The Child Labor Problem and the Need for International Labor Standards

The problem of exploitative child labor has received much attention in recent years. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) there are approximately 250 million working children aged between five and fourteen, of which at least 120 million are involved in full-time work that is both hazardous and exploitative. Such labor is spread throughout the developing world. Measured in absolute terms, Asia has the high-est incidence of child labor (152.5 million), followed by Africa (80 million) and Latin America (17.5 million). Measured in proportional terms approximately 40 percent of African children work, while 20 percent of children work in Asia and Latin America respectively.1 Driven by public outrage in developed countries, the issue of exploitative child labor has received increasing attention. Yet solutions remain elusive, and they are made more complicated by the fact that the extent of child labor reflects a country’s level of economic development. This means that developed country calls for prohibition can seem hollow in the eyes of developing countries, which maintain that the developed countries themselves relied extensively on child labor when they were at a similar stage of economic development. Given this contentious environment there has been a tendency to promote policies of unofficial voluntarism whereby private producers adopt codes of practice that bar the use of child labor. These voluntaristic practices are exemplified by private labeling