Child Labour and Precarious
Living
Dr Gareth A Jones
LSE
Overview
• The Good News: for most young people life chances
and qualities have improved over past 50 years –
healthier, better educated, material goods (though not
‘happier’),
• The Bad News: for young people at bottom, conditions
have not changed or got worse, including health
indicators, life expectancy, violence...
• Nine SSA countries increased U5MR 1990-2000; 88
countries predict fail universal primary education 2015,
gender inequality persistent...700 million children live
less $1 per day, more than in 1990.
• Though baseline data are poor especially in terms of
work (informality, domestic etc), violence (including
abuse), income (and time) – and respect, ‘self’ esteem,
suicidal ideation...
A Right Problem
• Approaches to young people at work (and many other
pursuits) has varied from criminalisation, welfare
interventionism and rights approaches.
• A Rights agenda has been vital to recasting ‘how’ young people
are to be involved in development.
• But, although poverty conceptualised as denial of (human)
rights – and choices, entitlements – freedom from poverty is
not itself a right.
• For 1990s it was enough to argue that improving rights was
axiomatic to poverty alleviation – neither academics nor
agencies explained how ‘rights in principle’ would address
structural poverty or affect constraints related to ethnicity,
custom, religion, gender.
• Nagging doubt that governments found easier to ‘sign up to
rights’ than devote budgets to material programmes.
• All rights frameworks, laws are clumsy and advocacy is dull.
Child Labour
• Shifting down the agenda (1990 Action Plan) but reemerged recent years (2002 UNGASS Outcome
Document).
• Predictor of poverty through lifecourse, target to ‘get
kids’ into the MDG/PRSP debate.
• International Programme on the Elimination of Child
Labour (IPEC) and ILO 182 on Worst Forms of Child
Labour in 1999.
• But does child labour indicate an absence of rights (to
education, welfare), or is the denial of labour an
abuse?
• The CRC does not prohibit or confirm a right to work,
while ILO 182 (and claims around) indicate that
elimination of worst forms of work complements CRC.
Working Children
• 351 million economically active children:
– 8.4 million in worst forms of labour (drug economies, prostitution),
– 171 million work in ‘hazardous conditions’,
• Hazardous = heavy machinery, night work, exposure to noise.
• But hazardous becomes ‘worst’ when ILO claims that 180
million children “are now suspected to be toiling in the ‘worst
forms’ of child labour – those activities that the global
community has unanimously agreed are inexcusable under
any circumstances and must be eliminated without
delay..persistence on such a scale of this violation of
children’s basic rights casts a shadow over us all”
• Lazy or semantics, or ILO repositioning, or agenda creep...?
• Is hazard a technical or an ethical judgement?
• Careful not to condemn work without knowing
what it is doing, or that consequence of non-work
is worse,
• Careful not to condemn work without considering
its positives – aside income, can offer access to
networks and institutions (though many forms of
work do not, conversely many ‘hazardous’ forms
do),
• Careful we have alternatives to work – education
might not be that alternative, in that it does not
lead to work in developing world (eg. Ghana).
Street Youth
• Approximately 18% world population, 1.2 billion people are
‘young people’ (15-24), and numbers peak 2035.
• Street youth – multiple failures in family, community,
government..experiences of vulnerability,
exclusion...though plenty international regimes address
‘youth’.
• Range of reasons to be on streets – once there, offers range
survival mechanisms though activities not perceived as
work,
• Work as means to opportunity – additional jobs, free
goods/food, medicine.
• Mother s work with young children to keep close, watch
out for partners (drugs, violence, sun burn, ..ensure they
work).
Some Conclusions
• Children & Youth at work on the streets ‘framed’ by
debates and responses to ‘informality’ – relative to the
eye of the beholder, attitude of the state and the law.
• Recognising ‘street youth’ as having multiple networks
within context of social exclusion may bring valuable
insights – consider what young people have, gender
and ‘carer’ relations.
• Recapture some ‘social justice’ – rights without welfare
is not a first-best option, it is a normative one.
• Encourage small measures – through CSOs – to
improve the ‘places’ of young people (including for
work) – good design, participatory practices, media
representation.