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Analyzing Child Labor as a Human Rights Issue: Its Causes, Aggravating Policies, and
Alternative Proposals
Author(s): Zehra F. Arat
Source: Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 2002), pp. 177-204
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
Analyzing Child Labor as a

Human Rights Issue:
Its Causes, Aggravating Policies,
and Alternative Proposals
Zehra F. Arat*
I. INTRODUCTION
The international community has been concerned about child labor for a
long time and attempted to curb it at the first session of the International
Labor Organization (ILO) in 1919 by establishing fourteen years as the
minimum age for children to be employed in industry.1 In 1973, the
Minimum Age Convention of the ILO (Convention 138, or C138) defined
child labor as economic activity performed by a person under the age of
fifteen, and prohibited it for being hazardous to the physical, mental, and
moral well-being of the child as well as for preventing effective schooling.2
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General
* Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat is Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies at Purchase
College of the State University of New York. She also serves as the Founding President of the
Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association. Her publications
include journal articles and book chapters on topics related to democracy, human rights, and
women's rights. She has also authored the books Democracy and Human Rights in
Developing Countries (1991) and Deconstructing Images of "The Turkish Woman'' (1998).
Currently she is working on a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Human Rights Policies
and Politics in Turkey.
1. Convention Fixing the Minimum Age for Admission of Children to Industrial Employ
ment (ILO No. 5), adopted 28 Nov. 1919 {entered into force 13 June 1921), revised in
1937 by Convention No. 59 and in 1973 by Convention No. 138, art. 2, available on
International Labour Organization <http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/scripts/convde.pl?C5> (vis
ited 11 Nov. 2001).
2. Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment (ILO No. 138),
adopted 26 June 1973, entered into force 19 June 1976, art. 2, reprinted in International
Documents on Children 355 (G?raldine Van Bueren ed., 2d ed. 1998).
Human Rights Quarterly 24 (2002) 177-204 ? 2002 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
178 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 24
Assembly on 20 November 1989, also included several articles against

economic exploitation and abuse of children.3
Among the human rights conventions of the United Nations (UN), the
Convention on the Rights of the Child enjoys a special status and popularity.
A record number of countries participated in the Convention's treaty-signing
ceremony in January 1990, and the Convention broke UN records again by
entering into force on 25 September 1990, less than a year after being
adopted.4 As this paper was written at the end of 2000, this Convention was
the closest to achieving universal ratification with 191 state parties?the
only exceptions being the United States, which signed it but did not ratify it,
and Somalia, which did neither.
Despite this high level of state support for the convention on children's
rights, only a minority of the world's children fully enjoys the rights included
in it, and many children are denied childhood. While Article 32 of the
Convention obligates states to protect children "from economic exploitation
and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere
with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical,
mental, spiritual, moral, or social development," millions of children are
overburdened with adult responsibilities and work in hazardous conditions.5
In fact, after not being able to gather enough support for the Minimum
Age Convention?it is ratified by only 103 states because it is considered
too complex and difficult to implement?the ILO adopted a new conven
tion, Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention (C182), in 1999. The
Convention, which entered into force on 19 November 2000, and acquired
forty-nine ratifications, prioritizes the struggle against the worst forms of
child labor and calls for their elimination for all persons under the age of
eighteen.6
3. See Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted 20 Nov. 1989, G.A. Res. 44/25,
U.N. GAOR, 44th Sess., Supp. No. 49, U.N. Doc. A/44/49 (1989) (entered into force 2
Sept. 1990), reprinted in 28 I.L.M. 1448 (1989).
4. Cynthia Price Cohen et al., Monitoring the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child: The Challenge of Information Management, 18 Hum. Rts. Q. 439, 440 (1996).
On the extensive use of reservations in ratification, see William A. Schabas, Reserva
tions to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 18 Hum. Rts. Q. 472 (1996).
5. Convention on the Rights of the Child, supra note 3, art. 32.
6. Id. art. 3. Article 3 defines the worst forms of child labor as comprising: (a) all forms of
slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt
bondage and serfdom, and forced labor or compulsory labor, including forced or
compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict; (b) the use, procuring or
offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography, or for porno
graphic performance; (c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in
particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant
international treaties; (d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is
carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children. Id. For a critique
of this prioritization by the ILO, see David M. Smolin, Strategic Choices in the
International Campaign Against Child Labor, 22 Hum. Rts. Q. 942 (2000).
2002 Analyzing Child Labor as a Human Rights Issue 1 79
The critics of child labor constitute a diverse group which opposes the
practice of child labor for concerns ranging from moral to economic
reasons, including:
allowing child labor means stealing the childhood of millions of

children;
child laborers are subject to economic exploitation because they are
paid at the lowest rates;
child labor replaces adult labor because it is preferred by employers

for being cheap and docile;
the widespread use of child labor results in lower wages for all
laborers;
children usually work under the worst working conditions, and

these unhealthy, unsafe, dangerous, and poisonous work environ
ments cause physical deformations and long-term health care
problems in children;
child labor perpetuates poverty because child laborers, deprived of

education or healthy physical development, are likely to become
adults with low earning prospects;
countries that allow child labor are able to lower the labor cost,
thus, they not only attract investors but also benefit from "unfair
trade" due to their low production cost.7
No matter which consequence of child labor has been their primary

concern, the critics, especially those located in the industrial societies, tend
to organize their efforts around banning child labor through trade sanctions,
import restrictions, and consumer boycotts. UNICEF opposes child labor
not only for being exploitative but also for endangering children's physical,
cognitive, emotional, social, and moral development; and proposes a more
comprehensive approach to the problem.8
7. See Charles Diamond & Tammy Fayed, Evidence on Substitutability of Adult and Child
Labor, 34 J. Dev. Stud. 62 (1998) (for a brief review of the arguments about the impact
of child labor on the adult labor market). Regarding the harm done to children, see
Robert Weissman, Stolen Youth: Brutalized Children, Globalization and the Campaign
to End Child Labor, 18 Multinat'l Monitor 10 (1997); Lee Tucker, Child Slaves in
Modern India: The Bonded Labor Problem, 19 Hum. Rts. Q. 572 (1997); Myron E.
Wegman, Foreign Aid, International Organizations, and the World's Children, 103
Pediatrics 646 (1999); Roger Sawyer, Children Enslaved (1988).
8. UNICEF, The State of World's Children 1997, at 24-25 (1997) (regarding the develop
mental impacts of child labor); Erika de Wet, Labor Standards in the Globalized
Economy: The Inclusion of a Social Clause in the General Agreement on Tariff and
Trade/World Trade Organization, 17 Hum. Rts. Q. 443 (1995).
This paper addresses the child labor issue as a human rights violation
and examines the root causes of the problem. In addition to the immediate
violators of the rights of children, the paper identifies parties that encourage
the use of child labor by violating other human rights. It treats child labor as
an issue which demonstrates the interdependency of human rights and
argues that its elimination demands a multidimensional approach.
II. THE SCOPE AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE PROBLEM
Obtaining the exact count of child laborers has been proven difficult for all
countries, and the global estimates range from 200 to 500 million. The ILO
reports that 250 million children, 140 million boys and 110 million girls,
between ages of five and fourteen are working, and 120 million of them
work full time.9 About 95 percent of the child laborers are in developing
countries; nearly 153 million of them are found in Asia, 80 million in Africa,
and 17.5 million in Latin America (Table 1).10
Rich countries are not immune to the problem either. The United
Kingdom and the United States are estimated to have two million working
children each.11 A more conservative estimate by the Associated Press
identifies 230,000 children as working in agriculture and 13,000 in
sweatshops in the United States.12 While their numbers may not be known
for sure, the fact remains that a considerable number of six-year-olds in
Texas, for example, pick fruit and vegetables and earn as low as $2.00 per
day.13 The problem, however, has been colossal in developing countries:
one in three children in Africa works, one in four in Asia, and one in five in
Latin America (Table 1).14 Although the estimates range from sixty to 115
million, it is widely accepted that "India has the largest number of working
children in the world."15
9. ILO, Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable: Report VI (1) of the International Labor
Conference, 86th Sess. (1998).
10. 5ee/d.
11. See Christian Huot, The Global Crisis of Child Labour, 32:6 Canadian Dimension 33
(1998).
12. Stacie Garnett, Taking Steps Against Child Labor, 217 Dollars & Sense 6 (1998).
13. Huot, supra note 11, at 33.
14. According to the UN reports:
The largest numbers of children workers are in Asia, where in some countries they make up more
than 10% of the labour force. But there are also large numbers in Africa, where several countries
are reported to have up to 20% of their children working. And in Latin America, more than a
quarter of children in some countries are thought to be working.
5ee United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 1993, at 33 (1993).
15. Human Rights Watch, The Small Hands of Slavery: Bonded Child Labor In India 122 (1996).
2002 Analyzing Child Labor as a Human Rights Issue 181
TABLE 1
The ILO Estimates of the Number and Distribution of Child Laborers of age 5-14
Total Boys Girls

