LONDON (Reuters) – More than 211 million children worldwide aged 5-15 are working full time, half of them in appalling conditions, some as prostitutes and miners, and huge aid increases are needed to help them, UNICEF’s UK branch said.

In a scathing report published on Monday, the British branch of the United Nations Children’s Fund said the only way to end child labor was to end poverty, and rich industrialized nations must give far more in development aid to poor countries.

“A huge amount still remains to be done to protect children’s rights all over the globe and to prevent their exploitation,” UNICEF UK’s executive director David Bull said.

From unregulated chemical plants in Asia to the giant open cast mines of Latin America and the stone quarries of West Africa, child labor is a scar on the conscience of the world in the 21st century, the report said.

Children are forced to work not only as soldiers in African wars or in the sweatshops of Asia, but also as cheap farm labor in north America and prostitutes in Europe, it said.

“Estimates of the number of young people working on farms in the U.S. vary from 300,000 to 800,000,” the report said. “Many are from minority groups, particularly Spanish-speaking immigrant families.”
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

According to the BBC, this represents one in twelve of the world’s children. Appeals to ‘conscience’ however, and ‘development aid’ disembodied from total system overhaul are simply worthless. Further, the condition of children speaks profoundly to the oppression of their mothers.

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