COVID-19 has brought a series of disturbing reports of school children reverting to child labour, as well as increases in child marriage, trafficking, domestic violence and a sharpening digital divide in education. Globally, children are falling through the cracks, with governments ignoring child rights violations under the facade of having more urgent problems to tackle.  According to the UNICEF, child labour has increased for the first time in two decades and the COVID crisis threatens to push millions more young people towards the same fate.

In a joint report, the International Labour Organization and the UNICEF says that the number of children in child labour stood at 160 million at the start of 2020 – an increase of 8.4 million in last four years. As reported by them, “the increase began before the pandemic hit and marks a dramatic reversal of a downward trend that had seen child labour numbers shrink by 94 million between 2000 and 2016.” And the pandemic risks worsening the situation. They warn that unless urgent action is taken to help ballooning numbers of families plunging into poverty, nearly 50 million more children could be forced into child labour over the next two years.

The number of children in child labour stood at 160 million at the start of 2020 – an increase of 8.4 million in last four years.

“We are losing ground in the fight to end child labour,” said Henrietta Fore, Executive Director at UNICEF, stressing that “the Covid-19 crisis is making a bad situation even worse.” She added, “Now, well into a second year of global lockdowns, school closures, economic disruptions, and shrinking national budgets, families are forced to make heart-breaking choices.”

According to the report, if the latest projections materialise of poverty increases due to the pandemic, another nine million children will be pushed into child labour by the end of 2022. But according to UNICEF statistics specialist Claudia Cappa, who co-authored the report, statistical modelling shows that number could be more than five times higher. 

“We are losing ground in the fight to end child labour,” – Henrietta Fore, Executive Director at UNICEF

“If social protection coverage slips from the current levels… as a result of austerity measures and other factors, the number of children falling into child labour can go up [an additional] 46 million [by the end of the next year],” she told Agence France-Presse. The report, which is published every four years, shows that children aged between five and 11 account for more than half of the global figure.

Boys are significantly more likely to be affected, accounting for 97 of the 160 million children toiling in child labour at the start of 2020. But the gender gap narrows by half when household chores performed for at least 21 hours a week are counted, the report says.

Another nine million children will be pushed into child labour by the end of 2022.

Worryingly there is a significant increase seen in children between the ages of five and 17 who are doing what is categorised as hazardous work, which is deemed to affect a child’s development, education or health. This can include labouring in dangerous industries, like mining or with heavy machinery, and working for more than 43 hours a week, which makes schooling next to impossible. A full 79 million children were considered to be doing such hazardous work at the start of 2020, up 6.5 million from four years earlier, the report shows.

The study reveals that most child labour is concentrated in the agriculture sector, which accounts for 70% of the global total, or 112 million children. The greatest increase in child labour was seen in sub-Saharan Africa, where population growth, recurrent crises, extreme poverty and inadequate social protection measures have pushed an additional 16.6 million children into child labour since 2016, the report finds. Nearly a quarter of children aged five to 17 years old in sub-Saharan Africa are already in child labour, compared with 2.3% in Europe and North America.

Most child labour is concentrated in the agriculture sector, which accounts for 70% of the global total, or 112 million children.

Education is rightly regarded everywhere as a route out of poverty and underdevelopment. Compulsory education was one of the factors that helped to eradicate child labour in 19th-century Europe, the US and Japan. This was achieved mainly through the strict implementation of child labour and education laws, inducing a shift in parental perceptions about the returns from child labour, and changes in education being the sole preserve of the elites. Today’s rapidly changing and competitive global labour market has accentuated the premium on education.