labor27

There are more than two billion children in the world today. Driven by poverty to support
themselves and their families, close to 300 million of them work.
That is more than the total number of children in all the developed nations together. More
than 250 million children in developing nations work, 60 percent of them for six or more
days a week, 40 percent for nine or more hours per day.
According to the 1997 United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report, "The State of the
World's Children: Focus on Child Labor," a review of nine Latin American countries shows
that without the income provided by children between the ages of 13 and 17 the level of
poverty in that area alone would rise between 10 and 20 percent.
Most children work on farms and plantations or in homes - away from the prying eyes of
government inspectors and media researchers. In Indonesia a third of all domestic workers
- about 400,000 of them - are less than 15 years old. Some quarter of a million children in
Haiti are domestic workers and about 50,000 of them are between the ages of 7 and 10.
Nine out of 10 child domestic workers are girls.
Children who work as domestics often do so under extremely exploitative conditions. They
may work as long as 12 to 15 hours a day. They receive no formal schooling. Very few are
paid except in kind: Clothing, food and board are considered sufficient. Learning no skills
they will be ill equipped to face the world as adults.
Many work in bonded servitude, under conditions amounting to slavery. As young as 8 or
9, they are pledged by their parents, sometimes in exchange for small loans, sometimes
simply for the cost of their upkeep. In either case, the result is the same for the child:
involuntary servitude, often for life.