A group of international academics has condemned a United Nations convention which bans child labour as ``harmful and unnecessary'', arguing that allowing young children to work can have positive effects which are not being taken into account.
In a letter to The Observer, the researchers, who work in the fields of child development or human rights, say the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has ignored evidence in favour of outdated and ill-informed Western prejudices and policies which can have a negative impact on the ground.
A total of 193 countries have committed to ending child labour by 2025 under the UN's sustainable development goals. But the academics want the existing minimum age (15 in some countries, 18 in others), to be abandoned, arguing that ``age-appropriate'' work can be beneficial for children in the developing and the developed worlds and gives poor children a chance to improve their lives.
One of the signatories, Dr Dorte Thorsen, of the University of Sussex, said: ``Banning children from work doesn't bring them back into school; in fact, it might do the opposite if they were working to pay their school fees.
``For some children it's a matter of rational economics. We have years of evidence that show that work doesn't end a childhood and often can enhance it, can create a solidarity. In some countries in Africa, and in India, we are seeing collectivisation movements of child workers, a unionisation where they are trying to participate in politics, be heard, as opposed to this being a story of victimisation and oppression.''
Dr Thorsen criticised the pressure on British companies to scrutinise their supply chains for evidence of child labour, a task Dr Thorsen says they are unlikely to perform properly.
The experts also pointed to the setting up of schools in some countries for employees, which had then closed after pressure from the international campaign against child labour. Other children, they said, have been forced into hazardous, dangerous or illegal work because more regulated employment became closed to them.
Richard Carothers, a Toronto-based child development expert at the International Child Protection Network, said: ``The hard-headed attitude of the big bureaucratic international agencies, immediately putting kids out of work because they think they should be playing football instead, is definitely not the way to approach this. Children need to be protected from nasty situations, and there is a debate about whether the percentage of working children in nasty situations is a small percentage or a very small percentage, but in no way does fixating on an age limit help kids in situations where they are being harmed.''
He said UN officials should listen to children's views. ``Once a country ratifies a UN convention, then this translates into national law, and that's it. Too simplistic. It's damaging. We have case study after case study where children and their families have been damaged.''
Melanie Jacquemin, a sociologist from the University of Marseille, is now working in the Ivory Coast. She said the stereotypes of exploited children were the exception.
``Yes, some child workers are in harsh situations. They are not matching the standards we have for decent work at all, they can be exploited and sometimes they are overworked. And of course if someone has your passport and you are deprived of your liberty and in a slavery situation, then this is a very important issue - trafficking does exist.
``But all the studies have shown that, although important morally, these cases are very much a minority issue compared with the great majority of children who are working under decent conditions, particularly here in west Africa.''
Young workers needed help to avoid pitfalls, and children, whether in Africa or Europe, would sometimes expose themselves to risk and be exploited. But banning work represented a grave error by big international agencies, and was a decision based on ``extremes of experiences that don't cover the experiences of real people living and learning''. - The Observer
