Child labor remains a global crisis. Althog made significant progress in reducing it since 2000, Kovid -19 epidemic and various conflicts around the world have pushed millions of families into poverty as recent years of discovery.
However, the latest UNICEF and International Labor Organization ILO on this subject found that there has been a decline compared to the final report four years ago, In 2025, with 138 million involved in child labor, below 160 million.
“The findings of our report provide hope and show that progress is possible,” ILO Director General Gilbert F. Hungbo said in a press release. “But we should not be blinded by the fact that we still have a long way to go before we achieve our goal of eliminating child labor.”
What is the formation of a child laboratory?
Nina Mast, analyst at the Washington DC-based Economic Policy Institute, told DW that child labor is a minor or “an exploitative or oppressive labor by any work that is excessive in this sense that gives the child’s education or well interference.”
Harmful child labor is specificly associated with the world’s poorest countries. For Claudia Kampa, senior advisor to statistics and monitoring UNICEF, is home to two-thirds children of all children in Sub-Sahara Africa.
However, he warned that it is therefore an issue for the discovery of the world’s high -income parts as the European Union and the United States.
“While child labor is more common in low -income country, it is still present in high -income people,” she told DW. “Often, it is hidden within the communities of agriculture, informal functions, or marginalized. Poverty, inequality and exclusion make some groups of children weak, no matter where they live.”
To collect US lakes
Nina Mast argues that Child Labor Breach is not only about unpaid or dangerous work, but therefore about the conditions that have been worked for hours or any “excessive or absorbent task that interferes with education.”
Its main focus is on the US where the violation of the country’s Fair Labor Standards Act – Chief Worker Protection Act in Kotri – has increased the epidemic to Sion.
According to the US Labor Department, the number of children employed in violation of federal child labor laws There was an increase of 31% between 2019 and 2024.
“I think we should consider this crisis that has not been resolved recently in terms of violation,” he said, the Trump administration has announced a plan to weaken various security laws.
She says that specific violations in the US include very late or long -working minors, or cases where minors are employed using devices that are prohibited or are prohibited for their age or are doing jobs that are not based on ned thirs age.
Another major problem, he said, what is the agricultural industry, where ten -year -old children are sometimes in harmful work.
“A problem we have not addressed in the US, the fact that standard agriculture is very few,” the mast said. “Agriculture is the deadliest industry for children in terms of deadly rates. This issue remains inadvertently.”
So a European problem
According to the International Labor Organization, about 71% of all child laborers are in agriculture. So according to Marco, there is a major part of the problem in Europe. He is a director with Global March, a network of trade union and civil society organizations, dedicated to the elimination of child labor, slavery and smuggling.
He says that Albania, Romania and fruits and vegetable sectors in Italy have been violated recently. “It does not kill you like a child working in mines in the Congo,” he told DW. “But this is a very dangerous task. Children work with pesticides, work under heavy heat stress. It is really unhealthy for the child.”
UNICEF’s Claudia Cappa explains that the prevalence of child labor in the European Union is lower than the global levels, but says, “It is present in more hidden forms, including agriculture, informal services and marginalized communities.”
Both Cappa and Dubbelt have taken care that reliable data is difficult to come in a high -income country and a lacquer of reporting.
Back in 2021, the European Union signed a global initiative to nominate 2025 as the year to eliminate child labor in all forms. While that goal has not been achieved, the European Union has a relative strong law aimed at protecting children and minors from harmful labor practices.
European Union instructions on safety of young people at work Member states still need those with some exceptions, to ban the employment of children under 15 or in full -time education. Therefore, the health and safety of young workers determines various obligations for employers.
Stephen Blight, senior advisor to UNICEF on child protection, believes that the European Union is an introduction of diligence instructions due to its corporate stability, which came into force in July 2024, which was on a significant step to deal with the problem. He reported that DW the Directural has a huge ability to contribute to the honor and protection of children’s rights when he is fully and properly implemented. “
However, he expresses concerns over the so -called omnipresent resolution of the European Union Commission, aimed at simplifying and reducing certain rules and reducing the requirements of requirements for businesses in the block.
The blight argues that the proposal can weaken the progress in relation to the European Union supply chains, indicating the fact that one of the plans is that European Union companies will have to work properly on suppliers. “It takes the risk of looking at the deep parts of the supply chains, where the worst form of child labor is often.”
Marco Dabelt agrees that one of the biggest challenges for the European Union in relation to the child laboratory is related to the supply of chains from outside the block.
Hey is larger than the problem, but can be re -emphasized that a lacquer of reliable data is a major issue, and that more research and reporting are requested.
“What I have seen is that a lot of children are connected to supply chains, but for some time it is difficult to create that connection, which is far more than the grid, and under the table.”
Edited by: Uwe Hessler
