ABSTRACT
The issue of child labour has been generating signifi cant interest worldwide for quite a number of years now. While the discourse on child labour has been infl uenced to a large extent by a growing volume of international law on children’s rights, critical analysis of the concept has been limited; rather, moral outrage and prohibitive and restrictive prescriptions have generally characterised debates and strategies against the practice. One of the fundamental reasons for this has been the lack of reliable quantifi ed data on the prevalence of child labour globally. The absence of consolidated data on child labour stems from the fact that the phenomenon predominates in the informal sector, which is outside the purview of labour legislation, and governments generally are reluctant to fl ag up statistics on illegal labour. Besides, measuring child labour is often problematic on account of varying defi nitions and perceptions about what constitutes childhood, a child, and a child labourer or worker. Consequently, child labour continues, with all its abuse, exploitation and deprivation. While child labour is commonly seen as an omnipresent feature of poor and developing economies, it is not particular to any country or culture, given that children work in response to contextual needs. Having said that, there is no denying that child labour is in danger of becoming institutionalised in some countries – fi rst, because it is regarded as a signifi cant factor in their national economies, and second, because it forms part of a generational chain as child workers grow up to be illiterate adults who in turn send their own children to work to help their families survive.1 The standard response in such situations has been the imposition of a wholesale ban on child work, ostensibly in the best interests of the child. The principal argument of this chapter is that conventional approaches, which tend to criminalise child labour, are grossly inadequate in addressing the issue, because they fail to take into consideration the associated complexities of the phenomenon and to recognise the full range of children’s rights. It argues that by disregarding socioeconomic and cultural diversity, globalised notions of
childhood and child work are often at odds with children’s interests. The chapter emphasises the signifi cance of recognising child workers as rights-holders and active agents of change during policy formulation processes.
