Slavery and drudgery: the reality of childhood

One in 12 of the world's children is involved in the worst forms of forced labour, sexual exploitation or enforced military conscription, according to a report published today.

One in 12 of the world's children is involved in the worst forms of forced labour, sexual exploitation or enforced military conscription, according to a report published today.

Charities described the scale of the international child labour scandal as "staggering'' and called on governments worldwide to do more to combat the problem. About 97 per cent of child labourers work in developing countries, where child poverty is also rampant.

According to the charities, the problem is getting worse as millions of children are left orphaned and vulnerable by the HIV/Aids epidemic which has meant that in some countries almost half of all children under 14 are forced into work.

The report by the United Nations children's agency Unicef, published to raise awareness of its End Exploitation Now initiative, found that 180 million people under 18 are involved in what are termed the worst forms of child labour: hazardous work, slavery, bonded labour, commercial sexual exploitation and military activity.

In some countries up to two-thirds of children under 18 are in full-time employment, and an estimated 114 million children of primary school education age are not enrolled in school.

David Bull, executive director of Unicef in the UK, said: "The scale of the problem is staggering. This problem has been fairly high up the agenda for the last 10 years and a lot of progress has been made but a lot more still needs to be done.''

Unicef found that in some countries children as young as 11 were being forced into prostitution to support several younger siblings because both parents had been killed by Aids.

Mr Bull added: "One way to put an end to the exploitation of children highlighted in this report is by taking action to make poverty history and in showing a commitment to more and better international aid. One billion children around the world are still living in poverty and this is an unacceptable injustice."

The study found that while scandals such as children working in sweatshops supplying clothes for international companies such as Marks & Spencer had raised awareness of the issue more than a decade ago, the global outcry had often led to yet more exploitation of young people. Businesses and factories in countries such as Bangladesh had summarily sacked many of its workers under 18, fearful that British and American companies would boycott them because of their use of child labour. Mr Bull said: "In some cases this has meant that young people, especially girls, have been forced out of one sort of work into even more exploitative forms of labour such as prostitution.

''We have to be practical about this. ''In many of these countries the HIV/Aids epidemic has meant that children as young as 13 or 14 are heading their households and need to work. What we need to do is create a protective environment for these children and make sure that the work they do is regulated.''

He added: "The biggest driver of child labour is poverty and lack of access to education. If we have a worldwide drive to address these issues we will also address the problems of child labour.''

The study found that in countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 41 per cent of children aged four to 14 are involved in the worst forms of child labour.

In Asia, one in five children under 14 are working, although the huge population of the continent means that they make up 60 per cent of the total child labour market internationally.

Unicef pointed out that even in industrialised countries such as the UK, a combination of legal loopholes and regional deprivation means that children as young as 14 are often working full-time or forced into prostitution and low-paid labour.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that 1.2 million children in the worst forms of labour have been trafficked from their home countries by gangs and in some case by their own families.

Western clampdowns on so-called sweatshops have meant that the worst forms of child labour are often now centred on domestic work, where youngsters are employed in virtual slavery as maids and houseboys for families in India and other countries in south-east Asia.

Many are sold into what is termed "bonded labour'', where their labour is used in effect as collateral for loans of money to their parents.

An estimated 1.8 million children are involved in prostitution and child pornography around the world, while a further 300,000 have been recruited into armed groups.

CHILD LABOUR AROUND THE WORLD

COLOMBIA

Alexis*, 15, leans against a car on a street in a major city in Colombia where boy sex workers often work for clients. He ran away from home at the age of 11 to escape a stepfather he fought with, and became a sex worker. His family does not want him back because he stole money from them to buy drugs. Alexis was once in a shelter programme but returned to drugs and prostitution. He says, "I missed the freedom of the streets. The streets are exciting but they also destroy you ... when I went back to the street, I fell deeper into drugs. I want to leave them, I know they harm me, and I want to leave prostitution as well."

*Name changed to protect identity

UNITED KINGDOM

Emily Wilson, aged 12, would repeatedly slip out of her care home into the streets of Doncaster. The suspicions of the home's social worker were confirmed when an adult prostitute contacted an outreach worker to say that Emily was picking up men on the street for paid sex. Ironically, Emily was one of the "lucky" ones. Outreach workers in the town said they had picked up only one girl working on the streets in the past 12 months, as they were probably now more likely to be working from flats or houses - "off-street" prostitution - which is even harder to monitor.

PAKISTAN

Eleven-year-old Medina stretches to reach a skein of wool to incorporate into the carpet that she and her younger siblings are weaving. Her family migrated to Peshawar, Pakistan from Afghanistan in 1997. As members of the Hazara ethnic group, they are discriminated against - Medina's father is therefore afraid to seek formal employment or send the children to school. The family barely survives by weaving carpets.

LAO PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Net* started work at the age of 13 after her father died and when her uncle no longer allowed her family to plant rice in their former fields. Net's mother was paralysed and could not work, so the burden fell on the children. Net met a man who said he could find work for her in Thailand. She ended up working as a domestic servant in Bangkok, cleaning floors and washing clothes and dishes. "My boss was a very old man. If I looked up, he hit me. His wife was a good woman. She was kind. She asked me what the problem was, but I could not tell her. I cried every night for three months." Net received no wages and eventually ran away. With the assistance of the Thai police, she reached a residential centre where she could learn new skills before returning home.

*Name changed to protect identity

CAMBODIA

Yv* stands silhouetted against a window in a brothel in the southern port city of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Yv, aged 21, was forced into prostitution at the age of 15, when she was abducted and sold into the commercial sex trade for US$130 (£68). She earns an average of US$1 (52p) per client, and receives up to eight clients a day. She says she requires all her clients to wear "double" condoms, but many clients of sex workers refuse to use condoms.

*Name changed to protect identity

HOW CHILDREN ARE EXPLOITED

By Genevieve Roberts

'Homeworkers':

Millions of children working in their own homes are in an environment that should protect against harm, but some are exploited. Children in parts of India, working at home rolling tobacco into thin cigarettes, are exposed to the health hazard of working with tobacco. Many have to work to pay back money that their parents have borrowed.

Routinely, laws concerning child employment do not apply to children working at home in a family business. There is thus a danger families and employers avoid their terms by claiming children are working for their own family when this is not the case.

Children working away from home:

Some children decide to leave home to seek work; others are sent away by parents. In Haiti, there is a tradition of boys and girls from poor families being sent to live with, and be servants for, slightly better-off families. A special whip is on sale to punish them.

In Ethiopia, girls under 14 were reported to earn on average $1.20 an hour (63 pence) in 2001, working in other people's homes. Approximately 700,000 girls are involved in this work in Indonesia.

In 2000, 1.2 million children were trafficked, mainly for commercial sexual exploitation or slavery, according to the International Labour Organisation.

Bonded labour and slavery:

According to the ILO, six million children are believed to work in forced bonded labour or other forms of slavery. Children become victims of bonded labour when they, or adult relatives, accept a loan and agree the child should work to pay it back. Sometimes, children work for years to pay off a small sum. In 2001, four child migrants were rescued off a ship supposed to be taking them from West to Central Africa. On arrival, they were scheduled to work for eight years to pay for the 1,000km trip. The knotted carpet industry in north India and Pakistan is infamous forbonded children.

Child soldiers:

International legal standards ban under-16s from working in the armed forces and under-18s from conscription. Yet at the start of this decade, an estimated 300,000 children had been recruited into armed groups. Each time war has broken out in sub-Saharan Africa in the past two decades, there have been reports of boys as young as 11 sent into combat.