Across Africa, more than a fifth of children work
Most people would agree. But the experience of Mr Baka’s pupils is less unusual than they might hope. A recent report by Unicef, the’s agency for children, and the International Labour Organisation found that between 2016 and 2020 the number of working children around the world had risen for the first time since 2000, to 160m, with all of the net increase in sub-Saharan Africa. On the continent more than a fifth of children, or some 87m, work.
Sometimes the work is even more exploitative. Children from the countryside are often sent by their parents to cities to get education, only to be put to work by relatives, acquaintances or criminal gangs. From there it can be a “slippery slope” to child-trafficking and other forms of abuse, says James Riak, who works in Freetown forFrom Zambia to Nigeria, millions of children as young as five toil as domestic servants.
Other experts worry that well-meaning interventions can make things worse for children. They point to the fervent international campaign to eradicate child labour in the cocoa industry, even though 94% of children in the industry work for their parents or relatives. Criminalising child labour has led to raids on communities and incidents ofs removing children from cocoa farms or remote fishing villages, as has often happened in Ghana.
Such views have been strongly criticised by governments and international organisations. The idea that there should be two standards of rights—one for richer children and one for poorer children—is “a bit bizarre” says Benjamin Smith, a child-labour expert at the. Others balk at the prospect of undermining the huge strides made in the provision of free education to children across the continent.
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