Children fighting in armies or working as servants, but US labour department report says progress is being made

Children continue to be trapped in domestic servitude in Venezuela, taken into military service in Eritrea and made to labour in cotton fields in Uzbekistan, as 10% of the world’s children are forced to work.

About 40% of countries surveyed are not doing enough to protect children from employment, according to a report released on Tuesday by the US department of labour. The study, which analysed more than 140 countries, showed that 168 million children are made to work.

Children are employed in dangerous agricultural work, carpet weaving, stone quarrying, domestic work and scavenging on waste sites. Some are held in bonded labour and forced to serve in armed conflict or help traffic illicit drugs, while others are trafficked for commercial exploitation.

The use of child soldiers is still a problem in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, the report said, with the governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and South Sudan recruiting children for their armies, and Mali and Rwanda funding armed groups that are known to deploy child fighters. Children in Iraq, Palestine and Yemen were also made to fight in armed conflicts, according to the report.

“Children working in hazardous or exploitative conditions is a problem that requires urgent action by all parties, including governments and nongovernmental actors alike,” said Egan Reich, a spokesman for the department of labour.

Limited access to education and inadequate legal protections push children into work, according to the report. In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 59 million children between the ages of five and 17 are made to work.

But more countries are making “meaningful efforts” to eradicate child labour than in previous years, with 13 states thought to have strengthened laws and policies aimed at preventing young people from working. The report ranks countries as having made significant, moderate, minimal or no advancement in reducing child labour.

Albania, Brazil, Chile, Ivory Coast and Tunisia have used “very innovative strategies and social programmes” to make impressive strides in keeping children out of the workplace. Reich said: “These countries took important steps forward in their efforts to address child labour, and, for some, this was the first time we had seen such a high level of advancement.”

In 2012, the International Labour Organisation estimated that the number of working children fell by 78 million, or 30%, from 2000.

US secretary of labour Thomas Perez said: “We are seeing more countries take action to address the issue, but the world can and must do more to accelerate these efforts. When children are learning rather than working, families flourish, economies grow and nations prosper.”