The International Labour Organization is a United Nations agency dealing with labour issues, particularly international labour standards and decent for all. There are 185 countries that are member states of International Labour Organization. The ILO aims to ensure that it serves the needs of working women and men by bringing together governments, employers and workers to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes. The very structure of the ILO, where workers and employers together have an equal voice with governments in its deliberations, shows social dialogue in action. It ensures that the views of the social partners are closely reflected in ILO labour standards, policies and programmes. They have concern about many issues which are happening in world. In this essay I selected child labour for further discussion.
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Child labour is a complex problem and numerous factors influence whether children work or not. Poverty emerges as the most compelling reason why children work. Poor households spend the bulk of their income on food and the income provided by working children is often critical to their survival. However, poverty is not the only factor in child labour and cannot justify all types of employment and servitude. Countries may be equally poor and yet have relatively high or relatively low levels of child labour.
Child labour is clearly detrimental to individual children, preventing them from enjoying their childhood, hampering their development and sometimes causing lifelong physical or psychological damage; it is also detrimental to families, to communities and to society as a whole. As both a result and a cause of poverty, child labour perpetuates disadvantage and social exclusion. It undermines national development by keeping children out of school, preventing them from gaining the education and skills that would enable them as adults to contribute to economic growth and prosperity. As long as child labour continues, the ILO’s goal of decent work can never be achieved.
Discussion
Millions of children worldwide are engaged in labour that is hindering their education, development and future livelihoods. A lot of of them are involved in the worst forms of child labour that because irreversible physical or psychological damage, or that even threaten their lives. This situation represents an intolerable violation of the rights of individual children, it perpetuates poverty and it compromises economic growth and equitable development.
There are plenty of things can be happened to occur child labour. Factors include for Child labour:
Barriers to education – basic education is not free in all countries and is not always available for all children, especially in remote rural areas. Where schools are available, the quality of education can be poor and the content not relevant. In situations where education is not affordable or parents see no value in education, children are sent to work, rather than to school.
Culture and tradition – with few opportunities open to children with more education, parents are likely to share a cultural norm in which labour is seen as the most productive use of a child’s time. Children are often expected to follow in their parents’ footsteps and are frequently summoned to “help” other members of the family, often at a young age.
Market demand – child labour is not accidental. Employers may prefer to hire children because they are “cheaper” than their adult counterparts, can be dispensed of easily if labour demands fluctuate and also form a docile, obedient work-force that will not seek to organize itself for protection and support.
The effects of income shocks on households – households that do not have the means to deal with income shocks, such as natural disasters, economic or agricultural crises
Taking into consideration above factors the child labour will occur. This is a massive issue in modern world. Hence there are so many organizations and governments are consider this issue. Hence The ILO has given a priority to wipe out this issue.
The International Labour Organization, from its setting up, has made child labour one of its central concerns. ILO work on child labour over the decades has mainly taken its indication from the phrase “protection of children” in the Preamble to its Constitution. The ILO’s prime tool in pursuing the elimination of child labour has always been, and remains to this day, the labour standards that embody the concept of a minimum age to enter into employment. This approach responds to two concerns: to protect children from work that interferes with their full development and to pursue economic efficiency through well-functioning adult labour markets.
Some child laborers are highly visible, such as street children working in the urban informal economy. Others, such as child domestic workers, are effectively hidden from public view and are thus particularly vulnerable, including to physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Rather than working in formal sector establishments that produce for export, the majority of child labourers in manufacturing toil in supply chains producing for the domestic market, for example, in the production of fireworks, matches or incense sticks. A reported increase in home-based production of these and other goods, in response to heightened competitive pressures, brings with it an increased potential for exploitation of child labour. Such hidden groups of children present particular challenges for research and effective action.
A future without child labour traces the ILO’s historical concern with the abolition of child labour. At its very first session, the International Labour Conference adopted the Minimum Age (Industry) Convention, 1919 . Over the years that followed, the concept of minimum age for entry into employment was extended to different economic sectors, culminating with the adoption of the comprehensive Minimum Age Convention, 1973. The inclusion of the effective abolition of child labour in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up, adopted in 1988, highlighted the growing consensus across the world that child labour represents a serious threat to sustainable economic and social development everywhere. The unanimous adoption, the following year, of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 , and its subsequent unprecedented rate of ratification, attest to the strength of the political will among ILO member States to tackle, with employers’ and workers’ organizations and all partners in civil society, these most extreme forms of child labour as a matter of the greatest urgency. Convention No. 182 has served to consolidate resolve on the need for immediate action to combat the worst forms of child labour, accompanied by measures to eliminate and prevent all child labour in the longer term.
Drawing on the provisions of Conventions Nos. 138 and 182, they identify three categories of child labour to be eliminated:
Labour performed by a child who is under a minimum age specified in national legislation for that kind of work.
Labour that jeopardizes the physical, mental or moral well-being of a child, known as hazardous work
The unconditional worst forms of child labour, which are internationally defined as slavery, trafficking, debt bondage and other forms of forced labour, forced recruitment for use in armed conflict, prostitution and pornography, and illicit activities.
Furthermore they have taken several objectives to eliminate this child labor issue.
Key objectives in the fight against child labour
the long tradition of ILO standard setting and supervision in the field of child labour, dating from the very first session of the International Labour Conference in 1919 and leading up to the adoption of the umbrella Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138);
The impetus given by the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989;
The experience gained by national governments working with IPEC;
increased activism on child labour by employers’ and workers’ organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs);
The unanimous adoption of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), and the subsequent campaign for its universal ratification and implementation;
Research and action that have provided new insights into the causes, dimensions and means of reducing both poverty and child labour.
According to the on top of objective the ILO have planned to eliminate child labor in every country. Although, when they erect new objectives and procedures they will have to concern countries policies. So that is a huge difficulty that they are appearance currently.
Conclusion
Children’s participation in the labour force at the start of the twenty-first century is continuously varied and infinitely volatile, responding to changing market and social conditions. This circumstance is matched by the flexibility of the large, unprotected, potential child labour force. Poverty and social exclusion, labour mobility, discrimination on the basis of sex and other grounds, and lack of adequate social protection and educational opportunity all come into play in influencing child labour outcomes.
The ILO calls on all partners in this undertaking to redouble their efforts, to give all children, everywhere, the childhood and the future that they deserve.universal education and social protection, together with a better understanding of the needs and rights of children, can bring about a significant reduction in child labour.
Recommendation
Working closely with governments are the social partners – employers’ and workers’ organizations – who are uniquely placed to understand and to change the realities of the workplace so that child labour simply has no part to play.
Partnerships operate horizontally at national level and also vertically between national, regional and international players.
A worldwide movement, involving the ILO’s constituents – governments and employers’ and workers’ organizations – and many other partners working together at international, national and local levels, has altered that irrevocably.
Improve education system in every country.
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