Child Labour and Economic Development

Abstract

The topic discussed in this thesis concerns a reality that closely lies at my heart: child labour, in fact, does not just represent an obstacle towards economic and social development, but first of all constitutes a violation of human rights. It is a plague that still continues to affect not only the world poorest countries, in which high rates of illiteracy, misery and the presence of deeply rooted cultural attitudes make child labour a challenging problem to eradicate, but also the developing ones. In the first part of the dissertation I deal with the international legislation concerning child labour, from its definition and causes to the ILO and UN Conventions and Protocols aimed at protecting children from all forms of exploitation and illicit activities. In particular I pay major focus on the ILO Minimum Age Convention No. 138 (1973), the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182 (1999) and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the three most important documents on children rights. I also examine in broad terms the legal frameworks characterising different geographic areas - namely EU and Eurasia, Asia and the Pacific, North of America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa - and which programmes have been implemented by governments in order to address child labour issue. Furthermore, I analyse more in detail how child labourers are involved in the production process in some of the most commonly used goods at global level, such as cotton, sugarcane, cocoa and gold. In the second part I describe how a sustained economic development reduces child labour over time, and the results suggest serious commitment by governments to promote long term growth in order to curtail the threat of child labour.