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Story highlights

Where in the world are children toiling dangerous and dirty conditions, missing out on education and other basic rights?

A new report by risk analysis firm Maplecroft, which ranks 197 countries, identifies Eritrea, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Yemen as the 10 places where child labor is most prevalent.

Countries with high poverty rates fare badly in the index due to the need for children to supplement their family income, the report said, but economically important countries like China, India, Russia and Brazil were also found to have extreme risks because child labor laws are often poorly enforced.

READ: Fewer child laborers still too many

Trafficking of children into forced labor or sexual exploitation remains a big problem, the report added.

Despite its fast-growing economy, China has witnessed a substantial increase in child labor risks over the past year, ranking 20th compared with 53rd a year earlier.

The report said that unofficial estimates suggested that 100,000 children are employed in the country's manufacturing sector.

CNN Freedom Project

"The use of vocational work and study schemes, along with the continued use of children in factories, present significant supply chain risks to companies even in the more economically developed provinces," the report said.

Last year, electronics supplier Foxconn admitted that interns as young as 14 worked at one of its Chinese plants.

However, the report pointed to minor improvements in the risk of child labor, with South America now ranked as "high risk" rather than "extreme risk."

In September, the International Labor Organization estimated that the rate of five to 17 year olds engaged in child labor had decreased to 10.6% in 2012 from 13.6% in 2008. The number of children involved in the worst forms of child labor has decreased to 85 million from 115 million during this time.

The company compiles the ranking by evaluating the frequency and severity of reported child labor incidents, as well as tracking how governments prevent child labor and ensure perpetrators are held accountable.

The index has been developed to help companies understand the risks of children being employed in their supply chains.

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The 10 worst countries for child labor | CNN

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Where in the world are children toiling dangerous and dirty conditions, missing out on education and other basic rights? A new report by risk analysis firm Maplecroft, which ranks 197 countries, identifies Eritrea, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Yemen as the 10 places where child labor is most prevalent.

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Beef Magazine - Kids Working

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Growing up, my younger sisters and I were Dad's chore help. He taught us how to feed cattle, drive the four-wheeler and tractor, stack bales, pitch manure, fix fence, chop weeds and treat sick calves. While kids in town may have had to do chores like wash dishes and make their bed, we were busy working outside, learning from a young age that the cattle relied on us to care for them.

Although I didn't always appreciate having to work on the ranch, looking back now, I know the chores helped shape me into who I am today. More than that, without us to help with the chores, Dad would have had to hire employees to help.

If the Obama administration's Department of Labor (DOL) had its way, a lot of kids wouldn't be allowed to help on the farm or ranch. When DOL proposed a rule earlier this year regarding youth in agriculture, farm and ranch families were perplexed. Young people play a huge role in family-owned agriculture businesses, and the proposed rule, which was later withdrawn, would have been a detriment to those farm families who rely on kids to help with everything from cattle chores, to throwing square bales, to driving machinery.

But, just because DOL pulled back the proposed rule doesn't mean agriculture felt confident about future regulations that might impose on family traditions. So, Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) introduced the Preserving America's Family Farm Act (H.R. 4157), which was passed a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, July 24.

H.R. 4157 will prevent the DOL from finalizing or enforcing its previously proposed rule, ensuring that this rule will not be reintroduced. Similar legislation (S. 2221) has now been introduced in the Senate by Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Jerry Moran (R-KS).

Here's hoping S. 2221 is passed quickly, so that America's farm and ranch families can feel secure that their children can be a part of the tradition of food production.

What do you think of the legislation? If passed by the U.S. Senate, will this measure serve the purpose of protecting farm and ranch families?

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Farm And Ranch Kids Get Opportunity To Work

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Growing up, my younger sisters and I were Dad's chore help. He taught us how to feed cattle, drive the four-wheeler and tractor, stack bales, pitch manure, fix fence, chop weeds and treat sick calves.

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Farm Work

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Austin, who is now 14, tends heifers, makes sure the barbed-wire fence around the pasture is intact and helps clean equipment and care for calves on his grandfather and great-uncle's bigger farm a couple of miles down the road.

