Children at work: Health and Safety Risks

Summary

Seeing vulnerable children risk their lives and undermining their health is disturbing and painful to everyone, and to their parents in the first place. When children are drawn into work prematurely, by poverty or tradition, or in the absence of educational opportunities, both they and their parents may see no other way out. It is unacceptable, moreover that children should labour in manifestly hazardous occupations. ILO convention No. 138 concerning the Minimum Age of Admission to Employment, adopted in 1973, already determined this. The latest ILO Child Labour Convention, No. 182 concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999), is even more explicit on the subject, as witnessed by its title. It is now possible to tackle effectively the very serious problems of occupational health and safety affecting working children as well as adults occupied in such hazardous activities.