Name: Raiza Caramihan 12 HUMSS St.
John the Evangelist
Teacher: Ms. Gisselle Baring
Child Labor in the Philippines
One of the major manifestations of low economic growth, lack of education, and poverty is
depriving children of liberty to enjoy their youth as being subjects to child labor. According to
International Labor Organization (n.d), Child labor refers to any work that deprives children of
their childhood and has the potentiality to harm their dignity, mental, physical, social, and moral
development, and also any work that interfered with the child’s opportunity for schooling.
Consequently, since the beginning of the Pandemic where many family wage-earners lost their
jobs and businesses, many children were substituted in their stead. Whereby according to
UNICEF (2021), Child labor continues to increase even in this time where approximately 160
million children were recorded to have been working at an early age, which is the highest
statistics for almost two decades. Moreover, the UNICEF also warned the potentiality of nine
million more children at risk for child labor as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Accordingly, one of the major foreseen factors that led to child labor is the lack of financial
sustainability in a family, poverty, illness of a caregiver, or job loss of the primary wage earner.
As a result, early labor may materialize for these children to exposure to extreme bodily and
mental harm, fatigue, exhaustion, and decrease in mortality span. Moreover, in an article by the
International Labor Organization (n.d.) the institution insisted that child labor forces children to
temporarily or permanently living on streets, leading them to a vagrant existence and harsh
conception of reality. This predicament also pressures many children to mature hastily and
create independent decisions.
On the other hand, from the latest released data from Philippine Statistics Authority (2021), out
of the estimated 31.17 million registered children in the country aged 5 to 17 years old, a
concerning 2.8% or nearly nine hundred thousand children are working. And although this is
much lower from the previous 2019 data amounting to 3.4% child laborers, this statistic is still
concerning. On a similar account by the Department of Labor and Employment Cordillera
Administrative Region Regional Office, a contrasting number of 2.097 million children
(registered and non-registered) were recorded to have been working at an early age. Whereby
58% of the total sum are children working in agricultural manual labor, while the remaining 42%
were either working in manufacturing industries, mining industries, quarrying, construction,
domestic service, domestic service, and many other general service labors such as retail,
restaurants, and hotels.
As a solution, the Department of Labor and Employment emphasizes on the legislation of The
UN Convention on the Rights of the Chile, Article 32 that summarizes children to be protected
from any external economic exploitation; the Presidential Decree 422 “Labor Code of the
Philippines”; P.D. 603 “The Child and Youth Welfare Code’; Republic Act 9231 for the
elimination of the worst forms of child labor and heightening of child protection; R.A 9775 “Anti-
Child Pornography Act”; and several more policies and laws that may protect children from
being subjected to child labor. Hence, the Department of Labor and Employment also stated
that the best escape from labor work is allowing these children to work in Schools instead;
calling out the national government to provide quality and free education for all to allow these
children access to education instead of manual labor.
REFERENCES:
Department of Labor and Employment. (2022). Revisiting Child Labor - Related Laws
and Policies. [Link]
policies/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20International%20Labor,%25)%20are
%20in%20the%20Industry.
International Labor Organization. (n,d). Causes. [Link]
work/child-labour/WCMS_248984/lang--en/[Link]#:~:text=make%20independent
%20decisions.-,Economic%20hardships%20and%20family%20dysfunction%20can
%20therefore%20be%20named%20as,the%20complexity%20of%20the%20problem.
International Labor Organization. (n.d). What is Child Labor.
[Link]
Philippine Statistics Authority. (2021). Working Children and Child Labor Situation.
[Link]
UNICEF. (2021). Child labor rises to 160 million - first increase in two decades.
[Link]
decades
