit and enforceable domestic laws.topChild Soldiers

The recruitment of children under age 15 for military purposes is a war crime under a statute of the International Criminal Court. Although progress is slow, the Court is currently pursuing its first case in this category - against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a militia leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2007 the war crimes court for Sierra Leone was successful in convicting three warlords for the use of child soldiers.

Children at war in DRC Amnesty International

These landmarks are tempered by the knowledge that children remain vulnerable in countries suffering longstanding civil conflict, in regions of extreme poverty or complete breakdown of central authority. For example, residents of camps for refugees and internally displaced persons such as those in Somalia, Sudan and Chad are particularly at risk.

Theproliferation of lightweight but deadly small armsof sophisticated modern design enables a cheap, acquiescent and expendable army to be conscripted by warlords. A child of ten can be trained to strip down a Kalashnikov.

Despite the ending of various civil wars andrelease of tens of thousands of child soldiersin the period since 2004, the UN still names as many as 16 armies and groups where recruitment continues. An estimated total of up to 300,000 children are in military service, including a significant proportion of girls.

There may be as many as 70,000 child soldiers engaged by government and rebel armies in Burma, the country named as the worst offender. Rape and sexual violence are rampant, especially within groups in The Democratic Republic of Congo and amongst the Lords Resistance Army which was formed originally in Northern Uganda.

Campaigners are putting pressure on over 60 countries which have so far failed to sign the Optional Protocols to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Drawn up in 2000, these Protocols prevent recruitment of children under 18 for hostilities.

They are supported by the 2007Paris Commitments and Principles, a set of practical guidelines for the process of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration which is particularly sensitive for children, often psychologically disturbed by violence.

The UN's efforts appeared to have been supported in the tough Child Soldiers Prevention Act passed in the US in 2008. The Act prohibits military assistance for countries which turn a blind eye to the engagement of child soldiers.

However, the intent of the Act has already been undermined by acontroversial waiverapproved by President Obama in 2010. This allows US support to continue for Chad, DRC, Sudan, and Yemen.Labour rights is a very broad issue; however, it can be boiled down to the protection and respect of human life in the workplace and the right to work itself. Some components of labour rights are the rights to job safety, collective bargaining, and equal pay for equal work.

Labour rights vary by country, however the International Labour Organization (ILO) provides universal standards and guidelines. The ILO, a part of the UN, aims to provide guidance and standards for labour practices around the world.

One labour issue that the ILO is making progress on is child labour. According to UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_childlabour.html) an estimated 246 million children are working, and nearly three quarters of those children are working in hazardous places like mines, or working with dangerous tools like machinery and pesticides. A large number of child labourers are girls and are susceptible to sexual exploitation. While most everyone agrees that child labour cannot be condoned, the issue is complex. Impoverished families or parents who are unable to work depend on their childrens income source for survival. The cycle of poverty and its gendered implications must be adequately addressed so families can find other means to survive.

When it comes to labour rights for the general population, in many places around the world people have to work in sweatshops that have questionable labour policies in order to make a living. Defenders of sweatshops argue that without the factories, the workers wouldnt have a job. Labour activists note that a major problem of sweatshops is the awful treatment of workers and the lack of opportunity. Workers deserve respect and safety from harm.

There are other labour rights issues that need global attention like bonded labour people forced to work to pay off debts of ancestors. And human traffickingOther issues include, but arent limited to, maternity rights, living wages, working time, gender equality, decent work, and of course, unionization. Freedom of association is essential because it allows people to discuss matters: whether they are political or social- and act on them as well. This issue is so important that it is"at the core of the ILOs values."Child labourrefers to the employment of children at regular and sustainedlabour. This practice is considered exploitative by manyinternational organizationsand is illegal in many countries. Child labour was employed to varying extents through most of history, but entered public dispute with the advent ofuniversal schooling, with changes in working conditions during theindustrial revolution, and with the emergence of the concepts ofworkers' andchildren's rights.In many developed countries, it is considered inappropriate or exploitative if a child below a certain age works (excluding household chores, in a family shop, or school-related work).[2]An employer is usually not permitted to hire a child below a certain minimum age. This minimum age depends on the country and the type of work involved. States ratifying theMinimum Age Conventionadopted by the International Labor Organization in 1973, have adopted minimum ages varying from 14 to 16.Child labor laws in the United Statesset the minimum age to work in an establishment without restrictions and without parents' consent at age 16.[3]The incidence of child labour in the world decreased from 25 to 10 percent between 1960 and 2003, according to the World BankHistorical

