Understanding child labor in Myanmar

ABSTRACTThis article examines the ways in which the problem of child labour has been perceived and addressed, from the beginnings of social concern about these issues until the present, with illustrations from The Netherlands and Indonesia. National and international responses to the problem of child labour reflect a number of assumptions which are almost completely at odds with the views and the preferences of children themselves. Paradoxically, powerful lobbies in some of the world's wealthiest countries – which cannot enforce, and in some cases are beginning to relax, their own child labour laws – are trying to insist that the developing countries tighten and/or enforce their laws, under the threat of various forms of sanction or boycott. These increasingly active threats make it highly inadvisable for any exporting country to acknowledge the existence of children's employment at all, for example by protective legislation or other efforts to promote the improvement of children's working conditions.

This paper examines the issue of global child labor. The treatment is grounded in the classical economics of Adam smith and the more recent writings of human capital theorists. Using this framework, the universal problem of child labor in newly industrializing countries is investigated. Child labor is placed in its historical context with a brief review of practices in the United States and Great Britain at the time those countries were industrializing. Then, child labor is examined in its contemporary global context. We argue that, as countries industrialize, they tend to follow predictable patterns of development – including use of and eventual abandonment of child labor. We argue that this convergence under the logic of industrial capitalism supports a universalist approach to human rights (that would condemn child labor) over a more tolerant cultural relativist approach.

The Third World cities have been reinvented by the forces of globalization as the destinations of new investments, causing the migration of a teeming million to the major urban centers without any corresponding increase in the creation of new jobs and other basic amenities required for decent living. The problem of child labor has also been exacerbated to an unprecedented level in the urban areas of the Third World countries during this period. Yet the dominant discourses on this problem have come from the Western observers or have some prior Western presence in its understanding of the problem, which defers the Third Worldly understanding of the situation. The author argues that a paradigm shift is needed to incorporate various local discourses in order to effectively address the problem of child labor. Based on a decade of fieldwork among the poor and marginalized population in the city of Kolkata, Child Labor and the Urban Third World will give readers an idea of how this problem has become inextricably bound with various other local conditions, such as the security of tenure in the houses.

Objectives: Child labor is a problem that needs attention especially in developing countries The pandemic of Covid-19 has given it a spurt. Previously conducted studies on child labor remained focused on existence, causes and magnitude of this universal dilemma. Several measures at national and international level have been taken to eradicate it but could not get succeed fully. There is a need to explore the experiences and problems of working children from which they use to pass through. The needs of working children should get highlighted so that some suitable measures can be taken to make the condition better. However, this research is aimed to exploring psychological, physical, social, workplace, familial needs and problems faced by child labor further to find out some feasible alternative solutions. Design of the Study: Qualitative design and thematic analysis was used to compile results. Place and Duration: Working children in field were interviewed from two cities of Punjab Pakistan Multan and Jhung respectively from May 2022 to July 2022. Sample and Method: Total 19 working children including two girls under the age limit of 16 have interviewed from different workplaces as workshops, hospital, hotel and tea stall. Purposive sampling technique was used to include participants. Semi structured interviews have conducted with participant’s consent. Results and Conclusion: Data has been analyzed through method of thematic analysis. Eight super themes have been derived namely “Covid closure, low income cause of work and children’s will”, “Personal needs, beating, and poverty creates sadness”, “Face familial health problems, family disputes and financial problems”, “Scolding and beating at workplace and from general people”, “We are okay as we are, have no other solutions except Allah or hard work”, “Like study but need financial support and teacher’s good behavior in school and awareness”, “Work adjustment with time, social examples and personal experiences forms concepts about education job and work”, “Earning, exposure, supportive behavior of family and work master creates happiness and develops a sense of responsibility” from the gathered data. The present study highlights the experiences, needs and problems of child labor.

Does child labour increase unemployment and reduce labour force participation? Empirical evidence from Jordan

The problem of child labour is pernicious which has not only affected the developing countries but has whipsawed the developed countries as well. India has introduced ample of legislations and policies but it has been lacking in its enforcements whereas America does not have enough laws to address the issues of child labour. Despite the fact, both the countries with their endeavour have seen reduction in cases of child labour but even then, the problem seems to persist involving children in hazardous work. Therefore, in order to obviate child labour both countries need a balanced combination of legislations and their implementation to remove this evil from our society.

