There are about 250 million children around the world, in the ages of 5-14 years
old who works. The children work in very harmful surroundings, which could
jeopardize the child's school attendance, health or psychical, spiritual, moral or
social development. Childlabour exists in almost every kind of production.
Nowadays there are children who works in factories and are breathing fumes an
touching dangerous liquids. These children are forced to work long shifts in bad
working environment. These children are taken away from their family. These
children are being tortured and are locked away. It`s about children that not only
are deprived of their childhoodit also ruins their lives as adults.

The children are exposed for the same risks as an adult worker. They are exposed
to poison and a lot of harmful substances. They are forced to do monotonous
movements.They are forced to work in a surrounding which contains a lot of noise
and bad lightning. A lot of the children are not allowed to leave their workplaces.
They don`t know that this work is a serious threat for their future. Small children
can easier get cancer than an adult if they are near poison. And monotonous movements
has more bad effects on small children than adults. Children who work in bad lightning
become blind faster. And children ears are more sensitive than adults. And a child
can not be exposed to a lot of horror without taking damage, so they get psychical
damage too. If a child loses his job his family will be upset and maybe starve to
death. That`s why they keep on working, despite the diseases and hunger. The work
becomes their protection.

Where are they?
In Africa 40% of all the children work, the ages are 5-15 years old.
In Ghana, India and Indonesia and Senegal 25% of all the children between the ages of
5-14 years old work. 33% of all the children do not go to school.
The countries with the most childlabour are:
Bhutan:55%, Mali:54%, Burkina Faso:51%, Burundi:48%, East Timor:45%, Uganda:45%,
Pakistan:18%,India: 14%.There are about 5 billion people in the world, 2 billion
of those people are under the age of 18. 9 out of 10 of those people live in
developing countries.

Are there children in the export industry?
At least 10 million children or 5% work in the industrialization export industry.
They produce rugs, clothes, products made of tin, locks, embroidery, furniture,
electronics, silk material, matches, leather, ceramics, watches, glasses, fireworks, toys,
and sports equipment. Childlabour is also used in the production of export crops within
agriculture. The children pick, clean and pack coffe, cotton, fruit, vegetables, jasmine,
rubber, sugar, tee, tobaco, and vanilla. They are also used in gold,diamond and coal
mines and in the fishing industry.

How are they doing?
Doctors have made medical examinations on working children and they show pains in the
muscles, chest, stomach, head and dizziness, infections in the respiratory organ and
diarrhoea. Other examinations on children that work with agriculture, mines, ceramics
and glass industry, matches and fireworks factories and deep-sea fishing shows damage in
respiratory organ, skin, skeleton and hearing. These symptoms are normal for a child
labourer. So they are not doing very well.

Summery
So, there are about 250 millions of child labourer`s around the world, they are being
locked in and some of them have never seen the daylight for years. Nobody could ever
understand what the children are going through.
One thing that you have to understand is that these children work to survive, but what
they don`t know is that this job can kill them.

© 2003 Freeway
Writers: Lena Larsson (sp05-12@park.se)
HTML by: Mikael Svensson (te04-45@park.se).