Blog 3: Progress in eliminating Child Labor

   As time goes by the progress in eliminating child labor around the world has been picking up this past decade. According from the International Labour Organization or ILO the number of child working either for their family farms or dangerous jobs acquired to pay off debts dropped by half since 2000 from 215 million to 168 million. One factor that contributed to the improvement of the situation of the child workers was the fact that the most ratified law in some countries in the world is the Convention on the rights of Children. Additionally, the article from the online newspaper The Monitor View states that one issue that is related to child labor is child sex trade. The main concern that the U.N. has been focusing on is mainly the girl population that are related to child labor as they are the ones that gets affected the most. One of the few examples is the fact that girls are being used as sex slaves and child marriages. Some cultures even practice the mutilation of a girl's genitals to "protect" her virginity. Even though there has been some slow improvement over the past years, the United Nations' data research still shows that almost 37,000 girls are married off each year. Therefore, the progress in fighting child labor has been one of the most important subjects that the United Nations have been focusing on.

Since the start of the decline of child labor cases, the chances of survival an average child has have been rising in the recent years. In addition to that, the number of children enrolled in an education institution has also risen up. Many factor plays a key role in a child's chance in life, one being the progress in the economy such as the ratification of new technologies or new laws. There are an abundant of ways that organizations such as the UN have been testing for years that started way back in the 1990s. Some multinational companies started operating in low-wage nations. And by the year 1999, trades and businesses have been improving their systems and requirements globally in order to put a halt in child labor. An example of such is the restrictions that some companies have imposed in the west on imports from countries that supported child labor.

   The article shows that our world have been changing alongside how we see our children but in reality, child labor is still very much present in our world's diverse society. We have a long way to go before we can truly say that children out there that has the freedom to attend an educational institution and not be oppressed and neglected by their parents and elders. There is so much to do to clean up the mess that we have been trying to ignore for years. Putting a child through something that is dangerous and could potentially be extremely dangerous to his/her health and mental being is an abused that most uneducated parents or authorities in some parts of the world do not know. Therefore, educating and spreading the news and facts to small countries and cities that needs the right education is an important task that we need to pay attention to.



Trisha May Antonio
09/23/2013
11:05 PM

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0923/Drop-in-child-labor-points-to-progress-for-all-children