In the collective consciousness, child labour has long since ceased to apply in Europe : yet children’s rights are not respected everywhere, as shown by the 8% of Ukrainian children who are forced, either by a third person (in any case an adult) or because of poverty, to work in order to survive.
In many countries of the world, in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America or Asia, children’s rights to education, access to health care and a decent life (comfortable and far from poverty), do not exist. In 2020, about 152 million children, aged between 5 and 17, are working, often in appalling conditions. Unfortunately, the health crisis caused by COVID-19 only reinforces these inequalities and pushes more and more children into precarious conditions.
Although this does not fall within the scope of Union Syndicale’s actions, we wish to denounce this situation by the means at our disposal and to raise awareness among our members and our representatives. It is through our efforts and our awareness that we can hope that the 21st century will finally mark the elimination of child labour and that the rights of all workers will be respected.
Would you like more information on this subject or would you like to support an organisation that fights against child labour? You can find it here:
- Humanium association
- Unicef Foundation
- ILO Report about the correlation between COVID-19 and children’s precarity
- ILO webpage about Child labour
- ILO call for action
