ABSTRACT
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, United Nations General Assembly, 1989) confers upon children the right to protection from economic exploitation. This guarantee for protection is often understood as the obligation to prevent situations in which children have to work. In this sense the prohibition of child labour – i.e., in the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 138 concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment (1973) and ILO Convention 182 concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999), or in national legislation – is understood as the manifestation of a specific human right of the child, whose implementation is a prerequisite to the realisation of other children’s rights, such as the right to education. Such interpretations tacitly assume that children’s work (in this case defined as ‘child labour’) is synonymous to exploitation. What is more, they suggest that the prohibition of child labour and subsequent enforcement measures serve the interests of working children by putting an end to their exploitation. In this way, the right to be protected from economic exploitation is reinterpreted to mean the (alleged) right to be ‘free from child labour’.
