Nearly one in ten children in the world is forced to work, the International Labor Organization recalled on Friday in South Africa at the 5th World Conference on the Elimination of Child Labor, fearing the crisis would worsen. of COVID.
Child labor was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of them stopped studying and found themselves in the labor marketsaid in the conclusions of Max Conteh, general secretary of the Sierra Leone Labor Congress and representative of trade unions at the conference organized byILO for five days in Durban.
According to the latest UN statistics from 2020, 160 million children are working, a number that has risen to 8.4 million in four years. Half of them engage in work that endangers their physical and mental health.
The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts and food, humanitarian and environmental crises threaten to correct the years of development against child laborwarned theILO.
Increasing 5 to 11 years of age
Ashely worked on the farm, sold things on the street and also tried to earn money making clothes. The Guatemalan teenager, whose last name has not been released, was one of 59 children from ten countries who testified at the conference.
Poverty is pushing us child laborers out of our homes and risking our lives to help our families.he explained.
Child labor especially increased among 5 to 11 -year -olds, according toILO.
Behind each number, there is a woman, there is a boy like everyone else who wants to learn, play, nurture, grow and work as an adult. They are deprived of the most basic rights of protection. It is intolerable and morally unacceptableinsisted Gilbert Houngbo, recently elected head of the ILO.
The conference was for the first time organized in Africa where the number of working children was the highest. Most child labor on the continent-about 70%-is in agriculture, mostly in areas where children work with their families.according to’ILO.
The conference called for action to, among other things, end child labor in agriculture, ensure the right to education and access to social protection.
The UN aims to eliminate child labor by 2025 and forced labor by 2030.
Source: Radio-Canada
