Child Labor in Africa - Coursework Example

Engineering and Construction] [Child Labor in Africa] Child Labor in Africa Bekele & Boyden (1988) define child labor is any form of work done by children that are under the age that has been put by the ILO (International Labor Organizations) standards usually below age of fifteen. The worst forms of children forced to work are slavery, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, forced recruitment in the armed forces, drug trafficking and many other illegal activities that are harmful to their health, safety, morals and social life. There is a large number of children that work today and as per the ILO research, it was found that approximately 246 million children between the age of 5 and 17 were involved in child labor and out of them 179 million were in the in very harmful forms of labor. Africa as a developing continent records a large number of children active to work for economic purposes and roughly 41% of children in Africa are economic workers. In Rwanda, most of the children that are workers are involved in harmful forms of labor with prostitution taking the lead and the rest are domestic workers. In Tanzania, some of the children around 4600 of them work in the small-scale mining, with many of them being as young as eight years. In Kenya, coffee picking during the peak seasons records 30% of the workers to be below the age of fifteen. In Africa, there are states that are still forcing children to take up arms and join the military, here they work as porters, messengers, cooks, sex slaves and the older ones are forced to be soldiers. In Morocco, approximately 50,000 children work as domestics. In West Africa, most children are engaged in sexual exploitation recording an estimate of 35,000. Child trafficking from Mali to cote d’Ivoire has increased the number of children working in the plantations of the latter to between 10,000 and 15,000 (Nogler, Nesi & Pertile, 2013). Reasons for Forced Child Labor The reasons why most children are forced to labor are: I. Poverty: most children in Africa work to help their families survive. Despite the fact that most of their employers underpay them, children still serve as contributors to family incomes especially in developing states. Most of the children that are forced to labor are taken into it by their parents. II. Schooling problems: some of the children are forced to labor because they cannot go to school either because of the distance from home to school or complete lack of the school. In areas where the schools are scarce, the quality of education is poor so many parents doing not see the reason as to why their children should go to school to waste time. III. Traditional factors: most of the traditions view that if a girl child is educated, she will not be able to perform traditional roles. So the girls are raised learning how to do house chores so that when she knows how to do them, their mothers can go to look for jobs as they stay at home doing the house chores. IV. Child specialization: this one sees some of the children in a family going to gain formal education in schools while the others are taken to the fields to learn how to work. Most of the time it is the eldest who is privileged to attend school. This showed that although many parents in Africa have a large number of children, it does not affect the number of child enrolment in schools but it increases child labor. V. Rural-Urban migration: many families disregard working in the fields in the rural areas and opt to migrate to urban areas to search for jobs that are not there. This situation has increased annually and these increases combined with the harsh economic situations, has forced families into urban poverty, and for this case every member of the family will have to work in order to sustain their economical life. VI. Orphan hood: most of the orphaned children in Africa are brought up by either grandparents, relatives or unrelated households. With an increase in the number of orphans, this form of accommodation is not able to sustain all of them. This also has led to the increase of child labor in the society (Agbu, 2009). Developing a Strategy that will see the reduction of child labor in Africa I. The International Labor Organization decided to form IPEC (International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor). The main aim of this program is to eradicate all the harmful forms of child labor; this is to happen mainly in the agricultural and the informal sector. II. Developing many schools will see many children move away from the labor market and move to schools. It is through schools that children will get to understand their role in the society and they will also learn their rights as children in an independent nation more so continent. III. Child labor should be stopped especially in industries like mining, prostitution, soldiering etc where the health and life of the children is endangered and every child should seek protection from the state when this happens (Hindman, 2011).. IV. Create alternative ways of accommodating orphans through international NGOs and other reliable organizations V. Provision of the needy child fund that will see most of the willing but unable children going to school. This will also help reduce the number of street children. Public spending on education should take a bigger percentage on the nation budget, VI. Set a basic minimum work age and also set the working conditions of the young workers. Problems that arise from such strategies are: I. Children will not be able to attend to the schools if the economy does not improve. These schools should give reasons why those children should abandon their jobs and go to school by offering the education services freely, and the quality of education that is learnt there to be improved. Another major thing that the schools should offer is food supplements to draw more children to school. II. Some children work in order to get to school, if not by themselves then some of them go to school as others go to work in order to pay for their studies. Doing away with child labor may also reduce the number of children that attend school. The effects of child labor I. Their health is at stake and it is a sign of a not so much developing nation when most of its future is wasting away in the labor market. Some of the work children perform is very hazardous and may risk them to severe injuries and lead them to have disabilities. Exposure to a lot of work affects the immune system of the child which later makes them vulnerable to diseases. II. Child labor improves the skills and the child becomes experienced, independent and social. Although this may be a positive view, it will only be so if the child chooses to work but not being constrained by other factors. III. Is that reduces the faith of the education investors because most NGOs and sponsors target education and want to do anything to lower the child labor to zero. IV. Most children are today used in trafficking of illegal goods and it has made the business reach its peak because the children are unsuspecting to the authorities. Like the illegal trafficking of Colton (Columbite-Tantalite) from the Coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Illegally mined Coltan is mixed with legally mined Coltan and then priced and made available for users in the world. V. Though it may be argued that child labor does not affect the attendance of children to school at times, but it does affect the school performance because most of the time is spent at work and if the child works after school hours then they will attend school when they are tired. The concentration of working children is always impaired (Bass, 2004) Conclusion Child labor has been discussed in many countries and the urge to eliminate it has been so high, though many nations have failed to reduce the number of working children. Those being worked for by the under age should stop employing them, this will assist the continent in killing the child labor. In the trafficking industry consumers of the illegal goods should show the value of ethical issues while buying for such goods this will help the importance of ethical consumerism. Reference List Agbu, O. (2009). Children and Youth in the Labor Process in Africa, Oxford; African Books Collective. Bass, L. E. (2004). Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa, London, U.K.; Lynne Reinner Publishers. Bekele, A. & Boyden, J. (1988). Combating Child Labor, Geneva; Switzerland; International Labor Organization. Hindman, H. D. (2011). The World Child Labor: An Historical Regional Survey, New York, NY; M.E. Sharpe Inc. Nogler, L., Nesi, G. & Pertile, M. (2013). Child Labor in a Globalized World: A Legal Analysis of ILO Action, Farnham, U.K.; Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Read More