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Child Labor - A World in Crisis

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Nepal is a country that has many children working at a very young age; an estimate of 1.6 million children between the ages of 5 to 17 is in the workforce (Bhandari). Many of them are working in hazardous workplaces such as, craft and related trades, housekeeping, restaurant services, miners, shot firers, stone cutters, carvers, painters, welders, etc. One of the worst forms of childhood labor trafficked for sexual exploitation. The human rights that are being violated are articles 3, 4, 5, 23, and 26. Many articles and reports documented unhealthy consequences for children who worked in the carpet industry (World Education, 2009; USDOL, 1994, 2011b; KC, 2002). The factories were often poorly ventilated and crowded with looms, workers, and material. Child carpet weavers suffered from respiratory illnesses and other health problems, and were particularly vulnerable to tuberculosis, due to constant inhalation of dust and tiny wool fibers. Another obvious hazard was the children having to work too many hours (10-16 hours) a day, six or seven days a week every week without rest. The long days spent in cramped positions damaged the children's backs and legs and caused backaches, swelling legs, and severe joint pain. Other commonly reported health problems included swollen knuckles, arthritis, eye strain, and children also complained of sore hands from weaving. Work-caused cuts and wounds were endemic and frequently became infected. Another hazard was sexual abuse by factory managers, co-workers, or labor contractors. The pesky system in Nepal involved workers taking advances on their future wages before they started working or while they were working. In the case of children, the advances were paid to the parents. The children started as bonded labor because they had to continue working until the advances were repaid. When the wages the children received, after their employers subtracted the costs of food and training, were not enough to cover the advances, the indebted children had to continue working for the employer (sometimes indefinitely) in order to try to repay their debts (O'Neill, 2004). In its 1993 study, CWIN estimated that seven to eight percent of the surveyed carpet children were debt-bonded, working to pay debts incurred by their parents; the debts ranged from 100 to 15,000 rupees (2.50 - 375 USD).7 In its 1994 study, AAFLI reported that none of the surveyed children were debt-bonded, but it was using a different standard, defining debt-bonded as being held and forced to work against their will to repay a family debt. All of the children AAFLI interviewed who had been recruited by a labor contractor (naike) had come to work after some advance had been paid to the children's parents. The primary benefit to the parents or family was the initial advance payment, as few of the children reported sending remittances to their families (USDOL, 1994). Most are getting the right to life taking away from them because they don't have any say in their country. It's a since of slavery because they doing it against their will and not getting paid for certain jobs, such as, human trafficking. Having kids working at 5 is known to be something cruel and a hazard, many can die from being in toxic chemicals or be hurt by working machines. The free choice of employment aren't being giving to children, they are being forced to work with metal or cleaning houses, and being taking for sex. The right to education is being taken from some because they need to work full time to help their parents get money to support their family. North Korea the human rights that is being violated is articles 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 16, 23, 24, 25, and 26. Majority is living in poverty and has food shortages. Many don't have money for school, so they are forced to work. The ones that did go to school, at the age of 14 they are sent to the army. Most kids are sent to labor camps to work on military products, mining, chemicals, eclectic powers, and lead processing. They must work 15 hours a day, and most are forced to into unpaid labors. If some do get paid they are paid $1.45 per a hour. Children have arranged marriages by guards. Married children are forced to have sex and produce children. The guards at the labor camps sexually abuse girls. These are the reasons why they violate human rights. There are about 200,000 inmates in six camps, the largest of which is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. According to the testimony of camp survivors, prisoners live and die without soap, socks, underwear, toilet paper or sanitary napkins. They are forced to do hard labor while subsisting on a starvation diet of corn, cabbage, salt ”and the occasional rat. As they age, they lose their teeth, their gums turn black, their bones weaken and they hunch over at the waist. They usually die of hunger-related illness before turning 50" (Harden, 2012). Poor children and their families may rely upon child labor in ord

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