World Economically Active Child Population age 5-14
(in millions) 250 140 110
Distribution of working children (% of world child laborers)
Africa 32.0 56.0 44.0
Asia (excluding Japan) 61.0 54.0 46.0
Latin America & Caribbean 7.0 67.0 33.0
Oceania (excluding Australia & New Zealand) .2 57.0 43.0
Economic Activity Participation Rate of Children?World 24.7 27.0 22.6
Africa 41.4 46.0 36.7
Asia (excluding Japan) 21.5 22.5 20.4
Latin America & Caribbean 16.5 21.8 11.1
Oceania (excluding Australia & New Zealand) 29.3 32.7 25.8
Distribution of Child Laborers by Industry (26 counties only)
1. Agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing 70.4 69.9 75.3
2. Mining and quarrying .9 1.0 .9
3. Manufacturing 8.3 9.4 7.9
4. Electricity, gas and water ? ? ?
5. Construction 1.9 2.0 1.9
6. Wholesale and retail trade, restaurants and hotels 8.3 10.4 5.0
7. Transport, storage and communication 3.8 3.8 ?
8. Financing, insurance, real estate and busyiness services ? ? ?
9. Community, social and personal services 6.5 4.7 8.9
Source: Kebebew Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Hazardous Child Labour in
Brief. Revised Version. International Labor Office, Geneva, 1998. <www.ilo.org/public/
english/comp/child/stat/stats.htm>
Some country-specific studies and surveys also find that many children
who are not even five years old work in harsh conditions, usually without
pay, in family farms and businesses, or for their parents' creditors as bound
laborers.16 It is estimated that 15-20 percent of children in developing
countries work for no pay, usually as domestic help or farm workers.17
Although child laborers tend to be more visible in cities, more of them work
in rural areas. Rural children are estimated to constitute two-thirds of all
16. See Weissman, supra note 7, at 10; Tucker, supra note 7, at 572; UNICEF, supra note 8,
at 24; Katherine Cox, The Inevitability of Nimble Fingers? Law, Development, and Child
Labor, 32 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 115 (1999); Emad Mekay, A Story of Children and
Cotton, Middle East Times, 19 Oct. 1997, at 38-39; Lee Tucker & Arvind Ganesan, The
Small Hands of Slavery: India's Bonded Child Laborers and the World Bank, 18
Multinat'l Monitor 17 (1997).
17. Sophie Boukhari, Child labour: a lesser evil?, UNESCO Courier, May 1999, at 38;
UNICEF, supra note 8, at 32-35, 43-45.
child laborers,18 and they, in particular girls, tend to start working at a

younger age as well. The ILO reports that in some countries those under age
ten account for 20 percent of child labor in rural areas and around 5 percent
in urban centers.19
Bonded child labor is considered to be an acute problem in Asia. In
India and Pakistan, millions of bonded child laborers work long hours each
day in all sorts of activities from agriculture to carpet factories as virtual
slaves to pay off debts incurred by their parents or guardians.20 The debts are
often minuscule, but because of the fraudulent accounting schemes em
ployed by the creditor-employers, children end up spending their entire
childhood, and at times their entire lives, working to pay off the debts.21 A
conservative estimate of bonded child laborers in India put it at fifteen
million.22 In Thailand, children are routinely bought and sold to work in
private houses, restaurants, factories, and brothels.23
What child labor statistics exclude or underestimate is the number of
domestic workers. The ILO plainly states the problem:
We do not know how many children are employed in domestic service because
of the "hidden" nature of the work but the practice, especially in the case of
girls, is certainly extensive. For example, studies in Indonesia estimate that there
are around 400,000 child domestic workers in Jakarta and up to 5 million in
Indonesia as a whole, and about 500,000 in Sri Lanka.24
III. THE BENEFICIARIES OF CHILD LABOR AND THE

VIOLATORS OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS
Child labor is sustained by a triangular foundation formed by three corner

players: the employers, parents, and the state. Its critics tend to recognize
the first two as the immediate violators and hold the state responsible for
failing to protect children's rights by allowing the employers and parents to
exploit child labor.
Employers use child labor because it is profitable. Governments often
turn a blind eye to the practice because they are willing to welcome any
form of investment. Employers prefer children because they are docile,
18. Boukhari, supra note 17, at 38.

19. Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable, supra note 9.
20. Human Development Report 1993, supra note 14, at 33.
21. See Tucker, supra note 7, at 573; Weissman, supra note 7, at 11 ; Human Rights Watch,
supra note 15, at 2; Cox, supra note 16, at 115.
22. Human Rights Watch, supra note 15, at 2 n.3.
24. Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable, supra note 9, at 12.
willing to work for lower wages and in undesirable work conditions,

