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Did you know almost 265 million kids work. Have you ever heard about child labor? Do you know where it happens? It happens in Somalia, Pakistan, and India. Here are some places of why it happens and what they do for jobs.
A little girl having dinner with her family.
A pie chart of Somalia's child labor.
Somalia
Somalia
In Somalia 39.8% of children between the ages of 5-14 work so around 1,012,863 children work in Somalia. Only half of those kids go to school. “More than two-thirds of all children in child labor (69.1 percent) work as contributing family laborers on family farms and in family enterprises, not in an employment relationship with a third-party employer”.(www.compassion.com) The kids in Somalia work in jobs like fishing, threshing grain, livestock raising, and mining.
Some of these jobs are dangerous like the mining, mining is dangerous because a rock might fall on their heads and it could give them a concussion or hurt them really bad.
In Somalia child labor is mostly happening because poor families need the money or the food to survive, so they think their kids will be great help to the job.
A five year old Ali wakes up every morning, she begins to do babysitting instead of school. The oldest child she babysits is only two years younger then her. After she gets the girls she babysits to the bus, she goes home and cleans the house, cooks, and irons the clothes. Then she really wanted to get out of that situation so she spoke to her parents, Her parents didn't care because they were more worried about the famine flood. The famine flood is a flood that happened in 2012. After they talked the parents said they had to leave their home and go to a refugee camp because it will be more safe so they went to the refugee camp and stayed there until they could go back. The parents then said that they won't make Ali do all the work, instead she would go to the closest school they could find but the mom and the dad would have to work instead of just the dad. It is hard for the mom to get work because she is a girl but she managed to do it.
A girl doing carpet weaving.
A pie chart of Pakistan's child labor.
Pakistan
Pakistan
In Pakistan 13% of children between the ages 10-14 work so about 12.5 million children. “Even though more than 33,000 children were found to be working in the carpet industry, the number and prevalence of working children and the size of the total industry were much smaller than earlier estimates."(Rosell) 76% of that 13% of children work in crop fields, fishing, shrimp harvesting, garbage scavenging, the glass bangle industry, carpet weaving, coal mining, restaurants and brick kilns. In the carpet weaving industry about 33,413 kids work there.
The manufacturer of the carpet industry in Pakistan admitted that only 8% of the 1.5 million people in the industry are children. Most kids in the industry have been injured because of sharp instruments that they used to make carpet and stuff. A Lot of children in Pakistan work in the carpet weaving industry because they have small hands, and the kids have to do that almost all day for most of the kids.
Child labor in Pakistan is usually because parents need money so they need to sell their kids to people for like 12 dollars obviously that's not always the amount, or In Pakistan the parents depend on their kids to bring back money or food from one of the kids jobs. The kids think that they will let down their parents by not doing the job so the parents are manipulating the kids.
Iqbal Masih was born in Pakistan in 1982. He lived in Muridke, Pakistan. Iqbal was sold to a carpet industry in Pakistan at age 4 he kept working there until age 10. he ran away from the factory at age 10 also when he ran away. When he was working in the child labor factory he was forced to work more than 12 hours a day he got beaten and verbally abused when he was working for the carpet industry.
A pair of shoes that have been shined.
A pie chart of India's child labor.
India
India
In India 41.5% ages 7-14 work so 218 million child laborers in India. India is the highest percentage of child laborers. The jobs these kids do are shoe shining, vending, and mining. ⅔ of these kids don’t go to primary school or any school. There are many reasons that there is child labor in India one is just plain poverty.
Shoe shining in India is one of the biggest child labor institutes. To shine your shoes first you need to dust off any dirt, dust, or salt, then apply polish to cloth, then apply polish in small circles in small amounts make sure to cover the entire shoe with polish, after that brush the entire shoe vigorously with a shoe shining brush, this removes aces polish from the shoe, then it’s time to get that mirror shine to make your shoe very shiny breath on your shoe and brush it, do that over and over again and you will have the perfect shiny shoe don't forget to do the other shoe. So those kids have to do that all day to every single shoe imagine what that is like.
Child labor happens in a lot of countries, countries we don't even think about like Pakistan, India, and Somalia. We need to stop child labor how can we make a change? How can YOU stop child labor?
Glossary
Glossary
Poverty is a state of being poor.
Manufacture is a person or company that makes goods for sale.
Primary School is elementary school.
Industry is economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories.
Manipulating is control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly or unfairly.
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