Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen..

My name is Vania Safira Evanti and I am from SMAN 1

Depok. Today, I am going to deliver my speech regarding child labor.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Child labor is defined as work that deprives children from their childhood, their potential, and
their dignity, and is harmful to physical and mental development. It refers to work that is
physically, mentally, socially, and morally dangerous and harmful to children, and interferes with
their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school, obliging them to leave
school prematurely or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively
long and heavy work.
Today, throughout the world, around 215 million children work, many full-time. They do not go
to school and have little or no time to play. Many of them do not receive proper nutrition or care.
They are denied the chance to be children. More than half of them are exposed to the worst
forms of child labor such as work in hazardous environments, slavery, or other forms of child
labor, illicit activities including child trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in
armed conflict.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Most child workers can be found in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. But
child labor today is not restricted to developing countries. There are working children found in
developed industrialized countries like Turkey and the Ukraine. Current causes of global child
labor are similar to its causes 100 years ago, they are poverty, limited access to education, and
repression of workers rights.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Poverty is the most common factors contributing to child labor. It is wildly believed that families
will not be able to cope if their children do not work. Parents simply have no other choice.
Children are easy being exploited and becoming cheap laborers, they are hired in preference to
adults. Child labor thus leads to lower wages and higher unemployment among adults. Children
who work and do not go to school will end up in low paid jobs later, and so will their children
and so the vicious cycle of poverty is perpetuated.
But even if parents do want to send their children to school, they cannot simply make it happen.
This may be related to a poor education system, discrimination and exclusion, the vulnerable
position of girls, extra costs, illness, or bureaucratic obstacles.
Another cause of child labor is repression of workers rights. Workers abilities to organize
unions affect the international protection of core labor standards, including child labor. Attacks
on workers to organize make it more difficult to improve labor standards and living standards in
order to eliminate child labor.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Solving a problem like child labor is never easy, but that does not necessarily mean that we
cannot do anything to eliminate the problem. There is always a solution to every problem and I
have some ideas that can help.
First, many children leave their homes in a way to avoid the abuse they sustain as they are
actually the victims of their own parents. To prevent this bad treatment, the government could
help give conferences to the parents about child labor and the consequences that it brings. In this
way, we can help prevent other children running away from home and living as homeless
children.
Another option could be to build homes for those children that are living on the streets. They will
be sent to these homes and they would not have to live outside. In this way, we can help prevent
children from any abuse that they can suffer on the streets. Also in these homes, children are not
supposed to work: they can study and learn a career, thus they will get a better job and a future.
So ladies and gentlemen, to sum up my speech, child labor is a very serious problem in our
society that should and can be eliminated. Child labor can harm childrens health and cause
serious mental problems in children. We want the next generation to be powerful and strong, we
want them to be able to solve the problems we are never able to solve, and we want them to build
a better world. Children are our future and we have to take care of them if we want a better
future.
Gandhi once said, if we are ever to have real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with the
children. Children are meant to learn, not to earn.