incapable of collective bargaining, and easier to manage.25 Child labor is
particularly favored in industries such as carpet weaving, silk production,
synthetic gemstone manufacturing, and jasmine picking due to a belief that
nimble fingers, small hands, and thin arms can do the delicate jobs better.26
Powerful investors?individuals as well as national or transnational corpo
rations?usually use their power to bribe officials to ignore violations,
pressure governments to relax employment restrictions, and encourage or
support governments to restrict labor rights and union activities. More
importantly, what many employers fail to provide for adult workers?e.g.,
"living wages/' disability benefits, a healthy and safe work environment,
health care coverage, and childcare allowances?create the conditions that
increase the family dependency on child labor.27
Parents, who normally care about the welfare and future of their
children, participate in the process by allowing, or even forcing, their
children to work. Poor parents who are unable to make an adequate living
rely upon the contribution of the youngsters, either in the form of unpaid
labor in family farms and businesses or as wage labor paid by other
employers. Usually the poorest parents, unable to pay bills for a medical
emergency or funeral, sign up their children to work in bondage for their
creditors.28
However, it is important to note that parents usually resort to child
labor when they have no other options. While the options are generally
limited by the resources of the country, even in the poorest countries, the
children of the well-to-do families do not share the fate of the poor children.
Child labor is provided by lower classes and poor households which are
unproportionally high among immigrant and ethnic minority groups.29 In
25. Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor, Foreign Labor Trends Report:
International Child Labor Problems 18 (1994).
26. See Tucker, supra note 7; Human Rights Watch, supra note 15, at 22; Bureau of
International Labor Affairs, supra note 25, at 18.
27. See Brent McClintock, The Multinational Corporations and Social Justice: Experiments
in Supranational Governance, 57 Rev. Social Econ. 507 (1999); Deborah Leipziger & Pia
Sabharwal, Companies That Play Hide and Seek With Child Labor, 95 Bus. & Soc'y Rev.
11-13 (1995); S.L. Bachman, The Political Economy of Child Labor and Its Impacts on
International Business, 35 Bus. Econ. 30 (2000). For a more optimistic view on the use
of multinational codes of conduct to protect labor rights, see Deborah L. Spar, The
Spotlight and the Bottom Line: How Multinationals Export Human Rights, 77 For. Aff. 7
(1998).
28. For a review of various micro- and macro-economic analyses of child labor practices,
including parental and employer choices, see S.L. Bachman, A New Economics of Child
Labor: Searching for Answers Behind the Headlines, 53 J. Int'l Aff. 545 (2000).
29. The reliance on the productive labor of non-elite children has been observed
throughout the history. Elizabeth Ann Kuznesof, The Puzzling Contradictions of Child
Labor, Unemployment, and Education in Brazil, 23 J. Family Hist. 225, 226 (1998).
fact, "[t]he harder and more hazardous the jobs become, the more they are
likely to be considered traditionally the province of the poor and disadvan
taged, the lower classes and ethnic minorities."30
Child labor was common in industrial countries during the earlier stages
of their industrialization process, and in some countries constituted 50
percent of the workforce.31 Historical studies of England and the United
States (e.g., 16-19 percent of the ten to fifteen year-olds in the United States
worked during 1880-1910)32 show that parents made their children work
because they had no choice?fathers' income and children's likelihood of
working had an inverse relation.33 Similarly, contemporary survey data from
various countries such as Paraguay, Egypt, Tanzania, and Guatemala show
a direct relation between household poverty and the use of child labor.34
Studies on micro-enterprise lending also confirm that having access to
credit increases the parents' investment in their children's schooling.35
Education is a human right, and primary education is mandatory in
many developing countries. Most countries also have laws that ban child
labor, but governments often fail to enforce these laws. The state contribu
tion to the child labor problem, however, is not limited to its failure in law
enforcement or regulations.
Most governments deny the existence of the problem, and some of them
actually sustain the practice by hiring child laborers in state-owned
enterprises. India is an "exemplary" case that demonstrates all of these
problems. While the Constitution and nearly a dozen laws forbid both
forced labor and child labor, Indian governments have been unsuccessful in
enforcing these laws, several officials have insisted that there were no child
laborers in their provinces,36 and the government itself has been using child
laborers. While the law specifically forbids the employment of children in
the carpet industry due to its hazardous nature, the government runs a
30. UNICEF, supra note 8, at 31.

31. See UNICEF, supra note 8, at 18.
32. Joan Aldous, The Political Process and the Failure of the Child Labor Amendment, 18
J. Family Iss. 71, 72 (1997).
33. Kaushik Basu & Pham Hoang Van, The Economics of Child Labor, 88 Am. Econ. Rev. 412
(1998).
34. See Harry Anthony Patrinos & George Psacharopoulos, Educational Performance and
Child Labor in Paraguay, 15 Int'l J. Educ. Dev. 47 (1995); Hideo Akabayashi & George
Psacharopoulos, The Trade-off between Child Labour and Human Capital Formation: A
Tanzanian Case Study, 35 J. Dev. Stud. 120 (1999).
35. See Bruce Wydick, The Effect of Microenterprise Lending on Child Schooling in
Guatemala, 47 Econ. Dev. & Cultural Change 853 (1999).
36. Human Rights Watch, supra note 15, at 28-41, 118-44. The apathy and corruption
among government officials, caste and class biases, obstruction by employers, lack of
accountability, and the lack of adequate enforcement staff are listed as obstacles for
enforcement.
"training" program for child carpet weavers and recruits children as young
as six. The critics note that by ignoring the educational provisions of the
program, the Indian government in effect runs a business that is entirely
based on child labor.37
Another illustrative case is Egypt. Despite its mandatory education and
child-protective labor laws, Egypt has about 1.5 million children under the
age of fourteen working. These children comprise 9 percent of the age
group and 7 percent of the country's total labor force, and eight out of ten
of these working children are employed in agriculture or related areas.38 It is
noted that the Ministry of Agriculture, which owns about 10 percent of
Egypt's cotton fields, overlooks the regulations that restrict child employ
ment and relies upon children as young as five years old to pick cotton in
the state-owned fields.39
The military and armed conflicts are also often sustained by recruiting
the young. Although the majority of the estimated 250,000 child soldiers
around the world might have been recruited by private militia or opposition
groups,40 several states routinely recruit children in their late teens (e.g., the
United States) and even younger ones at times of civil war.
In addition to employers, parents, and states, international actors should
be included among the violators as the fourth base of the foundation that
supports child labor. Transnational corporations and international financial
agencies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank, influence state policies and create socioeconomic conditions which
are not conducive to the protection of child rights or elimination of child
labor. I will discuss the impact of these agencies on child labor in Section V.
IV. THE ROOT CAUSES OF CHILD LABOR
As expressed by the ILO and reiterated by several other organizations and

agencies that work on child labor, "poverty is the most important reason
why children work."41 Child labor emanates from poverty and persists with
a host of other interrelated problems such as unskilled adult labor force,
poor and exploitative work conditions, weak labor laws and unions,
inadequate social services, and improper economic policies formulated by
37. Tucker, supra note 7, at 615.

38. Mekay, supra note 16, at 38-39.
39. See id.
40. Smolin, supra note 6, at 964.
41. Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable, supra note 9; see also United Nations Development
Programme, Human Development Report 1999 (1999); United Nations Development Programme,
Human Development Report 2000 (2000).
governments and international financial organizations. All of these have

been more arresting in developing countries.
Many adults in developing countries are unemployed or underem
ployed,42 and consequently are not able to make a decent living for
themselves or their families. For example, in Sal Hagar, an Egyptian village
with 50,000 people, more than 30 percent of the adult males are
unemployed, while others work for low wages in rice, wheat and corn
fields.43 The cotton fields of the village, however, including those owned by
the state, are full of child laborers picking cotton. Even though children are
paid no more than $1.50 for an eight-hour day, their earnings provide a
major source of income for their families.44
According to Human Development Report 2000, "About 790 million
people are hungry and food insecure,"45 and more than half of the
population in nearly a dozen countries lives for less than one dollar a day
(in 1993 PPP$).46 The Human Poverty Index, developed by the UNDP for
eighty-five countries, exceeds 33 percent in twenty-seven of the eighty-five
developing countries, implying that human poverty affects at least a third of
the population in more than one third of the developing world. In other
words, nearly 1.2 billion people live on less than a dollar a day and cannot
meet their basic needs.47 According to ILO reports, children commonly
contribute around 20-25 percent of family income.48 Since more than four
fifths of private income is spent on food in developing countries,49 the
meager earnings of children are critical to their survival. Most of the child
employees give their entire wages to their parents, and a study of nine Latin
American countries indicates that "without the income of working children
aged thirteen to seventeen, the incidence of poverty would rise by between
10 and 20 percent."50
The demographics and population trends of developing countries also
work against their children. According to UNICEF, nearly nine out of ten (87
percent) of the world's children (ages zero to eighteen) live in developing
countries.51 The population below the age of fifteen constitutes 33.6 percent
of the population in developing countries.52 With the elderly constituting
42. The United Nations reports that "at least 150 million of the world's workers were
unemployed by the end of 1998." Human Development Report 2000, supra note 41.
43. Mekay, supra note 16, at 38.
44. Id.
46. Id.
47. Id.
48. Child Labor: Targeting the Intolerable, supra note 9.
51. Id. at 24.
52. See id.
4.9 percent of the population, the working age population (fifteen to sixty
four years) comprises only 61.5 percent of the population.53 The proportion
of the under-age (youth) and elderly population to the working age
population provides the "dependency ratio" in the domestic economy.
Having a high percentage of young population means that more people
depend on the work of fewer people. As seen in Table 2, developing
countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, have
larger youth populations and higher dependency ratios. In order to avoid
starvation, countries that have high dependency ratios would need to either
increase the productivity level of the working age population or allow some
of the under-aged to participate in the work force.54
The extreme poverty prevalent in many of these countries with high
dependency ratios is a factor that works against the prospect of increasing
TABLE 2
Demographics: Fertility, Survival and Age Distribution, 1998
Fertility % work % % not

