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12th Jun: World Day Against Child Labour
12th June is World Day Against Child Labour. Over 200 million children aged 5 to 14 around the world are forced to work for a living, to support their families or themselves. This number accounts for one fifth of the total global 5 to 14 year old population.
EveryChild works with vulnerable children who are denied a childhood. Many beg on the streets, crawl through rubbish dumps collecting scrap or carry out dangerous and back-breaking work in sweatshops, mines, quarries, farms and heavy industry – just to survive.
Bopha spent years trapped in domestic labour
Many of these children work long hours, for little or no pay, for exploitative and unsympathetic employers. Bopha is an orphan from Cambodia who was employed as a domestic worker for as long as she can remember. Working from dawn until after midnight, Bopha’s only reward was bed and meagre board. Living as a virtual slave, she was often beaten or sent to bed after a grueling day’s work with an empty stomach as punishment for underachieving.
There are as many as 28,000 children who are being exploited in domestic service in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh - 75% receive no salary. The majority of these children are forced to work seven days a week, which keeps them away from home and school and has a damaging effect on their health and wellbeing. Bopha was rescued from a life of servitude by SCADP, EveryChild’s local partner in Phnom Penh.
Now aged 15, she attends school and enjoys the freedom to make friends for the first time in her life. Bopha is currently living in an interim housing centre run by SCADP, where she will learn the life and vocational skills she needs for the future. Instead of being in the secure and nurturing environment of a loving family, millions of children like Bopha are hidden away from the outside world and denied the type of childhood we take for granted in the West. With no hope of an education and no way of lifting themselves out of poverty, these children face a bleak future and are destined to repeat their parents' struggles and hardships.
Find out more
On World Day Against Child Labour, EveryChild is calling on governments to do more for the 1 in 5 children around the world who must work to survive. If you would like to learn more about our work with exploited children in Cambodia, or around the world, please click here.