Question

Child labor remains a major issue on a global scale. The US has strict laws against it, so it is much less common here, but that is not the case in poorer countries, especially in rural areas. Currently, there are an estimated 215 million children being forced into labor in the agricultural sector from a global perspective. One such country that is especially guilty of utilizing child labor is Ghana, where one in six children between the ages of six to fourteen work seventeen hour days in harsh and abusive conditions. In many cases, the parents of these children are tricked into allowing these child labor traffickers to take them under the belief that the children are actually going to be taught a trade. What was originally thought to be a way of providing a better future for the children turns into trafficking. They are taken out of school, so they end up missing out on education as they grow up. The government has been working to cut down on this trafficking, as there are laws against it in Ghana, but it is still a major ongoing problem. The poverty levels force the parents to believe that they have no choice but to give up their children in many cases because they cannot provide for all of them.

please elaborate more on this topic

Answer 1

There are many aspects of child labor. As the write-up points out, one of the key reasons for child labor is poverty. There is also serious ethical and moral questions that needs to be answered before we can convincingly say that the child labor should be abolished in a country like Ghana.

The main problem with many organizations and companies is that the senior managers and executives are often unaware of what goes on in the ground. This is a strong analogy to the child labor situation. We are currently sitting in a developed country like USA and talk about social justice and abolishment of child labor. However, we need to answer the key questions that comes along with it. If the child is not working, is there an opportunity for him to live in a better condition? If the parents are impoverished, how will they provide the child with education and food? In case that is not possible, is it possible for them to receive government aid? Does the abolishment of child labor bring them relief and better quality of life or does it pushes them into more depressive state?

By no means, I am an advocate for child labor. The only reason for this argument is that there are various situations and environment that we cannot exactly fathom. For example, let’s take Maslow’s hierarchy in consideration. Once our physical needs are satisfied we begin to look at security and social needs. Abolishment of child labor is at that stage. Since for the people in USA, the physical needs are take care of, we begin to worry about others’ issues such as child labor. What we fail to realize in this is that in countries like Ghana, a large chunk of the population finds it difficult to satisfy their physical needs. This makes the overall situation more complicated than we can gauge.

This is why even though we want to abolish child labor, we need to make sure that the step is progressive. We need to make sure that by abolishing child labor, we can provide the people of poor countries with a better standard of living and not end up in a regressive situation. This is why at the beginning of this write up I said that there are ethical and moral complications regarding this issue.