Fight child labour

More than one out of every seven children in the world is a child worker. The vast majority of them live and work in rural areas of developing countries.

Child labour is defined as work that is harmful to children’s health physically or psychologically, and prevents them from attending school.

246 million children in the world are child workers in this sense.

The problem is worst in Sub-Saharan Africa, where a quarter of all children are child workers, a total of 50 million children.

In the cities, children from the slums typically labour in backyard workshops, using machines and chemicals without protective gear and training.
The work may also be harmful, because the working days are too long, because the employers hit or yell at the children or abuse the children sexually.

Child labour in Europe
In Europe, child labour is particularly prevalent in poor countries. Children beg and wash cars in the streets of Romania, while in Ukraine, children graft away in dangerous coalmines.
In richer countries, illegal refugee children and adults work, for example, in market gardens and farms.

Cautious optimism
Due to HIV/AIDS, population growth and worsening poverty, there has been no reduction in the number of children subjected to hard labour in Africa. However, in other continents, the new millennium has seen fewer child workers.

The greatest decrease has occurred in Latin America, where only five percent of the children are now engaged in harmful work. In Asia, the scourge of child labour has receded slightly, but this remains the continent with the most child workers, a total of 122 million.

Save the Children’s efforts
Save the Children endeavours to abolish work that is harmful to children. We cooperate with a series of local children’s rights organisations, for instance in Bangladesh. (link)

Together with these partners, we set up schools, where child workers are taught in regular school subjects as well as in children’s rights.

In children’s clubs, the children learn how they themselves can fight for better working conditions.

Advocacy
Save the Children works to change attitudes to child labour.

For examples, we put pressure on governments to combat poverty and to enact laws that respect children’s rights.

Save the Children also gives advice to Danish companies about how to take on corporate social responsibility (CSR) (link) as regards child labour in firms in poor countries.