International day against Child Labour was marked across the globe and in Pakistan on Tuesday amid hundreds of thousands of children struggling for the survival of their families.
Seminars and conferences were held in different cities where speakers stressed the need to end child labour and make them useful citizens for the future of the country.
Every year on June 12, World Day against Children labour is observed to create awareness about the rights of children and against the social evil involving child labour. This year the theme of the day was “Human Rights and Social Justice – Let’s End Child Labour” as set by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
It should be mentioned that several national and international organizations are working towards the accomplishment of this cause but no positive change has come to the fate of the child laborers and their number is increasing with each passing day.
The groups working for children’s rights underscored the need to take up urgent corrective steps to immediately ban child labour, especially domestic child labour, through enforcement of the Employment of Children (Amended) Act 2011.
The ILO launched the day in 2002 to highlight the miseries of working children all over the world. This year, the organization has repeated its call for action to tackle this problem. The labor rights organization defines child labor as a work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.
It refers to works that are mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children, and interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school and obliging them to leave school prematurely. According to ILO, the most extreme forms of child labour is when it involves children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious health hazards and illnesses.
Pakistan is not among the countries where substantial efforts have been made to eliminate child labour, according to the organizations working for children’s rights. On the contrary, the country stands in the first row of those states where child labor is on the rise.
