Child Labour / Child Trafficking - For Labour / For Sexual Exploitation

The International Labor Organization states that not all work done by children should be classified as child labor that is to be targeted for elimination. 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. This 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 contribute to children’s development and to the welfare of their families; they provide them with skills and experience, and help to prepare them to be productive members of society during their adult life.

The term “child labor” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. It refers to work that:

• is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and
• interferes with their schooling by:
• depriving them of the opportunity to attend school;
• obliging them to leave school prematurely; or
• Requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

Child Labour in the Philippines 

Child labour is work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. In the Philippines, there are 2.1 million child labourers aged 5-17 years old based on the 2011 Survey on Children  of thePhilippine Statistics Authority (PSA) . About 95 per cent of them are in hazardous work. Sixty-nine per cent of these are aged 15-17 years old, beyond the minimum allowable age for work but still exposed to hazardous work. 

Click the link below for further informtaion 

http://www.ilo.org/manila/areasofwork/child-labour/lang--en/index.htm