Research Paper Example on Child Labour

According to Child Labour (2021), “roughly 160 million children were subjected to child labour at the beginning of 2020, with 9 million additional children at risk due to the impact of COVID-19”. Moreover, Child labour has been popular back in the old days, yet, not many people know that it does still exist today. Child labour is found mostly in poor counties where households need their children to work in order to survive. A great example to illustrate the image of the critical crime of child labour would be the low price fashion industry. Stores like SHEIN, Alibaba, JollyChic, and millions of other online stores around the world are accused of involving child labour. These types of online shops chose to hire children in order to maximize their profits by providing low wages to their workers. Which means that they are preying on their lack of voice. Although many poor families would encourage child labour in order to survive, it is argued that child labour should be banned due to the dangerous working conditions and the children would not live a normal childhood.

Dangerous working conditions is a major reason why child labour should be banned. Dangerous conditions would be like working in factories that require children to use harmful tools which may lead them to be injured. As proven in recent studies by the Journal of public health, most of the children that are involved in child labour are between 5 and 14 years old, and children at a younger age would have a higher risk to be suffering from injuries due to child labour like injections, burns, and lung diseases (Ibrahim et al., 2018). Another example would be if the working conditions contained a severely polluted atmosphere. That would definitely cause major effects on the children's health and may even cause death. Children living in poor areas would be forced to work under these harmful conditions in order to provide for their families, rather than studying and playing outside with their friends. Thus, by banning child labour, it would save millions of children from injuring themselves and to have harmful health effects due to the dangerous working conditions. 

Another major reason why child labour should be banned is due to the children not living a normal and healthy childhood. Children at a young age should focus on their studies and playing with their friends. Activities like watching movies, going to the playgrounds, and buying toys are important to build childhood memories that would never be forgotten. Children involved in child labour has been compared between normal, non-working children in a study conducted in India. This study has proven that the BMI of the working children is lower than the non working children and it is mostly due to the harmful working conditions and malnutrition (Ibrahim et al., 2018). Children that are forced to work under dangerous conditions would not only suffer from many harmful physical effects, but also mental effects. 

There is a study that has been conducted in Ethiopia which has claimed that the working children had emotional and behavioral disorders (Ibrahim et al., 2018). This of course does not apply to non-working children. Non-working children may have some mental issues but that would not be anywhere near the mental issues found in the working children. Consequently, by banning child labour, children would live a normal childhood and they would not suffer from mental issues and how they used to. 

Despite its  obvious disadvantages, opponents such as the poor families may claim that child labour should not be stopped because it increases their income for survival. (Tesfu, 2010). Many poor areas in the world have been suffering from unexpected weather conditions which have major effects on their incomes, healths, and survival. Therefore, poor families would force their children to work in order to bring some money to the household. It may be true that child labour may help poor households to survive by bringing home some money. Nevertheless, these poor families should realize the fact that child labour has more negative effects than positive effects to the children. If the poor households goal is to survive from hunger, then the countries should provide more support for Unicef in order for  them to reach the largest number of people. Therefore, poor households should focus more on the negative effects of child labour rather than its positive effects, and by having Unicef gain support from many countries, it would help them minimize this major problem.           

To conclude, child labour must be banned due to its major negative effects on children. Dangerous working conditions and not living a healthy childhood are some of the major negative effects that affect a working child. Children are being tortured due to these hazardous working conditions which could lead to them having physical and mental issues, and also it could lead up to death. While most of the firms that support child labour only think of maximizing thier profits rather than caring about these poor children’s health. Children in this young age should have a normal childhood, however, what we are seeing in reality is that only the children in a financially stable household are having this “privilege” of having a normal childhood. Child labour should not be acceptable in any shape or form, and I predict that in the near future, child labour would not exist and children would live a healthy childhood.