A group of international academics has condemned the UN convention banning child labour as “harmful”, saying the policy ignores benefits and reflects Western prejudice.
In a letter to The Observer newspaper, they argued that allowing young children to work could have positive effects which were not being taken into account, the Guardian reported on Sunday.
The researchers, who work in the fields of child development or human rights, said the UN committee has ignored available evidence in favour of “outdated and ill-informed Western prejudices”.
They said the UN policies could have a negative impact on the ground.
One of the signatories, Dorte Thorsen of the school of global studies at the University of Sussex, said, “Banning children from work doesn’t bring them back into school.
“In fact, it might do the opposite if they were working to pay their school fees,” the Guardian quoted him as saying.
He pointed at India and Africa nations and said, “We are seeing collectivisation movements of child workers, a unionisation where they are trying to participate in politics, be heard, as opposed to this being a story of victimisation and oppression.”
Richard Carothers, a Toronto-based child development expert at the International Child Protection Network, called the UN policy “hard-headed attitude of the big bureaucratic international agencies”.