rate age % 65 young Depen- likely
1995- (15-64 and (<15 dency live to
Country Groups 2000 years) older years) Ratio age 40
All Developing 3.0 61.8 4.9 33.3 61.7 14.3
Least Developed 4.9 54.4 3.1 42.5 83.8 30.3
Arab States 4.1 57.8 3.6 38.6 73.0 12.2
East Asia 1.8 67.9 6.6 25.5 47.2 7.5
East Asia
(excuding China) 1.7 71.1 6.6 22.3 40.7 4.6
Latin America &
Caribbean 2.7 62.3 5.2 32.5 60.5 9.7
South Asia 3.3 59.9 4.5 35.6 66.9 15.7
South Asia
(excluding India) 57.3 3.5 39.2 74.6 15.6
South-East Asia &
the Pacific 2.7 62.9 4.5 32.6 58.9 12.0
Sub-Saharan Africa 5.5 52.4 3.0 44.6 91.0 34.6
Eastern European &
the CIS 1.6 66.6 11.5 21.9 50.2 8.1
OECD 1.8 66.5 12.8 20.7 50.3 3.9
World 2.7 62.9 6.8 30.3 59.0 12.3
Source: Compiled and calculated from Human Development Report 2000, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
53. Human Development Report 2000, supra note 41, at 223-26.

54. See id. at 171.
labor productivity. In fact, poverty is likely to skew the population

distribution further, generating more young people depending on fewer
"working age" people. The UN reports that 14.3 percent of the population
in developing countries is not expected to survive age forty; and this figure
jumps to 30.3 percent in case of the least developed countries, and to 34.6
percent for those in Sub-Saharan Africa.55 The low levels of life expectancy,
combined with the high fertility rates, are likely to push up the already high
dependency ratios in developing countries (Table 2).
While there has been a considerable global interest in curbing the
population increase in developing countries, most of the effort and money
have been devoted to population control programs that turned out to be
coercive and ineffective. Although studies repeatedly show that the increase
in women's education is directly related to the decline in fertility rates,
education in general, and girls' education in particular, has been neglected
by governments and many internationally sponsored development pro
grams. Less than 4 percent of national income is spent on education in
developing countries (Table 3). The World Bank, while recognizing educa
tion and health as crucial to eliminating poverty in its development reports,
has been allocating only about a combined 8 percent of its development
assistance funds to projects on primary health care, education, clean water,
and sanitation.56
National laws that declare primary education as mandatory are not
enforced, especially beyond the perimeter of urban centers. Rural areas tend
to lack schools, and most village schools have been severely underfunded.
Overcrowded schools, with inadequate staff and supplies, offer poor quality
education which promises very little in terms of improved prospects.57 Thus,
from the perspective of impoverished parents, sending children to school is
seen as nothing but a waste of time and money.
In addition to its opportunity cost (the time the child could use to earn
some money instead of spending it at school), keeping a child in school
imposes an extra financial burden on parents (even if schools were available
and properly equipped). While "modest" school fees actually constitute
large sums for the poor, in many countries "free" education means only the
absence of tuition and fees; the cost of uniforms, books, and supplies still
has to be absorbed by the family.
55. Id.
57. Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and Education Policy in
Comparative Perspective (1991); International Bureau of Education, The Country Dossiers,
available at <httpy/www.ibe.unesco.org/lnternational/Databanks/Dossiers/mainfram.htm>
(visited 11 Nov. 2001).
TABLE 3
Education and Health Expenditures and Education Enrollments
Public Expenditures
On Education On Health
(%ofGNP) (%ofGDP) Education Enrollments, 1997
Country Groups 1995-97 1996-98 Primary Secondary
All Developing 3.8 2.2 85.7 60.4
Least Developed 1.6 60.4 31.2

Arab States 5.4 86.4 61.7
East Asia 2.9 1.5 99.8 71.0
East Asia (excluding
China) 3.5 2.4 97.9 93.7
Latin America &
Caribbean 4.5 3.1 93.3 65.3
South Asia 3.2 0.9 78.0
South Asia (excluding
India) 3.2 1.4 80.8
South-East Asia &
the Pacific 3.3 1.2 97.8 58.3
Sub-Saharan Africa 6.1 2.4 56.2 41.4
Eastern European &

the CIS 4.9 4.5
OECD 5.0 6.2 99.9 88.8
World 4.8 5.6 87.6 65.4
Source: Compiled from Human Development Report 2000, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Given these problems, it should not be surprising that more than 260
million of the primary and secondary school-age children of the world are
out of school.58 Enrollment rates are particularly low in least developed
countries and in Sub-Saharan Africa (Table 3). Moreover, enrollments are
not stable or continuous; the UN data for 1992-1995 show that, in
developing countries, 22 percent of all primary school enrollees fail to
reach grade five.59 In some countries the figure rises to 60 percent.60
58. See Human Development Report 1999, supra note 41, at 22.
59. Id. at 179.
V. INTERDEPENDENCY OF HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

MISGUIDED AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE ECONOMIC POLICIES
The advocates of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have repeat

