The ILO is highlighting their plight in a new report released for World Day Against Child Labour, and says much more still needs to be done by the world’s leaders.
The Asia-Pacific region has the largest number of child labourers with almost 78 million, including 5.5 million in the Philippines alone.
They’re the subject of Dateline's Children of the Dirty Gold story, looking at the children sent deep underground and even underwater to mine gold.
It’s known as Dirty Gold, because it’s not produced ethically. Not only do the miners work in dangerous conditions, but they’re also exploited over the value of the gold they find.
They receive just a fraction of its full market price, before much of it is sold on the black market to avoid taxes and ends up in China and Hong Kong.
The ILO says there could be at least 18,000 children working in gold mining, but the real figure could be tens of thousands more and possibly as high as 100,000.
This mining is illegal and unregulated, so no one really knows. And it’s also not known how many men or children have died compressor mining.
“We are demanding changes in the way that metals are extracted and produced,” says the US-based No Dirty Gold campaign on its website. “All too often at the expense of communities, workers and the environment.”
“Seeing these kind of situations with the children makes me angry,” anti-child labour campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi said after watching the story.
Source: SBS
“That the children have to get into those deep wells inside the water at the risk of their lives - that is something really very, very upsetting," he told the UK’s Channel 4 News.
“Why and how long will we keep on ignoring our children? How long can we just find an excuse of poverty and keep on killing the lives and innocence of children?"
Dateline has also highlighted the issue of child labour in a number of other countries, including Kailash Satyarthi’s homeland of India.
The number of workers aged between five and 14 was 120 million in 2012, compared to 186 million in 2000.
And more than half of all child labourers – 85 million – put their health at risk by working in hazardous jobs, such as mining and construction.
"Children who drop out of school and join the labour force early are more disadvantaged later in life because of a lack of education and basic skills," ILO adviser Patrick Quinn says.
Between 20 to 30 per cent of children in low-income countries are working by the age of 15 and even more leave school before that.
But some governments see it as a necessity – Bolivia recently passed a law lowering the minimum working age to 10.
The ILO says it’s now urging world leaders to come up with a coherent policy to tackle child labour and the lack of decent jobs for youth when they decide on new development goals in September.
