４．子供の保護
４．子供の保護The field of children's rights spans the fields of law, politics, religion, and morality.
Nowadays, a lot of debates occurred since that international schooling and access to education is seen to be the basis of a proper way of growing which can lead to the freedom to become what a child wants to be in the future.
- One of the most significant issue is child labor. Child labor is the employment of children under an age determined by law or custom. This practice is considered exploitative by many countries and international organizations despite child labor was utilized to varying extents through most of history. Changes in working conditions during industrialization, and with the emergence of the concepts of workers' and children's rights has made the problem all the more important.
In many developed countries, it is considered inappropriate or exploitative if a child below a certain age works, excluding household chores or schoolwork. An employer is often not allowed to hire a child below a certain age. This minimum age depends on the country.
In the Industrial Revolution, children as young as four were employed in production factories with dangerous, and often fatal, working conditions. Based on this understanding of the use of children as laborers, it is now considered by wealthy countries to be a human rights violation, and is outlawed, while some poorer countries may allow or tolerate it.
A major ethic issue in the child labor is the fact that poor families often rely on the labors of their children for survival, and sometimes it is their only source of income. Child labor is employed in subsistence agriculture and in the urban informal sector; child domestic work is also important. In order to benefit children, child labor prohibition has to address the dual challenge of providing them with both short-term income and long-term prospects. Some youth rights groups, however, feel that prohibiting work below a certain age violates human rights, reducing children's options and leaving them subject to the whims of those with money. A child may consent to work if, for example, the earnings are attractive or if the child hates school, but such consent may not be informed consent. The workplace may still be an undesirable situation for a child in the long run.
Child labor is still widely used today in many countries,including India and Bangladesh. Even though country law states that no child under the age of 14 may work, this law is ignored. Children as young as 11 go to work for up to 20 hours a day in sweatshops making items for US companies, such as Hanes, Wal-mart, and Target. They get paid as little as 6 and a half cents per item. One of the largest companies in Bangladesh is Harvest Rich, who claim not to use child labor, although the children only got 1d per week.
- The military use of children: it takes three distinct forms: children can take direct part in hostilities (child soldiers), or they can be used in support roles such as porters, spies, messengers, look outs, and sexual slaves; or they can be used for political advantage either as human shields or in propaganda.
Throughout history and in many cultures, children have been extensively involved in military campaigns even when such practices were supposedly against cultural morals. Since the 1970s a number of international conventions have come into effect that try to limit the participation of children in armed conflicts, nevertheless the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers reports that the use of children in military forces, and the active participation of children in armed conflicts is widespread.
Africa has the largest number of child soldiers. In 2004 one estimate put the number of children involved in armed conflict including combat roles at 100,000.
>Burundi – Hundreds of child soldiers serve in the Forces Nationales pour la Libération (FNL), an armed rebel Hutu group. 16-year olds are also conscripted by the Burundese military.
>Central African Republic – Hundreds of children serve in armed rebel groups, including the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement, UFDR).
>Chad – Child soldiers are fighting with the Chadian Military, integrated rebel forces - the United Front for Democratic Change (Front Uni pour le Changement, FUC), local self-defense forces known as Tora Boro militias, and two Sudanese rebel movements operating in Chad - the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the G-19 faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA).
>Cote d'Ivoire – Children serve in armed militia groups linked to the government, including the Alliance patriotique de l’ethnie Wé (APWé) and the Union patriotique de résistance du Grand Ouest (UPRGO). The ex-rebel groups now allied into the New Forces (Forces Nouvelles de Côte d'Ivoire, FAFN) also had child soldiers.
>Democratic Republic of Congo – Thousands of children serve in the military, as well as the various rebel militias. At the height of the Second Congo War, the UN estimated that more than 30,000 children were fighting with various parties to the conflict.
>Sierra Leone - Thousands of children were recruited and used by all sides during Sierra Leone’s conflict (1993-2002), including the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), and the pro-government Civil Defense Forces (CDF). Children were often forcibly recruited, given drugs and used to commit atrocities. Thousands of girls were also recruited as soldiers and often subjected to sexual exploitation. Many of the children were survivors of village attacks, while others were found abandoned. They were used for patrol purposes, attacking villages, and guarding workers in the diamond fields. In his book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier, Ishmael Beah chronicles his life during the conflict in Sierra Leone.
>Somalia – Nearly all factional militias in Somalia use child soldiers, with an estimated 200,000 children involved over a 16 year period. In late 2006, Islamic Courts Union used large numbers of child soldiers to fight against Ethiopian and Somalian forces, reportedly resulting in the death of "countless" teenage fighters.
>...
We can find also children in many armies all around the world, in every continent, such as in Asia (Nepal, Iraq,the Philippines, Sri Lanka,...), Europe (Chechnya, Serbia,...), South America (Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti)
- Prostitution of children: The Optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography to the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the prostitution of children or child prostitution is the practice whereby a child is used by others for sexual activities in return for remuneration or any other form of consideration. The remuneration or other consideration could be provided to the child or to another person.
Most generally, the prostitution of children means that a party other than the child benefits from a commercial transaction in which the child is made available for sexual purposes - either an exploiter intermediary (pimp) who controls or oversees the child’s activities for profit, or a child abuser who negotiates an exchange directly with a child in order to receive sexual gratification. The provision of children for sexual purposes may also be a medium of exchange between adults.
The prostitution of children is seen as forming part of the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), and is sometimes connected to the trafficking of children for sexual purposes, and to child pornography. Child sex tourism also falls within the category of the prostitution of children.
Practices have been seen in Ukraine, Thailand, or Cambodia...
A lot of NGOs are working in this field: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Save the Children Alliance, Jesuit Refugee Service, Defence for Children International, OneChild, etc.
