Over 115mn children in risky jobs: UN
Over 115 million children and teenagers in the world are engaged in dangerous and life-threatening jobs, the Global Report on Child Labor says.
In a report released on Friday, the International Labor Organization (ILO), which sets standards for employment around the globe, said the industries involved range from mining and metalworking through farming and shoe-making to flower-growing and the banana industry.
“The persistence of child labor is a clear indictment of the prevailing model of growth,” ILO Director General Juan Somavia said in a statement.
The ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations that deals with issues pertaining to international labor standards. It defines a child laborer as anyone under the age of 18 who works for their exploiters and is easily scared and complains less.
Extreme poverty drives child laborers to take up both physically and psychologically dangerous jobs, with the effects from toxic substances they have to work with only emerging in later life, the ILO report said.
According to the report, the vast majority of child laborers are in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the totals were nearly 39 million, which accounted for more than 15 percent of the overall population in the age category. In Latin America, the total number of child laborers was 9.5 million, or 6.7 percent.
Hazardous work is commonly found in agriculture, fishing, forestry, livestock-herding and aquaculture, in addition to subsistence and commercial farming, according to the ILO.
The report also indicates that the number of female child laborers has reduced so that 60 percent of the child laborers in hazardous jobs are boys.
Source: presstv.ir
