THE International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines child labour as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and dignity, as well as any work that is harmful to children’s physical and mental development.
According to the ILO, any work that leads to these harmful effects on children is undesirable and must be stopped.
The ILO, however, states that not all work done by children should be classified as ‘child labour’ that is to be targeted for elimination.
For instance, the United Nations body says children’s or adolescents’ participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development, or interfere with their schooling, is generally regarded as being something positive.
And positive child labour includes activities such as helping their parents around the home, assisting in a family business or earning pocket money outside school hours and during school holidays.
These kinds of activities, according to ILO, contribute to children’s own development and to the welfare of their families.
They further provide children with necessary skills and experience, and help to prepare them to be productive members of society during their adult life.
Any other work outside these tasks is considered to be worst form of labour which is harmful, and countries world-over have been urged to check them and, if possible, engage legal instruments to penalise the perpetrators.
Zambia is on record as having ratified most key international conventions concerning child labour, with laws and regulations related to child labour, including its worst forms, well in place.
Only last year, the country made some advancement in an effort to eliminate the worst forms of child labour.
This was done when the Government hired additional labour inspectors and approved a new development assistance framework aimed at preventing the worst forms of child labour.
The Government is also reported to have supported the development of programming to empower adolescent girls and reduce child labour in rural areas.
However, despite these efforts, many Zambian children reportedly continue to engage in the worst forms of child labour, which include commercial sexual exploitation which at times is as a result of human trafficking, as well as their involvement in the production of tobacco.
Their involvement in the production of tobacco rings a bell, and this is children’s participation in agricultural activities.
Incidentally, the ILO’s report in our possession says the agriculture sector accounts for the largest share of child labourers, at more than 90 per cent in Zambia.
The report emanates from the 2012 ILO study for child labour and modern slavery, which includes human trafficking.
This is based on data from the Zambia Labour Force Survey of the year 2008, which indicates that 950,000 child labourers between the ages of five and 14 were engaged in the vice.
Although the ILO Global Estimates of Child Labour Results and Trends for 2012-2016 says a number of children were trapped in child labour worldwide, it nevertheless indicates that the largest proportion of children in hazardous work is in sub-Saharan Africa, where Zambia is.
All this is a result of gaps that are evident in the legal frameworks relating to children. In the case of Zambia, for instance, the Education Act does not include the specific age at which education is compulsory.
This, unfortunately, leaves children under the legal working age vulnerable to the worst forms of child labour.
In addition, Zambia’s law-enforcement agencies are known to lack the necessary human and financial resources to adequately enforce laws against child labour.
Should these loopholes remain unsealed, worst forms of child labour are here to stay.