Child labour is an issue that has plagued society since the earliest of times. Despite measures taken by NGOs as well as the UN, child labour is still a prevalent problem in today’s society. Article 23 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child gives all children the right 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.1 Child labour clearly violates this right as well as others found in the UDHR. When we fail to see this issue as a human rights violation children around the world are subjected to hard labour which interferes with education, reinforces poverty and denies them basic human rights.
Therefore I strongly believe that the issue of child labour should be seen as a human rights violation. When we look at child labor we see that not only is it morally wrong, but it also violates some of our basic human rights under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and denies children an education. Article 26 of the UDHR states that everyone has the right to an education; child labor violates this right by taking children out of school and away from an education.2 155 countries at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 decided that by 2015 all children should have access to primary education.3 However, children are often pulled out of school at ages as young as 6 to work in factories or for mining companies, often working long hours leaving little to no time for a fundamental education, children who work in theses settings have a history of repeated grades and higher dropout rates. Christopher Heady’s research on educational a.
.es child as any person under the age of 18 therefore constituting the full time employment of 12 year olds as child labour.18 While the definition of child may be disputed, I still firmly believe that the full time work of persons under the age of 18, which puts them in harms way and distracts from education, and life outside of work constitutes as a human rights violation. In conclusion, I believe that child labour should be considered a violation of basic human rights. This essay demonstrates that not only does child labour take away fundamental human right however it also interferes with the education of the child and reinforces the cycle of poverty. It also proves child labour violates basic working rights found in the UDHR under article 23 and 24.
Child labour is an outright violation of human rights and has been an issue that has not been dealt with as such.