edly emphasized the interrelatedness and interdependency of human rights.
At least since the Proclamation of Teheran in 1968, these principles have
been accepted and underscored in various international declarations and
conventions. The Vienna Declaration and Programme for Action of 1993
asserts: "All human rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent and
interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally
in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same
emphasis. "61
The issue of child labor shows not only that the full enjoyment of one
right by an individual depends on his ability to enjoy other rights, but also
that the fulfillment of children's rights depends on the recognition and
realization of their parents' rights. Denying the right to employment or the
right to livable wages for adults inevitably results in the violation of
children's rights. Improving the parents' economic conditions would cer
tainly provide better opportunities for the children and free them from
laboring.
International finance and development agencies, however, tend to
ignore human rights and their interdependency in their dealings with the
developing world. The conditions that the IMF and the World Bank set for
lending, commonly referred to as the "structural adjustment policies," do
exactly the opposite of what is necessary to promote the rights of the poor
and improve the lives of poor people. Although these policy formulations
have no direct reference to children, their adverse impacts are probably
most remarkable on the children from poor households. As well put by
UNICEF, "the real cost of adjustment is being paid disproportionally by the
poor and by their children."62
In the name of economic stability, these agencies require governments
to implement measures of "fiscal discipline" which involve freezing wages,
reducing government spending, and privatizing government enterprises.
While the reduction in government spending typically means cutting down
social expenditures (e.g., health and education) and eliminating government
subsidies on basic goods, privatization almost always results in major
layoffs. Facing increasing unemployment levels, declining wages, and the
increase in out of pocket expenditures for essential food items, utilities or
transportation, the low income households in recipient countries find
61. Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 157/23 (12 July
1993).
themselves tightening their belts more and more.63 Through the reduction of
aggregate demand, the IMF may be successful in curbing inflation (although
it has not been always as successful as expected even in meeting that
objective), but it does so at the expense of poor households, which are
likely to turn to child labor for additional income.
The experience of India in the 1990s provides an illustrative case. As a
result of its agreement with the IMF in 1991, the Indian government slashed
social spending, especially on food subsidies, education, and health, while
simultaneously making every effort to increase its exports as it liberalized its
economy.64 The reduction in government services, combined with a
deregulated economy and economic policies catering to business interests,
not only increased poor households' dependency on child labor but also
enabled the local elite who employed poor children to run exploitative and
unsafe businesses that subsequently escaped government regulations and
law enforcement. According to the Commission on Labor Standards and
International Trade, child labor in India grew at an annual rate of 4 percent
in the 1990s, as the cost of living and unemployment increased.65 Similarly,
in Zimbabwe, reports by both the national government and the ILO "linked
the explosion of child labour directly to the impact of the country's
structural adjustment programme."66
It is noted that during the debt crisis of the 1980s, government cuts in
social spending hit education particularly hard, and in all regions spending
per student declined.67 In addition to pushing government spending down,
the structural adjustment policies adversely affect children's education by
forcing parents to rearrange their priorities. Trying to cope with the shrinking
family income, poor parents stop sending children to school or take them
out of school to reduce household expenses, to send children to work, or to
keep them at home to watch their younger siblings, since their mothers have
to enter the labor market or increase their work hours. Given the patriarchal
nature of the societies, the education of the female child is likely to be
sacrificed first. A study of seventeen countries that had implemented the
structural adjustment programs in the 1980s identified "a clear tendency for
a deterioration in the ratio of girls to boys in secondary education after the
onset of recession, reflecting decisions by families to remove girls from
schools at a greater rate than boys."68
63. Jeanne Vickers, Women and the World Economic Crisis 22-30 (1991).
64. Vijay Prashad, Calloused Consciences: The Limited Challenge to Child Labor, 225
Dollars & Sense 21-23 (1999).
65. Tucker & Ganesan, supra note 16, at 17-20.
67. Id. at 29.
68. Vickers, supra note 63, at 29.
As a response to its persistent critics, the IMF has demonstrated a

sensitivity to the situation of the poor, and starting in the late 1980s it
included the development of "safety nets" in its loan packages. However,
the IMF notion of safety nets (e.g., distributing free milk in some urban
slums) appears to be too small to fill the big hole that its other "adjustment"
policies open. Even Joseph Stiglitz, who has subscribed to the same
neoliberal economic theories followed by the IMF and shaped the policies
of the World Bank as its chief economist, finds himself agreeing with the
protestors of the IMF: "They'll say the IMF's economic 'remedies' often
make things worse?turning slowdowns into recessions and recessions into
depressions. And they'll have a point."69
While working for less has been prescribed to the developing countries
with the promise of prosperity in the future, after years of "structural
adjustment," the benefits of development in some countries, which experi
enced economic growth, are still waiting to trickle-down. Real income, on
the other hand, and especially for the working class, has declined in many
countries.70 Indeed, the poorest countries have failed to show any improve
ment at all.
It is noted that the average annual growth of income per capita for the
1990-1998 period was negative in fifty countries (only one of them is an
OECD country).71 The GDP per capita has shown a steady decline during
the last two decades for the least developed countries, from $287 in 1975 to
$245 in 1997 (measured in 1987 US$), with the largest decline observed in
South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries (Table 4).
Moreover, the aid from the developed world has shown a steady
decline itself. The World Bank notes that while donor countries' economies
grew after 1992, their development assistance shrank.72 The net official
development assistance received by developing countries dropped from
nearly $48 billion in 1991 to about $35 billion in 1997; and again, the
countries of Sub-Saharan Africa experienced the largest decline, from $42.6
to $33.5 in per capita values (Table 4). The net capital transfer through
loans, exports and other means also marked a net benefit for the industrial
world. UNIFEM noted that while the net transfer of funds from the North to
South was $19.1 billion in 1980, by 1990 the direction of the flow had
changed and $27.5 billion was transferred from South to North.73 In fact, the
last century demonstrated steady and unprecedented levels of increases in
69. Joseph Stiglitz, The Insider: What I learned at the world economic crisis, New Republic,
17 & 24 April 2000, at 56-60.
72. The World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001 : Attacking Poverty 190 (2001).
73. United Nations Development Fund for Women, Annual Report 1990 6 (1990).
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indicates that "the distance between the incomes of the richest and poorest
country was about 3 to 1 in 1820, 35 to 1 in 1950, 44 to 1 in 1973 and 72
to 1 in 1992."74
In addition to its poor economic policies, Stiglitz criticizes the IMF for
being undemocratic: "In theory, the fund supports democratic institutions in
the nations it assists. In practice, it undermines the democratic process by
imposing policies. Officially, of course, the IMF doesn't Impose' anything. It
'negotiates' the conditions for receiving aid/'75 What Stiglitz fails to
mention, however, is that the World Bank has also been guilty of imposing
the very same structural adjustment policies?policies that are also known
as "austerity measures" because of their negative economic and social
impacts.
Of course, with its development mission and programs geared toward
fighting poverty, the World Bank, when compared to the IMF, presents a
more complex picture in terms of its approach to the issues of poverty and
development. Numerous studies conducted by the Bank staff or published
by the Bank have repeatedly pointed to the persistent nature of the poverty
problem (some households experience chronic poverty, although there is a
transient component), the need to invest in human resource development,
and the enormous social gains promised by improving education and
income opportunities for women (e.g., improved nutrition and health of
children, higher labor and land productivity, lower fertility rates) since the
late 1960s.76 In case of funding, however, the Bank has been slow in
incorporating these findings into project designs and policy formulations.
Moreover, it has been reluctant to acknowledge the violations of human
rights caused by some of its grandiose projects and stubborn in denying the
negative impact of its adjustment policies on health, nutrition, and educa
tion. When confronted by critics about the social ramifications of its
policies, including accusations about enabling the trends that contribute to
child labor, the Bank officials have been rejecting the notion that the Bank
had any responsibilities in devastating the poor and insisting on the
argument that the recipient countries would have been worse off and
74. The report also notes that a "study of worldwide income distribution among households
shows a sharp rise in inequality?with the Gini coefficient deteriorating from 0.63 in
1988 to 0.66 in 1993," and "gaps between rich and poor are widening in many
countries," industrial and developing. Id.
75. Stiglitz, supra note 69, at 57.
76. See annual reports by the World Bank, World Development Report; see especially the
reports for the years 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000-2001, which focus on global poverty
and poverty reduction efforts.
registered higher rates of child labor if they had not carried out the policies
formulated by the Bank.77
A more direct undesirable impact of the Bank's work on child labor can
be best observed in its financing of the silk industry in India. In an effort to
help India increase its silk exports, the Bank has been lending India millions
of dollars since the 1980s. The Bank's support, which was intended to
create jobs and alleviate poverty began with loans of $54 million to support
sericulture (the raising of silkworms) in Karnataka in the 1980s. In the
1990s, the lending was extended to the state of Uttar Pradesh and involved
the overall modernization of the industry. The fact that the silk industry in
India has been largely dependent on child labor and that in Karnataka alone
there might have been "as many as 100,000 bonded children in every stage
of silk production" has been overlooked by the Bank. In 1997, it was
confronted by critics who argued that the Bank had failed to monitor labor
conditions, and "in effect, underwritten an industry which relied on bonded
child labor at all stages of operation."78 The Bank responded to these
charges with a range of statements: "The Bank does not condone the use of
child labor," yet "in some areas child labor is essential for families to
survive"; also that India's silk projects have been "regularly appraised" by
the Bank, but the problem of child labor "has not shown up in any of our
reports."79 Although an official of the Bank claimed that "the Bank has tried
to look in terms of providing the environment to discourage child labor,"80
the mechanisms used for creating such an environment were not specified.
Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, called on the Bank to suspend
funding until the Indian government fully implemented its law against
bonded labor and worked on the rehabilitation of the children working in
the industry. The Bank was also urged to set up educational and other
programs that would allow the bonded child laborers to attend school.81 As
a result of this pressure, the Bank hired an official in 1998 to oversee the
process to avoid lending to businesses that use child labor.82
This and other recent changes in the approach of the World Bank, e.g.,
moving away from large scale projects and increasing funding for education
and health care, are all promising developments. However, they are not
likely to be effective if the Bank, the IMF, and other international agencies
heavily influenced by the US Treasury Department continue to subscribe to
77. Weissman, supra note 7, at 14 (quoting Peter Fall?n).

