Opravy

Child exploitation is one the principal problems that the society faces.

It refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives them of their childhood and of receiving an education.

Child exploitation is not a recent problem.

In the XIX century, during the Industrial Revolution, many children worked 14 or more hours a day at the factories and they were paid only a fraction of what an adult would get.

They had to work with dangerous equipment, so accidents were very common and many of these children got injured or they even died.

Nowadays this situation isn't very different.

It's true that during the last century governments across the world have developed a legislation to prohibit child labour, but it continues to exit.

According to Unicef 168 million children aged 5 to 17 are engaged in child labour, in other words, 1 of every 6 children in the world suffers child exploitation.

In some countries young people aged 15 to 17 work at least 43 hours a week.

Child exploitation can be in presented different forms like slavery, child soldiering,drug trafficking or sexual exploitation.

At present there are around 300000 children who fight in a war, in India there are 12,6 million children caught by child trafficking networks, there are 8 countries which still haven't legislated against child labour (Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Maldives, Marshall islands, Myanmar, Tuvalu y Turkmenistan), etc. These figures are chilling: child labour affect children’ health and personal development and interfere with their education, so the children can’t improve their personal situation and they are trapped in a vicious cycle.

There is still a lot to be done against child labour, but we can start to make aware people about this horrible problem.