CHILD LABOR- HOW DOES THIS PRACTICE CONTINUE?

Over 70 million children around the world work in hazardous conditions in agriculture, mining, domestic labor, and other sectors. On tobacco farms, children work long hours in extreme heat, exposed to nicotine and toxic pesticides that can make them sick. In Africa, Asia, and Latin America, child laborers in artisanal and small-scale gold mines work underground in pits that easily collapse and use toxic mercury to process the gold, risking brain damage and other serious health conditions. We are working to end the worst forms of child labor and to ensure that all children are protected from jobs that interfere with their health, safety, and education.
Source: https://www.hrw.org/topic/childrens-rights/child-labor


How does this practice continue? How in the U.S. do we still permit this?
I cried watching the videos about this. It seems like we have not made much headway on this since the 1700's. We continue to see the health and economic effects of child labor. It is clear that this practice fuels the wealth of the rich and degrades the health and lifestyle of our most vulnerable citizens- children. There are families still having children for a perceived benefit of greater wealth. We have hidden the dark reality of child labor from consumers for too long. Perhaps we need labels for every item we purchase that tells the story behind the product.
Changing the narrative of our purchasing power could make a large impact on this horrific practice.
The ILO is doing incredible work to spread the word.
We too must raise our voice and recognize this as a threat to global health.

Facts and figures

• Worldwide 218 million children between 5 and 17 years are in employment.
  Among them, 152 million are victims of child labour; almost half of them, 73 million, work in hazardous child labour.
• In absolute terms, almost half of child labour (72.1 million) is to be found in Africa; 62.1 million in the Asia and the Pacific; 10.7 million in the Americas; 1.2 million in the Arab States and 5.5 million in Europe and Central Asia.
• In terms of prevalence, 1 in 5 children in Africa (19.6%) are in child labour, whilst prevalence in other regions is between 3% and 7%: 2.9% in the Arab States (1 in 35 children); 4.1% in Europe and Central Asia (1 in 25); 5.3%in the Americas (1 in 19) and 7.4% in Asia and the Pacific region (1 in 14).
• Almost half of all 152 million children victims of child labour are aged 5-11 years.
  42 million (28%) are 12-14 years old; and 37 million (24%) are 15-17 years old.
• Hazardous child labour is most prevalent among the 15-17 years old. Nevertheless up to a fourth of all hazardous child labour (19 million) is done by children less than 12 years old.
• Among 152 million children in child labour, 88 million are boys and 64 million are girls.
• 58% of all children in child labour and 62% of all children in hazardous work are boys. Boys appear to face a greater risk of child labour than girls, but this may also be a reflection of an under-reporting of girls’ work, particularly in domestic child labour.
• Child labour is concentrated primarily in agriculture (71%), which includes fishing, forestry, livestock herding and aquaculture, and comprises both subsistence and commercial farming; 17% in Services; and 12% in the Industrial sector, including mining.

Source: Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and trends, 2012-2016 , Geneva, September 2017.