Child labor is one of the worst forms of exploitation.

 Children Have The Right To Be Children

Child labor is one of the worst forms of exploitation. Child workers are deprived of schooling, forced to work in dangerous situations, beaten and sexually abused, and crippled by work-related illnesses and injuries. Children are sold or indentured to employers who pay impoverished families for the use of their children. An ensuing cycle of poverty pushes adults from their jobs and drives down wages worldwide.

For more than 200 million children, today is a workday, not a school day. Children as young as five years old are part of the global workforce. In factories and in fields, children work up to 15 hours a day, seven days a week. Matches, rugs, soccer balls, leather goods, paper cups, toys, shoes, fireworks — all of these products are made by tiny hands.

Every day, millions of children, in rich and poor countries alike, spend their days at the beck and call of adults for whom they cook, clean and take care of children not much younger than themselves. These children are domestic workers.

Detecting the number of children working in domestic service is beyond human capabilities. But, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), more girls under 16 worldwide are engaged in domestic service than any other kind of employment.

The hidden nature of domestic work means it often escapes the reach of the law and heightens the risk of abuse for workers at the hands of their employer. Where legal protections do exist, they are often little known and poorly enforced. Domestic workers tend to be undeclared, under-paid and unable to access complaints procedures. Furthermore, according to the ILO, domestic work is under-valued because it is seen as 'women's innate rather than acquired capacity'.

 Despite their important contributions to their employers’ household and the global economy, domestic workers are among the most exploited and abused workers in the world, due to persistent discrimination, exclusion from labour laws, isolation, and the invisible nature of their work. Children are at even greater risk, due to their young ages, lack of awareness of their rights, separation from their family, and dependence on their employer. While not all child domestic workers suffer abuse or exploitation, children working as domestics are particularly vulnerable to trafficking, forced labour, and the worst forms of child labour, making child domestic work one of the most widespread and potentially exploitative forms of child work in the world today.

Although most countries have laws against child labor, and it is banned by officially recognized conventions of the United Nations and the International Labor Organization, child labor exists everywhere in the world. Child labor is most common in countries where there are no unions and where other worker rights violations, such as pay inequity, discrimination, and lack of health and safety measures, are widespread. The Solidarity Center and our partners around the world are exposing the problem of child labor, pushing for policies that prepare young people for the workplace, and promoting more effective national action plans to curb this intolerable abuse of worker and human rights. Thanks to Solidarity Center programs, more kids are staying in school — while their parents earn decent wages so their children don't have to work.