Who are working children?

admin — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 21:56:58 +0000

You will see the term ‘working children’ used throughout the Sonrisa website. What does it mean?

There is some debate about the term, but organisations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) make a distinction between the following groups of children:

Street children: Children who live and/or work on the street and in other urban spaces in conditions of extreme poverty and with vastly inadequate shelter, health care, education, protection and guidance.

Street living children: Children who for the majority of the time sleep on the street and retain limited or have no contact with their family of origin.

Street working children: Children who work on the street, both informal and informal sectors, and who for the majority of the time sleep in a home environment and maintain strong and significant contact with their family of origin.

UNICEF also makes a distinction between child work and child labour.

Child work may not necessarily be damaging to a child, if it is not harmful to their health or education. Indeed, It can be positive.

Child labour is likely to be damaging. The term refers to children under 12 who work, children aged 12-14 who do more than light work and all children who are engaged in the worst forms of child labour.

The worst forms of child labour include children being enslaved, forcibly
recruited, prostituted, trafficked, forced into illegal activities or exposed to hazards.

Above: CENIT helps these young boys who work as shoe shiners on the streets of Quito.

The children Sonrisa helps

The children helped by Sonrisa’s partner organisation the Centre for the Working Girl (CENIT) are generally street working children engaged in child labour.

Most of them have homes to go to – they don’t sleep on the streets – although many live in impoverished conditions and may suffer domestic abuse.

The children’s work interferes with their educational opportunity, often puts them in situations of risk and may begin before their twelth birthday. Some CENIT children are engaged in the worst forms of child labour.