"This is what I want to do," says Austin, an A student and football player who has won many awards for showing livestock at fairs. "If you grow up in the farm atmosphere and you're safely trained and you enjoy it, I think you should be allowed to."

Proposed federal regulations could alter Austin's plans to work part time for pay on his relatives' farm. The Labor Department wants to update child-labor rules governing agricultural work for the first time in four decades.

The new rules would:

*Prohibit children under 16 who are being paid from operating most power-driven equipment, including tractors and combines. Some student-learners would be exempted from the ban on operating tractors and other farm implements, but only if the equipment has rollover protection and seat belts.

*Bar those under 18 from working at grain elevators, silos, feedlots and livestock auctions and from transporting raw farm materials.

*Prevent youths 15 and younger from cultivating, curing and harvesting tobacco to prevent exposure to green tobacco sickness, which is caused by exposure to wet tobacco plants.

*Prohibit youths from using electronic devices such as cellphones while operating power-driven equipment.

The legal age for children to be employed on a farm is 16 and would not change. The Fair Labor Standards Act also allows children 12 to 15 to have non-hazardous farm jobs under certain conditions.

The proposed regulations would not apply to children working at farms owned by their parents, but they would prevent youngsters from doing some jobs for pay at the farms of neighbors and relatives.
Threat to a lifestyle?
The proposed rules drew more than 18,000 public comments after they were published in September in the Federal Register and created a ruckus among farmers and ranchers. Some members of Congress hope to block them from taking effect.

"It's just more government trying to get in the middle of our lives" and could "change the whole (rural) lifestyle," says U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., who operates a 160-acre farm. "Farming is a very dangerous occupation, and you have to be aware of what you're doing, but I'm a whole lot more concerned about the safety of my kids and grandkids on the farm than the government."

Youngsters helping out on neighbors' farms "is a slice of Americana," Luetkemeyer says. "This is how we grew up."

Nancy Leppink, deputy administrator of the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division, says the changes are necessary to keep children safe. More than 15,000 youths under the age of 20 were injured on farms in 2009, according to the latest data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Most injuries involved farm chores, followed by accidents on all-terrain vehicles, horses and tractors.

The rules would not prevent anyone under 18 from performing non-hazardous jobs such as cleaning barns on farms and won't bar them from participating in 4-H and Future Farmers of America (FFA) clubs.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis wants to implement the new rules, Leppink says, after analyzing fatality and injury data and concluding that some farm jobs are "too hazardous for children to be engaged in." Congressional approval is not required because the proposed changes amend existing regulations.

The Labor Department is reviewing public comments and plans to act as quickly as possible, she says.

Farm injuries among youths have been declining for more than a decade, says Barbara Lee, senior research scientist at the National Farm Medicine Center in Marshfield, Wis., but precautions are essential. "Adults should be able to make their own decisions about putting themselves at risk," she says. "But a child should not be put into that position."

When they are, the consequences can be dire. In July 2010, two boys, 14 and 19, died in a corn bin they were trying to clear in Illinois. A few months later, a 3-year-old Michigan boy died after falling from the combine his father was driving.

Reid Maki, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, which fights exploitative child labor, said in comments submitted on the proposed rules that delaying the changes would mean that youths working on farms "will be killed and maimed unnecessarily."

Mark Vagts, 53, a dairy farmer in West Union, Iowa, first sat on a tractor when he was 5. He taught his son and daughter, now adults, to use caution around farm animals and equipment when they were very young. Farm work, he says, "builds confidence and teaches kids to be responsible." He now hires local youths to help on his farm, and he opposes the proposed limits.

"No. 1, they take away our liberty. That really bugs me," he says. "I'm sick of regulation. My answer to regulation is education." He believes that youngsters who work on farms should first take safety courses through the FFA or other organizations, and he wouldn't object if young workers were required to take such courses.

In a comment he submitted to the Labor Department on the proposed rule changes, Vagts wrote, "We often need help with baling hay and straw, chopping hay and hauling manure. It is an opportunity for young people to earn money and develop good work skills."
Safety through education
Darren Walter, 39, says Austin will take a tractor-safety course this summer so he can learn to disk fields. Austin already knows the basics: "You put the seat belt on, take the tractor out of park and you honk the horn to make sure nobody is around you," he says. "You check that there's nothing you're going to run into."

