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Child Labor: A Violation of Human Rights

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Child Labor: A Violation of Human Rights
World War 2 propelled the idea of human rights as the world reflected on how to prevent
such events. The United Nations was the first step towards peace, while the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights outlined rights and liberties. Freedom, equality, individualism, and
social rights are themes that underpin the 30 universal rights that protect all individuals. Child
labor is a significant issue for human rights as it is a direct violation of several human rights such
as the freedom from slavery, the right to rest, and the right to an education. Children should
enjoy their carefree childhoods without shouldering responsibilities like earning a living, yet
child labor still prevails in multiple countries.
The Causes of Child Labor
Agarwal (2017) understands child labor as the exploitation and abuse of children by
forcing and expecting them to work as adults. It not only denies children their childhood,
freedom, and the right to an education but also endangers their lives by putting them in
dangerous situations. Often these children work in environments that affect them physically,
emotionally, mentally, and socially. Moreover, poverty, unemployment, and societal attitudes
towards children often cause child labor.
The economic circumstances that children grow up in either support or constrain their
development and future. Poverty causes children to face the harsh decision of starving or finding
work to support themselves and their families (Lal, 2019). Furthermore, poverty and child labor
share a symbiotic relationship by forcing children to work to keep them impoverished. As
children work to lessen poverty, they grow up uneducated, earning meager wages, which sustains
the cycle of poverty.

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Similarly, unemployed parents, due to lacking skills, literacy, or opportunities, cause
children to become providers. With no source of income for the household, parents often place
financial responsibility on their children. But Lal (2019) stresses that the jobs these children
acquire pay them little money, which intensifies their financial stress. As parents remain
unemployed, children become further entrenched in the unfair system of child labor.
But poverty and unemployment are not the only factors that cause child labor but also
societal attitudes. Social norms vary across societies, which give children different roles. For
example, children in Papua New Guinea have chores entailing the harvesting of food for their
families, while their society does not recognize this as child labor. Lal (2019) states that some
social norms perpetuate child labor since families and society expect children to work.
Consequently, as the different attitudes in societies recognize child labor differently, this poses a
problem for the United Nations as it tries to enforce human rights.
The Effects of Child Labor on Children
Child laborers work long hours to put food on the table, which affects their social
development. Beaubien (2016) reports that on average, these children work 64 hours per week,
leaving them with little time to spend interacting and playing with other children. They end up
not knowing how to behave because they do not socialize with children their age. The amount of
time they spend working also impacts their family relations and bonds. Lal (2019) emphasizes
that children grow up detached from their families as they spend a considerable amount of time
away from home. Plus, they develop a distorted picture of family relations by thinking it is okay
for parents to be economically dependent on their children.

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Along with social development, children's physical development is also affected by the
work they do. To develop their brains and recuperate from the activities they engage in, children
need adequate rest. But studies by Ibrahim et al. (2018) show that working from a young age
impedes physical development by depriving sleep. What exacerbates this delay are the illnesses
that child laborers are susceptible to due to the nature of their work. For instance, child cobalt
miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are at risk of developing pneumoconiosis
because of cobalt mining. Considering these factors, child laborers do not enjoy life to the fullest
because of underdevelopment.
Nonetheless, the most prolonging impact of child labor is the psychological pain that
children carry with them into adulthood. Adults who worked from a young age are prone to have
mental illnesses like depression because they spent their childhood in loneliness. Research also
shows that adolescents who work long hours turn to substance abuse to cope (Ibrahim et al.,
2018). Not getting family love contributes to the development of depression in adulthood since
these individuals carry the emotional scar of neglect.
Countries With Child Labor
As the world develops technology to make the impossible possible, a crucial element is
needed to build devices. Cobalt is an element mined in the DRC and sold to tech giants like
Google, Tesla, and Samsung to make phone batteries and electric cars. But CBS News (2018)
discovered that children in the DRC mine this metal with no protective gear or shoes. Children
dig tunnels to extract the metal from the earth and handpick the cobalt from the rocks without
glo...