Child labourer,New Jersey, 1910During the Industrial Revolution, children as young as four were employed in production factories with dangerous, and often fatal, working conditions.[5]Based on this understanding of the use of children as labourers, it is now considered by wealthy countries to be ahuman rightsviolation, and is outlawed, while some poorer countries may allow or tolerate child labour. Child labour can also be defined as the full-time employment of children who are under a minimum legal age.TheVictorian erabecame notorious for employing young children in factories and mines and as chimney sweeps.[6]Child labour played an important role in theIndustrial Revolutionfrom its outset, often brought about by economic hardship,Charles Dickensfor example worked at the age of 12 in ablackingfactory, with his family indebtor's prison. The children of the poor were expected to help towards the family budget, often working long hours in dangerous jobs for low pay,[7]earning 10-20% of an adult male's wage. In England and Scotland in 1788, two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-poweredcotton millswere described as children.[8]In 19th-century Great Britain, one-third of poor families were without a breadwinner, as a result of death or abandonment, obliging many children to work from a young age.

Two girls protesting child labour (by calling it child slavery) in the 1909 New York CityLabor Dayparade.Incoal mines, children would crawl through tunnels too narrow and low for adults.[9]Children also worked as errand boys,crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, or selling matches, flowers and other cheap goods.[7]Some children undertook work asapprenticesto respectable trades, such as building or asdomestic servants(there were over 120,000 domestic servants in London in the mid-18th century). Working hours were long: builders worked 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter, while domestic servants worked 80 hour weeks.Children as young as three were put to work. A high number of children also worked asprostitutes.[10]Many children (and adults) worked 16 hour days. As early as 1802 and 1819Factory Actswere passed to regulate the working hours ofworkhousechildren in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day. These acts were largely ineffective and after radical agitation, by for example the "Short Time Committees" in 1831, a Royal Commission recommended in 1833 that children aged 1118 should work a maximum of 12 hours per day, children aged 911 a maximum of eight hours, and children under the age of nine were no longer permitted to work. This act however only applied to the textile industry, and further agitation led to another act in1847limiting both adults and children to 10 hour working days.An estimated 1.7 million children under the age of fifteen were employed in American industry by 1900.[11]In 1910, over 2 million children in the same age group were employed in the United States.[12]Present day

A young boy recycling garbage inHo Chi Minh City,Vietnam, in 2006See also:Children's rightsChild labour is still common in some parts of theworld, it can be factory work, mining,[13]prostitution, quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's ownsmall business(for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as: assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning. However, rather than in factories andsweatshops, most child labour occurs in the informal sector, "selling many things on the streets, at work in agriculture or hidden away in housesfar from the reach of official labour inspectors and from media scrutiny." And all the work that they did was done in all types of weather; and was also done for minimal pay. As long as there is family poverty there will be child labour.[14]According toUNICEF, there are an estimated 250 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labour worldwide, excluding child domestic labour.[15]TheUnited Nationsand theInternational Labor Organizationconsider child labour exploitative,[16][17]with the UN stipulating, in article 32 of theConvention on the Rights of the Childthat:...States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.Although globally there is an estimated 250 million children working.[17]In the 1990s every country in the world except forSomaliaand theUnited Statesbecame a signatory to theConvention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC. Somalia eventually signed the convention in 2002; the delay of the signing was believed to been due to Somalia not having a government.[18]

A boy repairing a tire inGambiaIn a recent paper,Basuand Van (1998)[19]argue that the primary cause of child labour is parentalpoverty. That being so, they caution against the use of a legislative ban against child labour, and argue that should be used only when there is reason to believe that a ban on child labour will cause adult wages to rise and so compensate adequately the households of the poor children. Child labour is still widely used today in many countries, includingIndiaandBangladesh. CACL estimated that there are between 70 and 80 million child labourers in India.[20]Child labour accounts for 22% of the workforce in Asia, 32% in Africa, 17% in Latin America, 1% in US, Canada, Europe and other wealthy nations.[21]The proportion of child labourers varies a lot among countries and even regions inside those countries.Recent child labour incidentsThis section'stoneor style may not reflect the formal tone used on Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on thetalk page. See Wikipedia'sguide to writing better articlesfor suggestions.(February 2011)