78. Tucker & Ganesan, supra note 16, at 19.
79. Id.
80. Id.
81. Id.
82. Prashad, supra note 64.
the policy principles that are known as the "Washington Consensus"?a set
of neoliberal economic policies that require developing countries to limit
government spending, eliminate subsidies, privatize state enterprises, de
regulate private businesses, protect property rights, broaden the tax base but
reduce the marginal tax rates, encourage direct foreign investment, devalu
ate their currency, and liberalize trade.83
These requirements clearly weaken government control over the
economy and favor the freedom of capital. Their implications for the poor
and working classes are all negative and point to a tacit mission of resource
allocation. Forced to follow these prescriptions, governments with reduced
budgets and declining regulatory power, cannot enforce laws on minimum
working age, healthy and safe work conditions, or mandatory education,
even if they had the will to do so. Moreover, the price competition in
international markets, along with the desire to attract foreign capital,
constantly pushes governments in developing countries to find ways to
reduce the cost of labor.
In order to increase their country's competitiveness in global market,
the executive and legislative bodies, both in developing and industrial
countries, have been busy redefining their welfare policies, social security
systems, retirement policies and labor laws. Such a "labor law reform"?
which intends to reduce the negotiating power of unions, limit workers'
benefits, and undermine job security?was recently legislated in Argentina
on 27 April 2000. President Fernando de la R?a, who pushed for the bill,
expressed his satisfaction with the legislation by describing it as "a law that
will contribute to the development of small- and medium-sized business
and work in Argentina."84 What he did not mention is the fact that these
expected gains will come at the expense of the unions and workers who can
now be dismissed in six months or a year after their employment without
any benefits.85
Historical data show that unionization in a country increases as the
country becomes more industrialized. Thus, not surprisingly old industrial
83. The IMF and the World Bank employ a "cookie-cutter approach" to economic stability,
and require all loan applicants to implement essentially the same structural adjustment
policies. These policies are supported and promoted by the US Treasury Department as
well, and the Department has been influential in formulating the lending policies of the
two international financial agencies. Since they are all located in Washington, D.C., the
underlying economic philosophy of the structural adjustment policies is commonly
referred to as "the Washington Consensus" by the critics. Although they all uphold the
principles of neo-liberalism, the key players in these agencies may have some minor
differences on the specifics. See Mois?s Nairn, Washington Consensus or Washington
Confusion? 118 For. Pol'y 87 (2000).
84. Clifford Krauss, Argentine Leader Wins Reform of the Nation's Rigid Labor Code, N.Y.
Times, 28 Apr. 2000, at A9.
85. See id.
countries hold higher levels of unionization.86 However, trade union

membership has been falling in most industrial countries in recent years. In
the Netherlands, membership in unions fell from 39 percent in 1978 to 24
percent in 1991.87 In the United States, where the conservative cultural
hostility and anti-unionism have prevailed, union membership has seen a
slide from a low 30 percent to about 15 percent during the last three
decades.88
Developing countries, which have smaller industrial sectors, of course
have smaller unionized proportions of their workforces. Although some
countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Singapore, and Sri
Lanka, register higher unionization rates, on the average the unionization
levels in Asia and Latin America remain around 20 percent. In Africa, where
only about 10 percent of the workforce is in the formal sector, union
members are estimated to be only 1-2 percent of the total workforce.89 The
current version of globalization which prompts "labor law reforms" is likely
to push unionization levels down. The welfare of workers and the elimina
tion of child labor, however, would demand resisting and reversing this
declining trend. Jay Mazur, Chair of the AFL-CIO International Affairs
Committee, noting that "Most unions now understand that they must match
the mobility and agility of employers in the global economy. And workers
understand that conditions abroad clearly affect their prospects at home,"
emphasizes the need for a new internationalism and global campaign for
"core labor rights and standards everywhere to ensure that the global rules
were respected at home and abroad."90
VI. HOW TO APPROACH THE CHILD LABOR ISSUE
While every measure should be taken to stop the abuse of children, the
proposals and policies that have been formulated in industrial countries
tend to employ a simplistic approach. Banning child labor and imposing
trade sanctions on countries that continue to allow it without any consider
ation of the root causes of the problem only palliates the guilt of Northern
nations and will not end the suffering of poor children and their families.
86. For example, Sweden (85 percent), Iceland (78 percent), Denmark (73 percent), Finland
(71 percent) and Norway {55 percent). See Human Development Report 1993, supra note
14, at 43.
87. Id.
88. Id.
89. Id.
90. Jay Mazur, Labor's New Internationalism, 79 For. Aff. 88, 90 (2000). The labor leaders
in the US, however, have tried to achieve this through imposing trade bans and
restrictions. This is a misguided strategy that will be discussed in the following pages.
Simply adding a social clause that links banning child labor to trade would
not only fail to improve the living conditions of poor children in developing
countries but would cause further deteriorations.91 Similarly, relying on
consumer labels and hoping that consumers in wealthy countries will refuse
to buy goods produced by child labor, even if effectively managed, would
only mean closing an employment opportunity for the needy child, not
creating options for her.92 These solutions cannot be effective because they
fail to address the multiple factors that cause and perpetuate the problem
and they apply only to the export-oriented industries.
Selectively addressing the child labor issue in export-oriented industries
is problematic for a number of reasons. First, even if sanctions were carried
out effectively, their impact would be limited because export industries
employ only 5 percent of child workers. According to the ILO, the majority
of the full-time working children are located in the commercial agricultural
sector.93 Second, such sanctions would miss the fact that many export items
that are produced solely by adult labor may depend on raw materials and
intermediary goods that are created by child laborers. Third, trade bans on
goods produced by child labor would pull down the demand for such goods
which consequently would result in a decline in demand for labor in
general (including the adult labor) and trigger a decline in wages. That
would also hurt the export sector of developing countries, which are already
losing in the global market. (While the world exports more than doubled
between 1980 and 1990, the share of least developed countries declined
from 0.6 percent to .05 percent.)94 Finally, banning child labor in export
industries could push children from these relatively (though not always)
more secure and better paying jobs to seeking employment in less protected
informal sectors. Many would be recruited into illegal operations and
prostitution that appear to be the thriving industries of this new phase of
globalization which has already registered the international trafficking of
women and children as an overwhelming problem. Those who escape the
underground life would join the ranks of street children?usually taken as a
91. 5ee Erika de Wet, supra note 8, at 443 (for an overview of efforts to include a social
clause in trade agreements); Human Development Report 1993, supra note 14, at 85 (for a
brief critical assessment of using trade sanctions as a way of improving labor rights).
92. Janet Hilowitz, Social labelling to combat child labour: Some considerations, 136 Int'l
Lab. Rev. 215, 231 (1997); Kaushik Basu, International Labor Standards and Child Labor,
42 Challenge 80 (1999); McClintock, supra note 27; Leipziger & Sabharwal, supra note
27; Bachman, supra note 28.
93. See Table 1; Kebebew Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Hazardous Child
Labour in Brief (revised version) (1998), available on <http://www.ilo.org/public/
english/comp/child/stat/stats.htm> (visited 11 Nov. 2001).
94. These countries attracted also less than $3 billion in foreign direct investments in 1998.
See Human Development Report 2000, supra note 41, at 9.
sign of urban deprivation and estimated to include 100 million children of

