A child labourer works at a small metal shop in Nepal. Pradip Shakya for ILO/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
Yesterday, 12 June, was the ‘World Day Against Child Labour’ – the annual jamboree put on by the major international child saving institutions. These include the United Nation’s Children’s Agency (UNICEF), the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), a collection of wealthy western donor bodies, transnational corporations, and a plethora of religious, liberal and otherwise establishment-defending NGOs.
‘That’s nice’, you might think. ‘We can all get on board with the current fight against child labour, can’t we’? Well actually no, we can’t. In part because mainstream anti-child labour campaigns are narrow, ethnocentric and very particular. And in part because they frequently end up making life worse for the very children they’re supposed to be helping.
