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Essay / Child labor: a modern form of slavery
“I see innocent children brutally taken out of bed to be thrown into factories from the age of 3 or 4; I see them stunned, sickly, with sad eyes imploring in vain the mercy of their parents and masters,” a quote from Allan Clark’s 1899 book “The Effects of the Factory System.” What is child labor, you ask? Child labor involves sending children (up to the age of 18) cruelly sent by their parents or stolen from their families to work for little or no pay. They usually work in dangerous conditions, risking their lives to earn money for their master. They usually sleep in crowded huts with other children, sleep at least 12 to 16 hours a day and do not shower. Imagine sleeping in your own sweat and grime. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. The cruel abuse of countless children takes many forms: slavery, trafficking, soldiering and servitude. Children sold into slavery are forced to live in tiny huts. Up to 100 children are crammed into these huts. Similar to slavery, child trafficking involves the sale and smuggling of children to cruel “masters” and are treated as “commodities”. Child soldiers are not bought but stolen from their families to fight in gangs and armies. Africa accounts for more than 40% of child soldiers in the world. Children are not bought but given to “masters” to repay their family’s debt to others, this is called servitude. No child should have to go through this, and yet people get through it just fine. Just imagine what it must be like to work continuously every day of every week. More than 168 million children (5 to 17 years old) are involved in child labor. So why are all these children used for child labor? Some of the main causes resemble those of slavery 100 years ago. This includes poverty, limited access to education, repression of workers, and limited bans on child labor. Although there are laws and standards aimed at eliminating child labor, this phenomenon continues to occur all over the world. But YOU can help stop it by donating to charity, supporting families with working children, reporting unsafe working conditions, giving them the education they deserve, reporting abuse of children (which could come from their owners), by helping to remove children from dangerous places. working conditions and, finally, report any word of child trafficking, slavery or soldiering. While we are all sitting nice and happy here with our phones, video games, TVs and good food, the children of Africa and Asia are sitting in their crowded huts with none of what we have. They work 12 to 16 hour days in dangerous conditions, with barely a single break, while we get the education we need to get the jobs we want. We can decide what our future will be while they don't. None of us would last a day doing what we have to do, but they must prove to their masters that they are not weak, or else they will be thrown into the street or even killed. Do you want your children to experience what they are experiencing? I didn't think so, so why should they go through all this? Yes, Unicef has been trying to do something for years.