Child Labor In Asia

Child labor is a contested and global issue that affected mostly Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. According to International Labor Organization (ILO-IPEC) (1996-2016a), a United Nations agency, the number of children in labour globally has declined since 2000 from 246 million to 168 million children; and although declining, around 85 million are still working in hazardous environment. However, the Asia-Pacific region has the largest number of child workers in the world and represents about 18.8 per cent of 650 million 5-14 year-olds in the region. Out from the statistics, the majority population of children in global context are still trapped in child labor, thus the higher rates of evolving into an adult with poor prospects of securing

It started out mostly in today’s developed and industrialized countries, children were used as industrial labourers due to the constraints of families in not being able to provide better for them. The conditions under their work during this period were harsh with long hours and it was a formed of economic contribution to their household. However, in recent years due to structural measures taken by institutions such as the ILO and UN through the CRC and UNHRD, they exist in a lesser measure than in the developing countries of the global South. On the contrary, the prevalence of child labour in Asia is enormous as it acts as an alternate coping mechanisms for poor families. Although there are several reasons why a child work, the primary cause of engaging children into labour is poverty. It has become a standard for people living in the Asia region to send their child/children into the labour market in most developing

Although child labour has received considerable attention through the intervention and pressure from the international and national institutions with their frameworks and policies to reduce or eradicate the issue, the problem still exists as the underlying causes are not recognized. In Asia, the underlying causes of increasing child labour market is correlated to the level of income in the society and as well poverty (ILO 2004, 80). It is also crucial to understand that the driving factors of child labour often lies in the household decision-making process, the constraints that families are facing, etc. (Betcherman et al. 2004, 2-3). Particularly in Asia, a region considered to be the fastest growing economy in the world, millions of its workers are children (Olguin 2015). Parents from this regions are often forced to make economically rational decisions in sending their children to work as the economic benefits of a child working is possibly greater than expected benefits of education/schooling for the benefit of the family (Betcherman et al. 2004,