Currently in Indonesia child labor is not a new issue because in almost all regions in Indonesia there are still many underage children working. but not in accordance with the regulations that have been made by the government, labor issues and child labor are problems that need serious attention, regulation and supervision from the government. This study aims to analyze the considerations that must be made by the government in overcoming the problem of child labor. The problems studied in this study are about how the form of government supervision of child labor and government supervision procedures for child labor. so that how the function of government supervision of child labor and how the government's responsibility for this and has the aim of examining and analyzing how government policies in protecting child labor are in accordance with the supervisory function, what factors influence the government's responsibility to increase efforts to protect child labor.The method used in analyzing and discussing the problem of Government Supervision of Child Labor is Normative Juridical. This type of research is descriptive-analytical, the sources of legal materials used are primary legal materials and secondary legal materials. research techniques are carried out through literature review followed by descriptive analysis using qualitative methods.The results show that the government has an important responsibility to protect child labor. What the government must consider is ensuring that there is effective supervision to protect child labor. The government also needs to implement clear policies and regulations to protect child labor. This includes developing regulations that provide protection and limit child laborers' access to hazardous industries, as well as providing protection and access to education and health..

Despite popular belief, the problem of illegal child labor has not been remedied. The practice persists in the United States and even appears to be increasing. Levine, an acknowledged expert in the field, reveals the nature and magnitude of this old problem in today's economy. Levine explains that since 1981, there has been a relaxation in enforcement of federal child labor law provisions. He presents the complicated elements and troubling implications of a problem that has come to be ignored or overlooked in American society, focusing especially on matters of occupational health and safety. This book is important reading for the general public, as well as for scholars and policymakers involved with children's and labor issues in the United States. The United States has more of its children in the workforce than any other developed country. They are found in textile, jewelry, and machine shops in New York and New Jersey, in Southeast supermarkets operating meat-cutting machines and paper-box bailers, in Washington state selling candy door-to-door, and in farming operations throughout the country.

Linking Child Labour with International Trade: Recent Developments and their Implications

Is Temporary Emigration of Unskilled Workers a Solution to the Child Labor Problem?

Will trade sanctions reduce child labour?: The role of credit markets

A large number of children in India still work under highly exploitative working conditions. In spite of magnificent efforts, the problem of child labor has compounded into more complex issues intertwined with child trafficking, forced labor, missing children, and many other worst forms of childhood struggles. There is a general postulation that in reality the rehabilitation measures are not so effective. The phenomenon of the recycling of child labor divulges that the rescued children again join the workforce after a small gap either at the same place in the same city or at different places in different cities. The paper is aimed to study the realities of rehabilitation in order to understand intertwined issues relating to rehabilitation of rescued children from worksites as well as the present state of affairs. The paper has specifically explored the process of rescue challenges, the mechanisms devised and implemented for rehabilitation of these children, and the effectiveness of initiatives intended for reintegrating rescued children in societal mainstream. It discovered that the realities of rehabilitation are quite painful and a sad commentary on our efforts of rehabilitation. The compensation, back wages, or rehabilitation money has passes through different layers before reaching the rescued child. Once received, it is generally used for different purposes –such as buying animals, construction/repair of house, daughter’s marriage, and repaying to contractor who provided the employment. In some cases, cut/convenience money is also paid to the person responsible for releasing compensation. The time frame for receiving compensation/rehabilitation money varies from 6 to 36 months. As an estimate, approximately one-fifth of the rescued children never join school after rehabilitation because of poor economic conditions of their families, and many drop out to rejoining workforce. The paper has also explored various gaps in their rehabilitation and suggested recommendations for more efficient, effective, and efficacious rehabilitation of children freed from worksites.