Young girl working on a loom inAt Benhaddou,Moroccoin May 2008.MeatpackingIn early August 2008,IowaLabor Commissioner David Neil announced that his department had found thatAgriprocessors, akoshermeatpackingcompany inPostvillewhich had recently been raided byImmigration and Customs Enforcement, had employed 57 minors, some as young as 14, in violation of state law prohibiting anyone under 18 from working in a meatpacking plant. Neil announced that he was turning the case over to the state Attorney General for prosecution, claiming that his department's inquiry had discovered "egregious violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa's child labor laws."[22]Agriprocessors claimed that it was at a loss to understand the allegations. Agriprocessors' CEO went to trial on these charges in state court on May 4, 2010. After a five-week trial he was found not guilty of all 57 charges of child labour violations by the Black Hawk County District Court jury in Waterloo, Iowa, on June 7, 2010.[23]FirestoneTheFirestone Tire and Rubber Companyoperate a metal plantation inLiberiawhich is the focus of a global campaign called Stop Firestone. Workers on the plantation are expected to fulfil a highproduction quotaor their wages will be halved, so many workers brought children to work. TheInternational Labor Rights Fundfiled a lawsuit against Firestone (The International Labor Fund vs. The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company) in November 2005 on behalf of current child labourers and their parents who had also been child labourers on the plantation. On June 26, 2007, the judge in this lawsuit in Indianapolis, Indiana, denied Firestone's motion to dismiss the case and allowed the lawsuit to proceed on child labour claims.GAPAfter the news of child labourers working in embroidery industry was uncovered in theSunday Observeron 28 October 2007, BBA activists swung into action. The GAP Inc. in a statement accepted that the child labourers were working in production of GAP Kids blouses and has already made a statement to pull the products from the shelf.[24][25]In spite of the documentation of the child labourers working in the high-street fashion and admission by all concerned parties, only the SDM (Sub-divisional Magistrate) could not recognise these children as working under conditions of slavery and bondage.Distraught and desperate that these collusions by the custodians of justice, founder of BBA Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson of Global March Against Child Labour appealed to the Honorable Chief Justice of Delhi High Court through a letter at 11.00 pm.[26]This order by the Honorable Chief Justice comes when the government is taking an extremely reactionary stance on the issue of child labour in sweatshops in India and threatening 'retaliatory measures' against child rights organisations.[27]In a parallel development, Global March Against Child labour and BBA are in dialogue with the GAP Inc. and other stakeholders to work out a positive strategy to prevent the entry of child labour in to sweatshops and device a mechanism of monitoring and remedial action. GAP Inc. Senior Vice President, Dan Henkle in a statement said: "We have been making steady progress, and the children are now under the care of the local government. As our policy requires, the vendor with which our order was originally placed will be required to provide the children with access to schooling and job training, pay them an ongoing wage and guarantee them jobs as soon as they reach the legal working age. We will now work with the local government and with Global March to ensure that our vendor fulfils these obligations."[28][29]On October 28, Joe Eastman, president of Gap North America, responded, "We strictly prohibit the use of child labor. This is non-negotiable for us and we are deeply concerned and upset by this allegation. As we've demonstrated in the past, Gap has a history of addressing challenges like this head-on, and our approach to this situation will be no exception. In 2006, Gap Inc. ceased business with 23 factories due to code violations. We have 90 people located around the world whose job is to ensure compliance with our Code of Vendor Conduct. As soon as we were alerted to this situation, we stopped the work order and prevented the product from being sold in stores. While violations of our strict prohibition on child labor in factories that produce product for the company are extremely rare, we have called an urgent meeting with our suppliers in the region to reinforce our policies."[30]H&MIn December 2009, campaigners in the UK called on two leading high street retailers to stop selling clothes made with cotton which may have been picked by children.Anti-Slavery Internationaland theEnvironmental Justice Foundation(EJF) accusedH&MandZaraof using cotton suppliers in Bangladesh. It is also suspected that many of their raw materials originates from Uzbekistan, where children aged 10 are forced to work in the fields. The activists were calling to ban the use of Uzbek cotton and implement a "track and trace" systems to guarantee an ethical responsible source of the material.H&M said it "does not accept" child labour and "seeks to avoid" using Uzbek cotton, but admitted it did "not have any reliable methods" to ensure Uzbek cotton did not end up in any of its products.Inditex, the owner of Zara, said its code of conduct banned child labour.[31]IndiaMain article:Child labour in IndiaIn 1997, research indicated that the number of child labourers in the silk-weaving industry in the district of Kanchipuram in India exceeded 40,000. This included children who were bonded labourers to loom owners.Rural Institute for Development Educationundertook many activities to improve the situation of child labourers. Working collaboratively, RIDE brought down the number of child labourers to less than 4,000 by 2007.On November 21, 2005, an Indian NGO activist Junned Khan,[32]with the help of the Labour Department and NGO Pratham mounted the country's biggest ever raid for child labour rescue in the Eastern part of New Delhi, the capital of India. The process resulted in rescue of 480 children from over 100 illegal embroidery factories operating in the crowded slum area of Seelampur. For next few weeks, government, mediahttp://www.tehelka.com/story_main39.asp?filename=cr050708laterdayslave.aspand NGOs were in a frenzy over the exuberant numbers of young boys, as young as 56 year olds, released from bondage. This rescue operation opened the eyes of the world to the menace of child labour operating right under the nose of the largest democracy in the whole world.Next few years Junned Khan did extensive campaigning on the issue of children involved in hazardous labour,[33]advocating with the central and state governments for formulation of guidelines for rescue and rehabilitation of children affected by child labour. In 2005, after the rescue, Junned Khan, collaborated with BBA to file petition in the Delhi High Court for formulation of guidelines for rescue and rehabilitation of child labour. In the following years, Delhi's NGOs, came together with the Delhi Government and formulated an Action Plan for Rescue and Rehabilitation of child labour.[34]PrimarkBBC recently reported[35]onPrimarkusing child labour in the manufacture of clothing. In particular, a 4.00 hand embroidered shirt was the starting point of a documentary produced byBBC'sPanoramaprogramme. The programme asks consumers to ask themselves, "Why am I only paying 4 for a hand embroidered top? This item looks handmade. Who made it for such little cost?", in addition to exposing the violent side of the child labour industry in countries where child exploitation is prevalent. As a result of the programme, Primark took action and sacked the relevant companies, and reviewed their supplier procedures.Child labour is also often used in the production of cocoa powder, used to makechocolate. SeeEconomics of cocoa.Defence of child labour

