Working for a few cents
According to the International Labor Organization, an estimated 168 million children worldwide are forced to work under very harsh conditions in places such as mines, factories, and in the agricultural sector.
Yearly reminder
Every year on June 12, the UN commemorates the World Day against Child Labor to highlight the fate of around 168 million child workers around the world. In 1999, the member countries of the International Labor Organization (ILO) adopted a convention against the worst forms of this practice. The agreement refers to children under 18 years of age, and prohibits their enslavement and prostitution.
Made-in-India towels
In this factory in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, children manufacture towels. According to the ILO estimates, there are around 78 million children working in Asia. In other words, almost 10 percent of young people - aged between five and 17 - are forced to work on a regular basis.
80 cents a day
Instead of studying, these children mould bricks. Acute poverty forces many children, such as these ones in India, to work to earn money for their families. They work at least ten hours a day for a pittance of around 80 US cents per day.
Cheap labor
According to the most recent Indian census, the world's largest democracy is home to 12.6 million child laborers, who sell goods on the street, sew, cook, do cleaning jobs in restaurants, pick cotton in the fields or cut bricks. The wages of a child worker amount to only a third of what an adult makes for the same job.
Inhumane conditions
A 2013 ILO report states that almost 50 percent of all child laborers work in hazardous conditions, overnight and often for extended hours. Many of them work as slaves without an employment contract and job benefits.
Made in Bangladesh
Child labor is rampant in Bangladesh, too. According to the UNICEF, approximately five million children work in the South Asian country’s textile industry - Bangladesh’s largest export sector - in slavish conditions. The clothes they produce are consumed in industrialized countries.
On his own in the big city
In Cambodia, the number of school-going children is very low. Most of them work with their parents, whereas thousands of others live on the streets - for example, in the capital Phnom Penh - where these young people have to make ends meet.
The list is long
Although the number of child laborers has declined worldwide since 2000, things haven’t improved much in many Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia and Myanmar.