Austin says his parents and other adults make sure he's not around dangerous equipment or frisky livestock, and he doesn't mind. "If you aren't safe and you get hurt," he says, "then you can't participate."

Darren, whose grandfather died in 1975 when an axle broke on the sprayer he was driving, says he and his wife, Samantha, 35, would never put their sons Austin and Dalton, 8, at risk.

Samantha says Austin is never allowed to be around grain augurs, for example. "We don't even let that happen," she says. And Dalton won't necessarily be allowed to take on new chores at the same age Austin did. "Each kid is different," she says. "Dalton is maturing at a different rate, and he's not ready for certain things yet."

Darren Walter says the pending new regulations suggest that officials in Washington "don't understand how much we respect the value of our children's safety. We truly take it on ourselves to teach safety and responsibility and respect to our children."

Dalton, who wants to be a professional football player, sometimes helps put feed in buckets and throws hay from the loft of the barn. His big brother helps teach him how to do chores safely, and his dad says Dalton won't be ready to get on a tractor for a couple of years.

If Austin can't work on his grandfather's farm to save money for college, Darren Walter says, he'll have to find other work. "We're going to basically regulate rural youth into forcing them to go get jobs in town," he says. "Where are our future farmers going to come from?"

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Proposed federal rules would limit kids' work on farms

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Austin, who is now 14, tends heifers, makes sure the barbed-wire fence around the pasture is intact and helps clean equipment and care for calves on his grandfather and great-uncle's bigger farm a couple of miles down the road.

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Child Labor Video

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A section of the three part video that aims to raise awareness about exploitation of women and children. This section is entitled Child Labour. Sources are as listed below: ...

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Iqbal Masih

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Child Labor News Special

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16x9 - Child Labour: The Dark Side of Chocolate

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Child Labor in Chocolate Industry

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International Labor Organization File on Child Labor
(Click the link to go to facts)

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This exhibition is dedicated to all the children of the world.

The drawings in this collection are the messages from hundreds of children around the world who were asked to express their understanding and feelings about child labour. Many of these children have been victims of child labour.

According to the latest estimates of the International Labour Organization, there are over 200 million child labourers in the world. Over 100 million children work in situations considered highly hazardous. They are trapped in bonded labour and prostitution, they work in agriculture, mining, manufacturing of chemicals and explosives, drug trafficking and are drawn into conflict, forced to use guns, sacrificed and abused in situations intolerable to the human heart and in violation of their basic human rights.

These strong and touching messages of despair and hope are a vivid reminder of the inequalities and injustices that exist in our globalized world and the need for urgent action to end child labour.

"I think that children are the worst victims of poverty and injustice, and too often they remain silent. They have found a voice through the work of your organization." - Muhammad Yunus (2006 Nobel Peace Price), message to GenevaWorld - 27 August 2008

An initiative of GenevaWorld Association, in partnership with the International Labour Organization

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Launch of the Children's views of child labour exhibit

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This exhibition is dedicated to all the children of the world. The drawings in this collection are the messages from hundreds of children around the world who were asked to express their understanding and feelings about child labour. Many of these children have been victims of child labour.

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UNICEF Facts on Child Labor

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Child Labor Stories - Mini Stories

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Individual subscriptions and access to Questia are no longer available. We apologize for any inconvenience and are here to help you find similar resources.

As the world of education changes, Gale continues to adapt to the needs of customers and users. We offer many other periodical resources and databases that have been recently enhanced to make discovery faster and easier for everyone.

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Individual subscriptions and access to Questia are no longer available. We apologize for any inconvenience and are here to help you find similar resources. As the world of education changes, Gale continues to adapt to the needs of customers and users.

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Child Labor PSA

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Ο Ιησούς είναι ο Κύριός μας

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By Damian Sanchez and Bryan Marmol Sources we used: 2nd Slide: TheWorldCounts.com 8th slide: WorldAtlas.com Africa Child Labor (slides 13-14) CrowdVoice.org and Humanium.org West Asia Child Labor: Gildshire.com and Asiantribune.com South Asia Child Labor: Wordpress.com

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Anti-Slavery (Child Labor)