Even in the 21st century, child labour and poverty are synonymous with the poor standards of living prevalent in the many rural villages of India. Notwithstanding the Child Labour Act adopted in 1986 and The United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, the issue of child labour remains a predominant issue within the country. Currently, India has the largest percentage of children in the country’s workforce- with 12.59 million children employed in the country’s workforces in 2001, and 120,000 children working in extremely hazardous conditions. Employed children are deprived of a proper education, and are often exposed to sexual, mental, and physical abuse.
The UNICEF committee, after a successful resolution upon the topic of education accessibility in India, have since gravitated their attention towards the ubiquitous crisis of child labour. Some possible solutions proposed by the committee delegates involved charity work providing for impoverished families, an increase of education pertaining to working rights, and the encouragement of the Indian government to take a larger initiative towards the monitoring of companies and employees.
Despite the strong assent that the majority of delegates have towards the proposed solutions, the committee was nevertheless in disarray over the time that it would take to implement the said solutions, along with their plausibility. Several concerns that were brought up regarding the propositions were that they fail to address the long-term repercussions of child labour, and that the committee was looking through too narrow a lens.
Alongside UNICEF, Amnesty International’s involvement in the regard of child labour and exploitative work has primarily been in the form of lobbying and petitions towards the Indian government. According to a study conducted by Amnesty International, reports of crimes against children in India in the year of 2015 rose by 5%. The child labour laws that prohibit the employment of children under the age of 14 also created an exception for family enterprises, effectively generating further varying forms of child labour. The amendments further allowed children between the ages of 14 to 18 to work in any occupation as long as it was not deemed “hazardous”, even if the employment was exploitative in nature.
The UNICEF committee, after a successful resolution upon the topic of education accessibility in India, have since gravitated their attention towards the ubiquitous crisis of child labour. Some possible solutions proposed by the committee delegates involved charity work providing for impoverished families, an increase of education pertaining to working rights, and the encouragement of the Indian government to take a larger initiative towards the monitoring of companies and employees.
Despite the strong assent that the majority of delegates have towards the proposed solutions, the committee was nevertheless in disarray over the time that it would take to implement the said solutions, along with their plausibility. Several concerns that were brought up regarding the propositions were that they fail to address the long-term repercussions of child labour, and that the committee was looking through too narrow a lens.
Alongside UNICEF, Amnesty International’s involvement in the regard of child labour and exploitative work has primarily been in the form of lobbying and petitions towards the Indian government. According to a study conducted by Amnesty International, reports of crimes against children in India in the year of 2015 rose by 5%. The child labour laws that prohibit the employment of children under the age of 14 also created an exception for family enterprises, effectively generating further varying forms of child labour. The amendments further allowed children between the ages of 14 to 18 to work in any occupation as long as it was not deemed “hazardous”, even if the employment was exploitative in nature.