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WORLD CHILD LABOR PUT AT 246 MILLION

JAKARTA: More than 127 million children are forced to do work unsuitable for their age, and millions of people work under coercion in Asia and the Pacific, the International Labor Organization said Wednesday.

The number of economically active children in the Asia-Pacific region makes up 60 percent of the world’s total, the organization said on a report, citing its recent studies.

“You have child labor throughout the Asian region partly because you are still, in most countries, at the level of development,” said Roger Bohning, director of a program to promote the organization’s declaration on fundamental rights at work. “Developing countries do have large demand for child labor.”

The International Labor Organization estimates that about 246 million children aged 5 to 17 around the world are involved.

It says 179 million of them are caught in the worst forms of child labor such as slavery, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography and forced recruitment for use in armed conflicts.

Poverty is not the only factor in child labor. Inequality, lack of education, high dependence of agriculture, a slow demographic transition and traditional cultural expectations also contribute, the report said.

Millions of people in India and Pakistan are forced to work because they or their dependants are tied to creditors until their loans are repaid, Bohning said. “They are in slave-like conditions,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of an international seminar organized by the organization.

THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, Feb. 20, 2003