Child workers on a farm inMaine, October 1940

Wasim, a child labourer, works at a tea stall - cleaning glasses and serving customers, inIndore,India.( 9 July 2010)

Concerns have often been raised over the buying public's moral complicity in purchasing products assembled or otherwise manufactured indeveloping countrieswith child labour. However, others have raised concerns thatboycottingproducts manufactured through child labour may force these children to turn to more dangerous or strenuous professions, such as prostitution or agriculture. For example, aUNICEFstudy found that after theChild Labor Deterrence Actwas introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs inBangladesh, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution", jobs that are "more hazardous and exploitative than garment production". The study suggests that boycotts are "blunt instruments with long-term consequences, that can actually harm rather than help the children involved."[14]According toMilton Friedman, before the Industrial Revolution virtually all children worked in agriculture. During the Industrial Revolution many of these children moved from farm work to factory work. Over time, as real wages rose, parents became able to afford to send their children to school instead of work and as a result child labour declined, both before and after legislation.[36]Austrian schooleconomistMurray Rothbardsaid that British and American children of the pre- and post-Industrial Revolution lived and suffered in infinitely worse conditions where jobs were not available for them and went "voluntarily and gladly" to work in factories.[37]British historian and socialistE. P. ThompsoninThe Making of the English Working Classdraws a qualitative distinction betweenchild domestic workand participation in the wider (waged) labour market.[5]Further, the usefulness of the experience of the industrial revolution in making predictions about current trends has been disputed. Social historian Hugh Cunningham, author ofChildren and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500, notes that:"Fifty years ago it might have been assumed that, just as child labour had declined in the developed world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so it would also, in a trickle-down fashion, in the rest of the world. Its failure to do that, and its re-emergence in the developed world, raise questions about its role in any economy, whether national or global."[36]According to Thomas DeGregori, an economics professor at theUniversity of Houston, in an article published by theCato Institute, alibertarianthink-tank operating in Washington D.C., "it is clear that technological and economic change are vital ingredients in getting children out of the workplace and into schools. Then they can grow to become productive adults and live longer, healthier lives. However, in poor countries like Bangladesh, working children are essential for survival in many families, as they were in our own heritage until the late 19th century. So, while the struggle to end child labour is necessary, getting there often requires taking different routesand, sadly, there are many political obstacles.[38]The International Labour Organizations International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), founded in 1992, aims to eliminate child labour. It operates in 88 countries and is the largest program of its kind in the world.[39]IPEC works with international and government agencies, NGOs, the media, and children and their families to end child labour and provide children with education and assistance