Iraq Point

Is the imposition of sanctions on states the best way to end child labour?

In the past activists have tried to encourage consumers to boycott companies using child labour by means of negative publicity about the conditions under which children work. The debate is partly, therefore, about whether such action (which may be ignored) is sufficient to force companies themselves to act, or whether it is more effective to use sanctions to pressurise governments into setting up national legal regulations (which might be avoided or repealed). However, there is a second issue: whilst it is normally deemed a truism that child labour is inherently bad, a subtler reasoning is sometimes illuminating. It is hard to see how child labour on family farms can be avoided, when countries do not have the resources to set up schools and to pay families a minimum income. Ultimately child labour ends up more as a question of solving poverty than a simple moral or emotional issue.A model for a sanctions regime would need to take several details into account: both general ones regarding sanctions cases (by whom will sanctions be imposed? And to what extent will they be enforced?) and questions particular to this topic: what age is a ‘child’? Is child labour inherently a issue, or is the debate really about minimum labour standards for any employee?

Public Comments

1. I think that child labor is in fact, a bad idea. But only if someone is forcing the children into the labor, and even this is debatable, because the way I phrased my statement, I was saying that simple household chores are out of the question. If the child is willingly participating, then i believe that the work (as it should be called in this case ) is perfectly OK in every way. Upon the subject of the age of the child in question, I think that only people over the age of fifteen should be allowed to perform paid labor, because by this point, most people are mature enough to understand the moral importance of the work-force, and also the necessary part of life that is making your own way in the world.