4 WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF CHILD LABOUR?

Contents

Child labour is undoubtedly linked with poverty. In Bangladesh for many poor parents the choice is often between having no food to provide to their children or allowing one's children do heavy work for the family's maintenance. At first sight, it appears to be obvious that poverty is the chief cause of child labour. Nevertheless, some would argue that child labour is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Their view is thus: children who have to work can not go to school, they keep being dependent on low-educated, badly paid and unhealthy work once they are grown up. Work that ruins children's health or that denies them the chance to receive an education certainly makes it more likely that they will stay poor in the future.

"Today's child workers will become tomorrow's unemployed adults, and their own children will in turn be forced to work". (...) ILO

To break this vicious circle, increasing emphasis is put on education as the most effective way to combat child labour. The question is whether it is more effective to eradicate all forms of child labour immediately by compulsory education. The alternative is to pursue a double track policy, namely to simultaneously abolish the extreme forms of child labour and to offer education besides children's work. Opinions are divided.

At the national level, the use of child labour in great numbers slows down economic growth and social development. "The continuous lack of adequate education and development perpetuates poverty and forms a barrier for socio-economic progress ".(1) Child labour that hampers school attendance is also in conflict with the UN convention entitled the Right of the Child. Article 28 of the UN Convention states:

States Parties recognise the right of the child to education and the State's duty is to ensure that primary education is free and compulsory to all.

The ILO Minimum Age Convention No. 138 explicitly links the minimum age for admission to employment with the age of completion of compulsory schooling.

THERE ARE NUMEROUS FACTORS PUSHING CHILDREN OUT OF SCHOOL AND/OR PULLING THEM INTO LABOUR
Many employers see that children are a cheap and docile labour force. It is sometimes claimed that children are particularly best suited physically in parts of the production process, the so-called "nimble fingers"- argument. Children may increase family income or even may be indispensable for the survival of poor families (especially in those cases where the parents are not income earners). Furthermore, child labour drives down adult wage levels, impoverishing families and keeping families under- or unemployed.

Schooling may be part of the solution to the child labour problem (including teaching children about their rights), but should be integrated into a whole range of socio-economic reforms. Child labour eradication is not solely about removing children from the workplace and placing them immediately into schools. Most working children belong to the poor. The negative effects of combating child labour mainly fall upon the poor families who simply can not permit to send their children to school. Even when public primary schools exist and charge no tuition, the associated expenses can be burdensome. Parents often have to pay for books, school supplies and uniforms. Add child's lost wages, and the costs of schooling are immensely high. Opportunity costs for girls may be even higher. They are required to work at home due to which girls drop out at an higher rate than boys. Besides, government schools are often poorly run and maintained, lack teaching materials and (motivated) teachers. Children's education seems a poor investment for many parents.

In 1993 primary education was declared compulsory for the whole of Bangladesh. School attendance improved, but drop out rates are very high. Girls are less likely to attend or remain in school than boys. More than three quarters of women are illiterate compared with about 50% of men.

Like poverty itself, the prohibitive costs of education that keep children out of school and increase the likelihood of them remaining in hazardous work, must be seen as a consequence of faulty policies and priorities. Many countries manage to find sufficient resources for disproportionate military spending . (2)

In the context of the Global March Against Child Labour, organisations plead for a doubling of development aid for basic education in developing countries, and to combine this with programmes to integrate working children in school. According to UNICEF 40 billion dollar extra is needed to give everyone in the developing countries access to basic social services such as health care, education and clean water . (3)

1. Policy Paper on Child Labour, Second Chamber, 1997/98
2. ILO, 1997 (Education and Child Labour Background Paper, Oslo Conference)
3. Policy Paper "Sign Against Child Labour", 1997
4. Unicef, 1997