ABSTRACT
The incidence of child labour worldwide has decreased over the last few years, in both absolute and percentage terms. As mentioned in chapter 3, the ILO (2002) reports that one in every six children aged between 5 and 17 – or 246 million children – were involved in child labour. Of those, about 170 million child workers were found in different hazardous and illegal activities. However, revised ILO (2013a) estimates show that 168 million children aged 5-17 years were involved in child labour in 2012 (10.6 per cent), compared to 215 million in 2008 (13.6 per cent)—47 million fewer than in 2008. Compared with the figures in 2002 in absolute terms, the magnitude of decrease has been 78 million. Interestingly, the ILO reports (2013a, 2013b) highlighted some new important dimensions of the problem. There has been an increase in the relative importance of child labour in services in recent years. The share of child labour in services has increased from 26 per cent in 2008 to 32 per cent in 2012. More specifically, among different services rendered by children, the incidence of child labour in domestic work has increased significantly from 10.57 million (4.9 per cent) in 2008 to 11.53 million (6.9 per cent) in 2012.1
Why child labour in services like domestic work has increased significantly both in absolute number as well as in terms of activity rate, especially when the incidence of child labour in both counts has appreciably fallen across the globe, is the question of the hour. This kind of child labour falls under the category of the worst form of child labour and is quite exploitative, seriously affecting the mental and proper physical growth of the hapless children who are employed as domestic help. This calls for urgent theoretical explanation(s) so that appropriate corrective measures can be undertaken to get rid of the problem.
