Child Labour under International Law
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990)10
Article 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) defines a child as a human being below the age of eighteen unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.
Article 32 of the CRC further provides that:
1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous, or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.
2. States Parties shall take legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to ensure the implementation of the present article. To this end, and having regard to the relevant provisions of other international instruments, States Parties shall in particular:
(a) Provide for a minimum age or minimum ages for admission to employment;
(b) Provide for appropriate regulation of the hours and conditions of employment; [and]
(c) Provide for appropriate penalties or other sanctions to ensure the effective enforcement of the present article.
All of the GMS countries have ratified the CRC.
ILO Conventions 138 and 18211
The ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and the 1999 Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (No. 182) define child labourers as those under the age of 12 working in economic activities, children aged between 12 and 14 years who are performing more than light work, and ‘all children engaged in the worst forms of child labour – in which they are enslaved, forcibly recruited, prostituted, trafficked, forced into illegal activities or exposed to hazards’.12
Article 2 of the ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) provides that the minimum age for any type of employment is 15 years, and for employment or work that may jeopardize the health, safety or morals of young people, the minimum age requirement increases to 18 years [Article 3]. Article 7 further stipulates that national laws may permit those aged between 13-15 years to perform light work, so long as it is not likely to harm their health or development, and will not affect their attendance at school or participation in vocational training.
Of the GMS countries, all except Burma have ratified ILO Conventions 138 and 182.
Endnotes
10 Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990, available at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/ law/crc.htm#art32 (accessed 12/05/11).
11 ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), available at http://www2.ohchr.org/ english/law/ageconvention.htm (accessed 16/05/11); and ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), available at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde. pl?C182 (accessed 16/05/11).
12 UNICEF Child Protection Information Sheet, Child Labour, available at http://www.unicef. org/protecti on/fi les/Child_Labour.pdf, p. 1 (accessed 16/05/11). For the definition of the ‘worst forms of child labour’ see Article 3 of the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), available at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde. pl?C182 (accessed 16/05/11).
