‘Action’ is the buzzword for the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour. But which actions bring progress and improve the lives of children who work? Which actually make things worse? These questions are intensely debated in both academic and policy spaces, and positions range from supporting the abolition of ‘child labour’ to fostering ‘child work’. I have engaged with grassroots organisations for over 15 years as well as worked with a large international child rights NGO. In this time I have come to the conclusion that we must look at children’s work from a rights perspective if we really want to design programmes that work for working children.
What does this mean in practice? To start, it means acknowledging that child work is an activity that is already strongly enshrined in a rights framework administered by the United Nations and the International Labour Organization. Its main building blocks are, in chronological order, the ILO Minimum Age Convention (1973), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999). This rights-based framework is important, but it is not internally harmonious. Tensions arise in interpretation and application whenever all three conventions are considered together.
For example, the protective rights and the participatory rights found in these documents often come into conflict whenever working children enter the conversation. The two ILO conventions focus on protection and emphasise rights like the right to not experience violence and exploitation. The UN convention, meanwhile, details children’s rights to participation, to education, and to having their indigenous and traditional practices protected. These don’t necessarily have to conflict, but in practice the socio-economic circumstances of most working children and the regulatory landscapes of most countries make it impossible for all of these rights to be simultaneously realised.
