Stop Child Labour? Think Again! (Matt)

Walking down the streets happily, last week you have had a breakthrough in your campaign against child labour; it has been outlawed world-wide. You walk down the streets and you notice 75% of the shops are closing down. You walk into a shop to buy a new phone but the cashier says they’re bankrupt. What’s happening? Was this the cause of child labour being banned? Of course not, banning child labour isn’t important to yo at all! It will not even affect you! Really? Think again!

Did you know that child labour is one of the most helpful jobs in the world? This is how it works; the families get enough money to survive, while the businesses have to pay lower for the cheap labour the children supply. Since there is more money saved on the labour, businesses can supply more people with jobs, therefore enabling more products to be made for the businesses and boosting the economy. Amazing isn’t it? Just one job area can sway economies, governments, businesses and families! Statistics show that in the past couple of years child labour in India has grown with its economy! Now that’s pretty impressive.

Child labour is also extremely useful for children. They learn to tolerate everyone and everything around them, they build confidence through success in their job and they and they become committed. Children can build valuable life skills through labour! They also will probably have to do a similar job later on, so it prepares them for their work.

Of course, in an ideal world we would prefer to end child labour for ethical reasons. But that's not the reality behind this. Imagine a family of six, a mother, father, two sons and two daughters. They are living in a small poor village in the heart of Africa. The father is brutal injured from war and the mother is sick from malaria. In the fields the two sons, thirteen and nine, are working for the pure survival of not only their families, but for themselves.

So what would happen if child labour was outlawed? One word: chaos. The developing countries’ economies, governments and businesses would come crashing down due to the loss of this cheap labour. On top of that hundreds upon millions of innocent poor children would perish; every day. The huge effect on the third world countries would result in no resources transferred into the modernised countries. Thousands of the things we have in our products come from these countries through child labour. The modernised economies would crash due to the lack of trade. In effect, this would send the world into the biggest crisis every known to man-kind.

Is this the cause of the bankrupt shop?
Yes.
So, how important is child labour to you now?