Child Labour Research Papers

Child labor is one of the world’s most common issues, mainly persistent in developing countries. At young ages, children are sent to work into the agricultural and industrial sectors. They are subjected to dangerous working conditions, such as over-exposition to harmful chemicals and to large machineries without sufficient safety precautions. Moreover, girls employed by the child labor industries face sexual assault from their employees. This results in deadly diseases, such as HIV and AIDS, for which they do not get professional medical treatment. Additionally, child labor deprives children of their educational opportunities. As children are sent into workforces, they are not provided the ability for developing skills and knowledge fitting

Depending on children’s character and vulnerability, there are different degrees to which the child laborers suffer mentally and emotionally in response to the environment they are subjected to. To more precisely understand this issue, we need to look at the different research data provided. According to M. Woodhead (2004), he states that the potential mental and emotional hazards include the inability to form secure relationships, risk of criminal behaviour and development of unrealistic or uncompromising parental expectations (p.15). This proves that child labor is not a temporary complication, but rather an issue that lingers further into the lives of the victimized children. In support of M. Woodhead, a journal article provides statements and data validating the previous claims of mental consequences of child labor. In their journal article “Physical & Psychological Hazards Faced by Child Labour”, Sarita Bharti and Dr. Shalini Agarwal state that 40 percent of the children in their research showed deviant psychological development hindering their mental progress, resulting in introverted and uncommunicative personalities (p.32). This illustrates that social interaction is vital to children’s social skills. When children are robbed of the opportunity to interact with others their age, there’s a clear psychological abnormality. Children have

Peter Dorman is a professor at the American University of Beirut and the head of the near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department in the University of Chicago. He wrote a report, analyzing the costs and benefits of eliminating child labor, on the study conducted by the ILO International Program on the topic of the Elimination of Child Labor. According to Dorman (2004), “The first was the cost of increasing the quantity and quality of education to accommodate all the world 's children. This entails the cost of building new schools, training and hiring new teachers, and supplying additional educational materials” (para.6). As child labor is common in developing countries, the expectations of having them build schools to redirect the children in the workforce is strenuous. However, there are organizations that are willing to help increase access to education for many of the children in impoverished countries. According to Bama Athreya (2014), senior expert in Labor and Employment Rights at USAID, “USAID’s Education Strategy is working to increase access to education for all children worldwide, and in particular for children in crisis and conflict environments” (para.8). This increase in access to education provided by international organizations shows that there are other ways in