Child Labour: The Dawn of an Epidemic

“Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God”

Luke 18:16-17

Child labour was always an international issue with all countries and today it has simply gone up the priority scale. Child labour could simply be defined as work done by children that could harm and exploit them physically or mentally or block their access to education. However, we know it is much more than that.

Today child labour is being practiced on a rampant basis. Not only does child labour exist in developing countries but also developed countries too are facing child labour issues. If one abides with the statistics, it is not a very happy picture. With Asia having the largest child labour involvement at 61percent followed by Africa at 32 percent, 7 percent in Latin America and 1percent in US, Canada and Europe.

India is sadly home to the largest number of child labourers in the world and the numbers keep rising. Poverty, lack of social security and illiteracy are major agents that are fuelling child labour in India. The growing disparity between the rich and the poor, privatization of basic necessities and neo liberal economic policies have pushed people out of employment and children are being made the bread earners. They work in harsh conditions and are often paid nothing.

Child labour is a global issue and we all need to stand together to fight the evil that come of it. Children are the future of the world. They will replace the present generation and they should be able to do well. However, if they are subjected to working from a tender age and not given the child hood they deserve, it simply messes things up.

One reason why child labour is largely practiced in countries facing population explosion is because here the value of human life is very cheap. There is excessive exploitation of cheap labour. It is no hidden fact that large manufacturers have most of their warehouses set up in South Asian countries where labour is afforded at dirt cheap prices. This is a cost cutting process which is today costing the world dearly.

Child labour does not only reveal how impotent a nation is but also expose the helplessness of the government. Laws and amendments are being made on a regular basis to put a stop to child labour but ineffective implementation has simply not addressed the issue yet.

Abraham Lincoln-the 16^th president of the United States of America, was successfully able to fight slavery and bring justice to the black people of America, and five scores years later, the very famous speech by Martin Luther King Jr.-I have a dream, simply showed how the people were not yet free. Today two centuries down and we simply see how we are faced with slavery yet again. And this time it is the slavery of children.

The learned will know the importance of education. To have a dream, to achieve a goal to be ambitious and to have options to choose from is something that only an educated person can enjoy. For a child exposed to the hardships of labour all he has to look forward to is his daily wage to support his family and hopelessly wait for death to arrive at his doorstep.

There is no future of a child subjected to labour. He has a totally different opinion of his surrounding due to the harshness he has been exposed to at the early stages of his life. He does not have the same perspectives of an educated person, and the world is equally harsh to him.

If one analyses Charles Dickens, David Copperfield we see how there is strong undercurrents of child labour and child abuse. This is the case today, children through child labour are being exposed to child abuse exploitation and nations need to make a more collective effort to eradicate this social evil. Cause if this social evil is allowed to persist it is not far that mankind will be ashamed of his activities.

Today, the world is again met with a challenge and if we don’t stand against it united there is no breakthrough of it.