Child Labor

1.1. Why Child Labour?

As I visited my brother in Cambodia in March 2004, I saw, to my horror, little girls of

10 to 12 years old everywhere on the streets and the bars selling themselves to the wealthy

'western' tourists who visit the country. This was the first touch I had to the reality of

working children in the 'developing countries'. My first reaction was pity and disgust as I

watched the girls. Next, I simply wanted to cry. The rest of my time in Cambodia I kept

wondering how was it possible that, despite all the international regulations on child labour

and trafficking of children, the streets of Phnom Penh were full of Vietnamese child

prostitutes. When I then got a chance to investigate something through my MA thesis in

Finland, to me it was clear from the beginning that this was the topic I wanted to study.

Something, in the end, must be 'wrong' with the international child labour regulations if the

reality in the 'developing' countries is still so horrid. My initial idea was to study all the

international regulations that relate to child labour but eventually, after some investigation, I

arrived at the conclusion that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) was the

international organisation responsible for the international child labour politics. In the end, all

the other international organisations working in the field of child labour (such as UNICEF

and the World Bank) base their regulations on those of the ILO. I also realised that the

national laws on child labour worldwide are, to a great extent, based on the regulations of the

ILO. Finally, I reached the conclusion that child labour as such is such a complicated concept

that it may simply be impossible to draft regulations on it that could be applied all over the

world. My question was, therefore, how was the ILO attempting to make universal child

labour policies and why? And was it possible, due to the complexity of the concept of child

labour, to draft universally applicable legislation on child labour? Asking myself these

questions I investigated on the topic and