Band 7+: In many developing countries, children work in some form to bring in necessary income from an early age. In the first world, many people think this is damaging and wrong but others would argue that their work brings them a sense of contributing, belonging and responsibility. What is your opinion?

Children laboring for means of financial gains has always been a subject of great scrutiny. While progressive supporters would argue that it is highly dehumanizing and is a predatory exploitation that critically violates children’s rights, the sympathizers imply the tragedies that made this a reality. This essay will delve into both grounds in the effort to elucidate my personal stance, which happens to fall onto the former reasoning.

Foremost, it is crucial for us to understand what settings force such practice to become the norm in developing countries. In these nations, the lack of technological advancements and illiteracy causes an inevitable form of population pattern. In families, youngster’s death rate is so staggeringly high that more than 5 offsprings are required to offset the imminent demise of the bloodline. With so many mouths to feed, it is imperative that all members of the family have to be involved in paid labor in order to survive. UNICEF’s 2017 Report on Children Wellbeing has outlined more than 64.2% of kids aged from 4-12 in Somalia, Congo, and Tanzania, involved in heavy laboring such as mineral mining, transportation, textile working and so forth. More than two-thirds of them not having finished elementary education, and only a quarter not in critical malnutrition condition, child labor has embedded itself as a norm of survival.

But in the eyes of progress, such act is not listenable. When such practices happen, children fall into the legal grey area, where they are not protected from exploitation, torture, hazardous working environments, and the risk of sweatshop exploitation has infact become commonplace. They believe global efforts and governmental involvements can keep children away from taking part in the workforce, as support programs for education, proper technology advancements to reduce death rate and proper propagation of population policies. With that in mind, it is a matter of dire attention to truly eradicate child labor. They are entitled to play, to education, to grow up in the protection of family and the society, and they are not manpower that have to toil their already bareboned bodies to subsidize their own survival.

To sum it up, even as dire as the situation can be, children having to work to bring in necessary income is despicable and damaging. It might seem normal with light labor works that are educational, but the horrible level of exploitation with children working critically attacks the goods of the modern society we are trying to uphold.