UN has BIG Plans

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The United Nations has announced plans to eliminate child labor by 2020. Ridiculous. Plain ridiculous.

This ambitious report comes in the wake of some bad news regarding child labor. Recent research presented quite a grim outlook on the subject - High growth in developing nations will not substantially reduce the number of children in labor. This means that even if, say India, develops quickly and gets on par with European countries, child labor will not magically disappear - In fact, as India develops, it would increase, halting progress.

Warning that "current trends are of great concern", the UN predicted that in eight years time, there will still be 190 million child laborers in the world, a drop of just 25 million from where it is today. Even worse is that in the poorest parts of the world, child labor is expected to rise: A jump of 15 million of child laborers in sub-Saharan Africa.

A UN report to be launched by special education envoy Gordon Brown warns that unless this serious issue is tackled, the goal of all children completing elementary school by 2015 will not be achieved. They state that child labor "Exacerbates the risk of being out of school." Big fancy word for child labor stops education.

The research continues with a barrage of statistics. 60 million children work in agriculture - In Afghanistan, half of the workforce in brick kilns are under 14. In Ethiopia, 60% of kids work. Multinational companies are coming under fire, especially in China, where supplies to Apple, Google, and Samsung have been accused of using children for cheap labor. So are US chocolate companies, who have failed to uphold their promise of educating all children in areas of West Africa where cocoa was made.

Strategies being discussed include making education compulsory for all children, and even paying families to send kids to school, something that has worked in Brazil. However, many children would go to school and work at the same time, resulting in a low quality education.

Brown tells the Guardian that child labour is the "new slavery" for our age. "Efforts to combat child labour are failing in the face of inertia, indifference and an indefensible willingness on the part of too many governments, international agencies and aid donors to turn a blind eye," he writes in the foreword to the report.

See ya next week!