Child labor in Cambodia registers alarming levels, according to a survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics, the Planning Ministry and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
The figures corresponding to year 2012 indicate that some 429,000 children were doing the work of adults, two thirds of them in rural areas.
This represents a 10 percent of those between 5 and 17 years of age. Consequently, half of them dropped out of school or never received primary health care, adds the first survey of its kind conducted in the country since 2001.
One of every nine child laborers were engaged in hazardous labor, including working at construction sites or factories, logging, operating heavy machinery and brick-making.
Researchers surveyed a sample of 9,600 households in all 23 provinces and the capital Phnom Penh, but they had no access to children who live at workplaces or those who have been exploited for sex- or drug-trafficking purposes.
In the child labor report’s foreword, Minister of Planning Chhay Than said he expected the report would be useful to ‘planners and policy-makers. Eliminating child labor in Cambodia is one of the most urgent challenges the government faces,’ he says.
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UN Calls for Eradicating Modern Forms of Slavery
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon observed the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery by calling for the eradication of modern forms of that inhuman practice, which affects 21 million people on the planet.
In a message on the date that was set in 1996 by the General Assembly, Ban called upon governments to ratify the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery.
He also asked them to pass solid legislation that will prevent and combat human trafficking, sexual exploitation, child labor, forced marriage and the recruitment of children for the war.
It is necessary to end modern forms of slavery and servitude affecting the poorest and most excluded sectors of society, including immigrants, women, discriminated ethnic groups and indigenous people, he noted.
In late October the General Assembly dedicated one of its sessions to observing the bicentennial of the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade, and several countries warned that poverty, underdevelopment and racism continue to make the scourge of slavery present in these times. (PL)