Child labor: developing country estimates double.

Some 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working in developing countries, nearly double the previous estimates, the International Labour Organization (ILO) says in a new report. Of this total, some 120 million children are working full time and 130 million work part time says the ILO report, Child Labour: Targeting the Intolerable.

Some 61 per cent of child workers, or nearly 153 million, are found in Asia; 32 per cent, or 80 million, are in Africa; and 7 per cent, or 17.5 million, live in Latin America.

There is evidence that child labour also exists in many industrialized countries, including Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. The problem is also emerging in many East European and Asian countries that are in transition to a market economy.

The results of an ILO survey published earlier this year showed that some 73 million children between the ages of 10 and 14 years were working full time in some 100 countries. The latest estimates are based on a new and more accurate methodology recently tested by the ILO which takes account of part-time as well as full-time work and covers all working children between the ages of 5 and 14.

Children may be crippled physically by being forced to work too early in life. For example, a large-scale ILO survey in the Philippines found that more than 60 per cent of working children were exposed to chemical and biological hazards, and that 40 per cent experience serious injuries or illnesses.

In addition, a comparative study carried out over a period of 17 years in India, on both children who attend school and those who instead work in agriculture, industry or the service sector, showed that working children grow up shorter and weigh less than school children.

Gender differences

Girls more often work in domestic labour and boys work in construction, fields and factories, leading to gender differences in exposure to hazards.

Girls, because of their employment in households, work longer hours each day than do boys. This is one important reason why they receive less schooling. Girls are also more vulnerable to sexual abuse and its consequences, such as social rejection, psychological trauma and unwanted motherhood. Boys, on the other hand, tend to suffer more injuries resulting from carrying weights too heavy for their age and stage of physical development.

The ILO survey focuses on unsafe and abusive working situations for children. Examples include:

* Slavery and forced child labour - Of all working children, those bound in slavery and forced child labour are the most imperiled. These practices are often underground, but the ILO report points out that children are still being sold outright for a sum of money. Other times, landlords buy child workers from their tenants, or labour "contractors" pay rural families in advance in order to take their children away to work in carpet-weaving, glass manufacturing or prostitution. Child slavery of this type has long been reported in South Asia, South-East Asia and West Africa.

* Prostitution and trafficking of children - The commercial sexual exploitation of children is on the rise, even though the subject has in recent years become an issue of global concern. The ILO report points out that at least five organized international networks trafficking in children exist. In Eastern Europe, girls from Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine are being transported to Hungary, Poland and the Baltic States, or to Western European capitals.

* Agriculture - Children work in agriculture throughout the world and often face hazards through exposure to biological and chemical agents. Mortality among Sri Lankan children farm workers from pesticides poisoning is greater than from a combination of childhood diseases, such as malaria, tetanus, diphtheria, polio and whooping cough.

* Mining - Child labour is used in small-scale mines in many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Child miners work long hours without adequate protective equipment, clothing or training. They are also exposed to high humidity levels and extreme temperatures.

* Ceramics and glass factory work - Child labour in these industries is common in Asia, but also can be found in other regions. Children often must carry molten loads of glass dragged from tank furnaces at a temperature of 1,500-1,800 degrees Centigrade. They also work long hours in rooms with poor lighting and little or no ventilation. The temperature inside these factories, some of which operate only at night, ranges from 40 to 45 degrees C. Floors are covered with broken glass and in many cases electric wires are exposed. The noise level from glass-pressing machines can be as high as 100 decibels or more, causing hearing impairment.

* Matches and fireworks industry - Match production normally takes place in small cottage units or in small-scale village factories where the risk of fire and explosion is present at all times. Children as young as three years of age are reported to work in match factories in unventilated rooms where they are exposed to dust, fumes, vapours and airborne concentrations of hazardous substances. Intoxication and dermatitis from these substances are frequent.

* Deep-sea fishing - In many Asian countries, especially Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, children work in muro-ami fishing, which involves deep-sea diving without the use of protective equipment. Children are used to bang on coral reefs to scare the fish into nets.

Each fishing ship employs up to 300 boys between the ages of 10 and 15, recruited from poor neighbourhoods. Divers reset the nets several times a day, so that the children are often in the water for up to 12 hours. Dozens of children are killed or injured each year from drowning or from decompression illness or other fatal accidents from exposure to high atmospheric pressure. Predatory fish such as sharks, barracudas, needle-fish and poisonous sea snakes also attack the children.

* Child domestic workers - Child domestic service is a widespread practice in many developing countries, with employers in cities often recruiting children from rural villages through family, friends and contacts. Violence and sexual abuse are among the most serious and frightening hazards facing children at work, especially those in domestic service. Such abuse leads to permanent psychological and emotional damage.

Hours for domestic child workers are very long. In Zimbabwe, the work day is between 10 and 15 hours long; in Morocco, a survey found that 72 per cent of such children start their working day before 7 a.m. and 65 per cent could not get to bed before 11 p.m.

* Construction - Children undertaking heavy work, carrying massive loads and maintaining awkward body positions for a long time can develop deformation of the spinal column. Sometimes, the pelvis can also be deformed, because of excessive stress being placed on the bones before the epiphysis has fused. Children working in construction and other fields are exposed to other toxic and carcinogenic substances, including asbestos, one of the best known of human carcinogens.

Call for new convention

One of the most important tools available to the ILO for improving the legislation and practice of its member States in the fight against child labour is the adoption and supervision of international labour conventions and recommendations. The ILO adopted its first Convention on child labour in 1919, the year of its foundation, and several more over the decades.

It is now calling for a new convention that would add specificity and focus on the worst forms and most hazardous types of child labour, including slavery, servitude, forced labour, bonded labour and serfdom, and the measures taken to eradicate them.

ILO action against child labour also includes a technical cooperation programme - the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour, now active in 25 countries on three continents.