the world,95 and try to survive by shining shoes, selling marginal consumer
items such as gums or paper tissues, begging, or scavenging. Eventually,
some of them would turn to crime.96
US Senator Tom Harkin's bill, the Child Labor Deterrence Act of 1993,97
which was introduced on 18 March 1993 as an attempt to ban the import of
goods that have been produced by child labor, has already illustrated the
unruly impact of such flat bans. The bill's threat led Bangladesh garment
manufacturers to lay off an estimated 50,000 children younger than
fourteen in 1993.98 UNICEF research, however, found out that these "freed"
children were actually "trapped in a harsh environment with no skills, little
or no education and precious few alternatives";' many of them "went
looking for new sources of income and found them in work such as stone
crushing, street hustling and prostitution?all of them more hazardous and
exploitative than garment production."99 In an effort to remedy the situation,
the United States, UNICEF, and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and
Exporters Association reached an agreement in 1995: no more child
workers would be hired but none would be fired either until alternative
arrangements were made, and the businesses would pay monthly stipends
that would help compensate for lost wages so the children could attend
UNICEF-funded schools.100 Ironically, in the middle of this crisis, the United
States was also working with the IMF on conditions for lending to
Bangladesh and in effect forcing its government to reduce expenditures on
health and education.
Recently, some of the child workers from urban areas have started to
organize, asserting their opposition to trade sanctions and claiming that they
have a right to work. This now international movement started with Ni?os y
Adolescents Trabajadores (Child and Teenage Workers) in Peru in the 1970s
and later spread to other Latin American countries. More recently child
laborers in Africa and Asia have joined this movement, which demands the
UN and other organizations make a distinction between the exploitation of
children through labor and other forms of work that help them. Similarly,
95. Id. at 4.
96. India probably has the greatest number of street children?New Delhi, Bombay and
Calcutta are reported to have around 100,000 street children each?and the juvenile
crime rate in India is reported as 3.1 per 1,000 people. Human Development Report 1993,
supra note 14, at 24.
97. See Child Labor Deterrence Act, S.I 551, 106th Cong. (1999) (most recent version).
98. Unicef, supra note 8, at 23, 60; Mohammad Mafizur Rahman et al., Child Labor in
Bangladesh: A Critical Appraisal of Harkin's Bill and the MOU-Type Schooling
Program, 33 J. of Econ. Issues 985 (1999); Bachman, supra note 28.
99. Unicef, supra note 8, at 60.
100. Id.; Rahman, supra note 98, at 985.
some NGO leaders, who help child workers, point to administrative and
institutional incongruities, noting that in African countries, for example, the
legal work age is usually fifteen and education is supposedly free and
compulsory up to the age of twelve, they question what the children
between the ages of twelve and fifteen should be doing.101 Michael Bonnet,
a former ILO official, recognizes the fact that these children who demand
the right to work face a risk of being manipulated but also supports their
position: "They want to be respected, get a decent wage, have work breaks,
and access to education and health care. What they don't want is to wake
up and find in their district some ill-thought-out project from a rich country
which is going to lose them their job."102
Simple bans or restrictions imposed upon export-industries that employ
child labor would not only harm the children working in that sector, but
they would fail to reach children who are employed in other economic
sectors. The State of the World's Children 1997 Report by UNICEF identifies
domestic work as the form of child exploitation that is most widespread but
least researched.103 The report notes that domestic child workers, most of
whom are girls, suffer from a wider range of abuse. In addition to working
for long hours and living in unsuitable conditions (e.g., sleeping on the
kitchen floor), they are exposed to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by
household members, deprived of their parents' affection and support, and
exposed to humiliation by the children of their employers. They earn very
little and sometimes are paid only "in kind" in the form of leftover food and
used clothing. UNICEF also points out that while domestic workers
constitute the most vulnerable and exploited children of all, they are also
the most difficult to protect.104
The solution to the problem of child labor has to be a comprehensive
one that would work to eliminate the poor family's need for child labor and
create educational opportunities for children. Providing improved and free
education, including textbooks and school uniforms, and enforcing the
principle of mandatory education would curb, if not eliminate, the use of
child labor. For example, the state of Kerela in India, and China until
recently, have emphasized education, and consequently both states have
101. Boukhari, supra note 17, at 38.

102. Id. at 38.
103. See Unicef, supra note 8.
104. Unicef, supra note 8, at 30-35. It should be added that many girls, throughout the world,
do domestic labor for their own families in the form of field labor, cooking, cleaning,
taking care of the younger siblings, and many other chores. Those girls who work
outside home come back home to pick up household chores. In Guatemala, for
example, girls spend an average of 21 hours a week on household duties on top of a 40
hour working week outside. See Global March Against Child Labour: Empowering the
Girl Child, 23 Women's Int'l Network News 75 (1997).
fewer child laborers than states with comparable economic means. Simi
larly, Cuba has largely managed to save its children from the burden of
work, thanks to its social programs and emphasis on schooling?despite its
relative poverty and the increased economic embargo imposed by the
United States. Government efforts and investments in education should be
encouraged, supported, and reinforced by unilateral and multilateral aid, as
well as by the international lending agencies. Educational programs and
schools, such as those established by the ILO under its International
Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC), launched in 1992 to help
countries in combating child labor, should be expanded to serve larger child
populations?not only for the rehabilitation of child laborers but also as
preventive measures.
Along with several analysts, UNICEF treats the improved access to
education as the most effective way of eradicating child labor. Arguing that
the failures in providing primary education as stemming from a lack of
political will rather than a question of scarce resources, UNICEF reported, in
1997, that an estimated addition of $6 billion a year?less than 1 percent of
what the world spends every year on weapons?would have put every child
in school by the year 2000.105
In addition to making education accessible, other interim measures
should be taken to make the schooling of children attractive to parents.
Providing school meals and even stipends paid to parents to compensate for
the children's labor can be considered among those measures. Oded
Grajew, the Director and President of the Foundation for Children's Rights
in Brazil (a country which has 3-4 million children below fourteen years old
working),106 argues in support of paying a stipend to the family and requiring
the parents to send the children to school. He states that the problem in
Brazil is not the absence or quality of schools (although this might be the
case in some rural areas), but "the main reason children work is because the
family needs money."107 In fact, in the war-torn and impoverished Cambo
dia, 98 percent of girls in prostitution are found to be the main providers for
their families.108