In biodiversity rich agriculture–forest moasic landscapes in south-western Ethiopia, the production of coffee and food crops, including guarding them from forest-dwelling mammals, requires a high input of labour, which is supplied partly by children. Through field observations and interviews with smallholders, we studied the extent of children’s participation in coffee production and food crop guarding, its impact on school attendance and implications for sustainable development. The findings revealed that the extent of children’s participation in such work is correlated with the level of household’s income and residential location, i.e. near versus far from forests or in coffee versus non-coffee areas. Child labour and school absenteeism linked to coffee production and crop guarding are widespread problems. Some of the measures taken to mitigate the problem of school absenteeism were coercive and posed threats to poor households. The paper concludes that child work in coffee production and crop protection is at the cost of school attendance for many children, which represents a critical social justice issue and a trade-off with the economic and environmental values of the forest. Reducing poverty would likely mitigate the problem of child labour and school absenteeism and promote synergistic development in the region.

This chapter considers a 3 × 3 × 3 competitive general equilibrium framework of a small open economy which exports product produced by child labour. In the first part, we abstract from unemployment to begin with and assume that adult labour market maintains full employment. Our objectives have been to investigate the effectiveness of trade and non-trade policies in the presence of child labour problem and also to examine the impacts on national welfare and trade balance of such an economy. In particular, in this chapter, we have examined the effectiveness of three different kinds of policies on the incidence of child labour. Among these three, one is trade policy and the rest are non-trade policies. First part of this chapter reveals that economic expansion via increase in adult labour endowment is ineffective in curtailing the incidence of child labour. The other two policies seem to be efficient in this ground. However, any policy designed to control child labour incidence must have an impact on welfare and trade balance situation of the economy. Trade balance situation worsens in case of economic expansion via increase in domestic capital stock. However, the other non-trade policy leaves it as unchanged. But the impact is ambiguous for the case of trade policy. Again, welfare impact is positive only in case of economic expansion via increase in adult labour endowment but ambiguous in the other two cases. Hence, from the above analysis, we observe that none of the policies simultaneously can have favourable impact on child labour supply, trade balance and welfare of the small open economy. In part two of the chapter, we introduce unemployment problem in the adult labour market on one hand, and retain the existence of a child labour market on the other hand. The economy is divided into one rural and two urban sub-sectors. Four inputs are used in the model among which three are specific in nature. The representative adult worker in this model not only supplies his own labour but also sends his children out to work. Factor market distortion in this model is captured by the existence of a factor price differential between urban and rural sectors. The model is used to analyse the effects of imposition of various forms of trade restrictions on the unemployment of adult workers on the one hand and on the incidence of child labour on the other. Alternative trade policy prescriptions to combat child labour as well as adult market unemployment problem have been analysed. An interesting result obtained from the exercise of trade policy suggests that supply of child labour is shown to vary inversely with the level of unemployment in the adult labour market. In part three, we focus on an important non-trade policy, namely education subsidy to find its effects on the incidence of child labour.

One way of conceptualizing educational quality is that it is a function of effectiveness, efficiency, responsiveness, equality, relevance and sustainability (Barrett et al. 2006). Quality education rejects gender discrimination and social injustice. Gender equality in Ethiopia, as an anchor of quality education, has long been explained numerically. The Annual Abstracts the Ministry of Education published each year do not clearly indicate the regions’ Gender Parity Index (GPI). The lack of such kind of data made it difficult to see gender parity beyond numbers. Employing concurrent mixed method design, of about 2,934 student universe, 314 populated the sample using stratified random sampling. The results showed that the gender parity index for the region for 2016 is 0.52 in favor of boys with previous indices not more than 0.6. The gender parity index set in MDGs to be eliminated for 2015 is far from achievement. Inequality to access to education is found to perpetuate further forms of inequalities like differences in the learning process, academic achievement, and post-schooling opportunities all in favor of boys and men. Boys’ advantages gained early in access and learning processes transform into disproportionately greater advantages in post-school opportunities subjecting girls and women into greater inequalities. Efforts to achieve equality in life outcomes has been challenged by several factors like lack of creation of gender sensitive schools and policies, societal attitude and awareness towards schooling, child labor, domestic works, weak school laws that did not annul gender biases, and economy of the student or parents. The creation and development of gender sensitive schools with regulations that outlaw gender biases, the development and administration of gender policies, the creation of awareness on society-wide approach are some of the recommendations made. Key words: Gender, equality, challenges.