Facts about child labour

According to UNICEF, 250 million children between 5 and 14 who do hard and health damaging work.

80 million child workers risk becoming handicapped from their work.  Girls are more often than boys denied schooling.

It is not necessarily a bad thing in itself that children work. In many countries and families it is part of the culture that children help in the fields or at home in the kitchen.

According to the ILO (the UN Workers' Organisation), almost 120 million children work full time without the possibility to go to school - the rest of the children go to school at home or simply just stay at home.

It is not only in poor countries that children work. In a rich country like Denmark it is quite usual that children work to earn some extra pocket money.

There are more than 400 million child workers in the world if children who do domestic work and work in agriculture are counted in.

Half of the world's child workers live in Asia.

According to UNICEF, in India alone there are 44 million children working.

Children are forced to work because of poverty, local customs and lack of schools.

Child workers are often working under dangerous conditions. Especially girls are more exposed to dangerous working conditions because they begin to work at an earlier age than boys. Moreover girls tend to have longer working days than boys.

Sources: UNICEF Denmark and the ILO (the UN Workers' Organisation) and more.