106. Battling Brazil's Child Labor Brutality: An interview with Oded Grajew, 18 Multinat'l
Monitor 20 (1997).
107. Id. at 21. Although some of her conclusions on the causal links between child labor and
school enrollments are debatable, a survey of Kenyan households by Claudia Buchmann
includes valuable information about the value of children's schooling. See Family
Structure, Parental Perceptions and Child Labor in Kenya: What Factors Determine Who
is Enrolled in School? 78 Soc. Forces 1 349 (2000).
108. From the report by the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
(ESCAP), as posted by Stop-traffic list serve, available on <http;//fpmaiI.friends-partners.org/
pipermail/stop-traffic/1904-January/001100.html> (visited 15 Nov. 2001).
Such data demonstrate that the lasting solution to the problem of child
labor would be improving the income and living conditions of the world's
poorest families?that is, to eliminate poverty. That can be achieved only if
the adult labor force is paid meaningful wages and has access to credit,
training programs, health care, and safety nets. According to UNICEF, some
of these goals are not out of reach:
An additional $40 billion a year could ensure access for all the world's people
to basic social services such as health care, education and safe water.
Two thirds of this amount could be found by developing countries if they

realigned their own budget priorities. Redirecting just one quarter of the
developing world's military expenditure?or $30 billion of $125 billion?for
example, could provide enough additional resources to reach most of the goals
for the year 2000. A similar shift in the targeting of development aid by donor
countries could generate much of the rest.
This premise is set out in the 20/20 initiative, which calls for developing
countries to increase government spending on basic social services from the
current average of approximately 13 percent to 20 percent, and for donor
countries to earmark 20 percent of official development assistance (ODA).109
Many child laborers are aware of the causes of their predicament and
they know what they need. More than 1,000 child workers participated at a
conference organized by the Campaign against Child Labor in Chennai,
India, in December 1994, and they demanded to have schools in their
areas, free books and uniforms, an "interesting" education, jobs for their
parents, and day-care for their siblings. Their interim proposals included
having rights in the workplace and being able to unionize.110
Of course, no proposal that attempts to improve working conditions
and no labor law, domestic or international, that protect labor rights can be
effectively enforced without proper monitoring by groups other than the
employers and government. Both of them may be too willing to undermine
the well-being of the workers for profit and other short-term interests. The
shortage of trained and committed government inspectors, which is repeat
edly reported to be an enforcement problem by governments, would
necessitate other competent and committed observers who can be logically
found in labor unions.
Unionization is not only the realization of a human right, freedom of
association, itself, but labor unions are critical to promoting workers' rights,
improving working conditions, increasing wages, and enforcing minimum

110. See Prashad, supra note 64, at 21-23.
age rules. Thus, unionization should be promoted, for all ages, first to
improve the conditions of child laborers, but eventually to eliminate the
need for child workers. By emphasizing anti-discrimination in wages
(including age discrimination) and seeking healthy and safe work conditions
and environments for all workers, unions would push for contracts and laws
that would make child labor less attractive to the employers. Unions in
industrial countries, instead of lobbying for trade sanctions, should direct
their energy and resources to resisting the trend of de-unionization and
restrictive labor legislation both at home and abroad.
Kaushik Basu and Pham Hoang Van, inferring from their economic
modeling of child and adult labor substitutability, reach the conclusion that:
If the market has only one equilibrium which is likely in very-poor countries,
then a ban can worsen the condition of the labor households. Partial bans are
especially likely to backfire and cause deterioration in labor conditions. The
first-best policy is to attack the problem at its source. This entails improving the
condition and scope for adult labor.111
Other economists, such as Jagdish Bhagwati, who serves on the academic

advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Asia, points out that child labor
laws were effective in cracking down on child labor in the United States and
other industrial countries only after the standard of living had risen to a level
where the economic need for child labor ceased to exist.112 He argues that
"the greatest enabling factor for social legislation is economic growth" and
proposes foreign aid as an important solution to the problem.113 Foreign aid
is essential, but for the reasons already discussed, it should be directed to
the development of human resources and enable governments to pay for
needed social services.114 Nevertheless, neither these arguments nor the
devastating case studies deter people like New Jersey Representative Chris
Smith from sponsoring bills that would punish countries that allow child
labor not only by imposing trade sanctions against them but also by cutting
off foreign aid.115
Insisting on such sanctions may stem from naivete, but it should be
noted that not all of those who are in favor of linking trade to restrictions on
child labor or other social clauses are interested in promoting the rights of
the child or labor rights. They are advocates of "fair trade," mostly located
in developed countries, who try to limit imports from those countries that
111. Basu and Van, supra note 33, at 425.

112. John Berlau, The Paradox of Child Labor Reform, Insight on the News, 24 Nov. 1997, at
20.
113. Id.
114. See Weissman, supra note 7, at 10; de Wet, supra note 8, at 443.
115. See International Child Labor Elimination Act o? 1997, H.R. 2678, 105th Cong. (1997).
are supposedly enjoying a trade advantage by keeping their exports cheap

thanks to their lower labor cost. Some others, on the other hand, propose
halfhearted sanctions that would serve no other purpose than ?mage saving.
An illustrative case for the latter is the executive order that President Clinton
signed in June 1999; the Executive Order 13126, Prohibition of Acquisition
of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor, prevents the US
government from purchasing goods made by the "worst forms" of child
labor but exempts those produced in Mexico (a party to the NAFTA) and
countries that are WTO members.116
In the style of the old left, Vijay Prashad writes that:
refusing to split apart the 'special' question of child labor from exploitation in
general may be the key which unlocks the child labor issue?placing the onus
not on the aberration of exploiting children, but on a world system which
makes this and other forms of hyper-exploitation all too typical.117
This is the point that some of the protestors were trying to make recently in
Seattle in November 1999; in Washington, D.C. in April 2000; and in
Prague in September 2000. They were somewhat successful in attracting the
attention of the "masterminds" of the world economy and globalization.
Now, the challenge is to communicate the concerns of the deprived,
incorporate the solutions offered by them, and empower them by allowing
them to organize and unionize. Unfortunately, the latest annual report of the
World Bank, The World Development Report 2000-2001,118 which focuses
on fighting poverty and proposes "empowerment" of the poor as a strategy,
fails to link empowerment to labor unions. The complete omission of labor
unions and repeated commitments to privatization in the report indicate
that the Bank's vision and grasp of issues are far from recognizing the rights
of poor people?adults or children.
116. See Exec. Order No. 13,126, 64 Fed. Reg. 32,383, at Sec. 5 (12 June 1999).
117. Prashad, supra note 64, at 23.
118. World Development Report 2000-2001, The World Bank (2001 ).

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Analyzing Child Labor as a Human Rights Issue: Its Causes, Aggravating Policies, and

Analyzing Child Labor as a

Assembly on 20 November 1989, also included several articles against

allowing child labor means stealing the childhood of millions of

child labor replaces adult labor because it is preferred by employers

children usually work under the worst working conditions, and

child labor perpetuates poverty because child laborers, deprived of

No matter which consequence of child labor has been their primary

II. THE SCOPE AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE PROBLEM

Total Boys Girls

child laborers,18 and they, in particular girls, tend to start working at a

III. THE BENEFICIARIES OF CHILD LABOR AND THE

Child labor is sustained by a triangular foundation formed by three corner

18. Boukhari, supra note 17, at 38.

willing to work for lower wages and in undesirable work conditions,

30. UNICEF, supra note 8, at 31.

IV. THE ROOT CAUSES OF CHILD LABOR

As expressed by the ILO and reiterated by several other organizations and

37. Tucker, supra note 7, at 615.

governments and international financial organizations. All of these have

Fertility % work % % not

53. Human Development Report 2000, supra note 41, at 223-26.

labor productivity. In fact, poverty is likely to skew the population

Least Developed 1.6 60.4 31.2

Eastern European &

V. INTERDEPENDENCY OF HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

The advocates of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have repeat

As a response to its persistent critics, the IMF has demonstrated a

i 00 co . CT> ro O '? crsv

national and international inequalities. Human Development Report 2000

77. Weissman, supra note 7, at 14 (quoting Peter Fall?n).

countries hold higher levels of unionization.86 However, trade union

VI. HOW TO APPROACH THE CHILD LABOR ISSUE

sign of urban deprivation and estimated to include 100 million children of

101. Boukhari, supra note 17, at 38.

105. Unicef, supra note 8, at 55.

Two thirds of this amount could be found by developing countries if they

109. Unicef, supra note 8, at 14.

Other economists, such as Jagdish Bhagwati, who serves on the academic

111. Basu and Van, supra note 33, at 425.

are supposedly enjoying a trade advantage by keeping their exports cheap

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