Child Labor Around the World

A Bangladeshi child works in a brick-breaking yard in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The broken bricks are mixed in with concrete. Typically working barefoot and with rough utensils, a child worker earns less than $2 a day. (Mehedi Hasan)

The term “child labor” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. 

An estimated 152 million children around the globe are doing work that prevents them from getting an education or that's harmful to their health. That's almost 1 in 10 children worldwide.

• Worldwide 218 million children between 5 and 17 years are in employment.
  Among them, 152 million are victims of child labor; almost half of them, 73 million, work in hazardous child labor.
• In absolute terms, almost half of child labor (72.1 million) is to be found in Africa; 62.1 million in the Asia and the Pacific; 10.7 million in the Americas; 1.2 million in the Arab States and 5.5 million in Europe and Central Asia.
• In terms of prevalence, 1 in 5 children in Africa (19.6%) are in child labor, whilst prevalence in other regions is between 3% and 7%: 2.9% in the Arab States (1 in 35 children); 4.1% in Europe and Central Asia (1 in 25); 5.3% in the Americas (1 in 19) and 7.4% in Asia and the Pacific region (1 in 14).
• Almost half of all 152 million children victims of child labor are aged 5-11 years.
  42 million (28%) are 12-14 years old; and 37 million (24%) are 15-17 years old.
• Hazardous child labor is most prevalent among the 15-17 years old. Nevertheless up to a fourth of all hazardous child labor (19 million) is done by children less than 12 years old.

• Among 152 million children in child labor, 88 million are boys and 64 million are girls.
• 58% of all children in child labor and 62% of all children in hazardous work are boys. Boys appear to face a greater risk of child labor than girls, but this may also be a reflection of an under-reporting of girls’ work, particularly in domestic child labour.
• Child labor is concentrated primarily in agriculture (71%), which includes fishing, forestry, livestock herding and aquaculture, and comprises both subsistence and commercial farming; 17% in Services; and 12% in the Industrial sector, including mining.Source: International Labor Organization

 

 

The IV Global Conference on the Sustained Eradication of Child Labour , held in Buenos Aires, concluded with a call to action to accelerate efforts to end child labor by 2025 and forced labour by 2030, and to generate more decent employment opportunities for young people around the world.