Chapter 2: Notions, Patterns and Trends

But another response might be ‘It all depends on what is meant by and counted as “child labour”’, just as child labour’s extent, patterns and trends depend on the same consideration (see: UNICEF, 01 January 2012).

In Chapter 1, reference is made to the International Labour Organization’s and UNICEF’s notions of child labour. According to the ILO, ‘child labour’ is ‘often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to [their] physical and mental development [and/or that] interferes with their schooling’ (ILO, 29 July 2024; see: Beegle et al., 2009). For UNICEF, child labour ‘refers to work that children are too young to perform or that – by its nature or circumstances – can be hazardous’; and, in ‘its most insidious forms, [child labour] can amount to slavery’ (UNICEF, 11 July 2024). The ILO and UNICEF are attracted to value-laden prescriptive notions of child labour, as befits their self-declared activist aims, these being focused on improving children’s lives by eliminating child labour, at least in the sense in which each organization (to some extent in a mutual way) has defined, distinguished and identified child labour.