Chapter 1: Child Coverture

Child Labour in the Global Human Rights Regime is about child labour and human rights in modern society at the global level (see: UN, December 2022) [^1.1] and in modern societies at the nation-state level. It is about child labour and human rights under globalization towards a single global social space (see: Close, 2014, p. 79, p. 164; Close & Askew, 2004, pp. 243–244; Close et al., 2007, pp. 34–35) [^1.2], and in societies represented primarily, but not exclusively, by the Member States and Accession Candidates of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), of which in August 2024 there were thirty-eight and eight respectively (see: OECD, 10 August 2024). The focus on the evolving relationship between child labour and human rights in modern nation-states, on the one hand, and in the emerging globalized social space, on the other hand, is not to ignore the relevance of the considerable resistance to globalization from outside and inside the OECD-centred social sphere of Western, or Westernized, economic, political and cultural influence.