Globally, Tweens & Teens Working As Maids

Indian rag picker children collect recyclable garbage at the roadside in Siliguri on June 11, 2013, the eve of World Day Against Child Labour. The International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the first World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 as a way to highlight the plight of children engaged in work that deprives them of adequate education, health, leisure and basic freedoms, violating their rights. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)An alarming number of children between the ages of 7 and 15 are working around the world as domestic servants, with the bulk of them in the poorest regions on earth, mainly Africa and Asia, the International Labor Organization said in a 104 page report published on Wednesday.An estimated 15.5 million children worldwide – most of them under age – are working as domestic workers in people’s homes, in hazardous and sometimes slave-like conditions.  According to the latest figures in a new ILO report titled Ending Child Labor in Domestic Work, the tweens and teens are working outside of their own homes, carrying out tasks such as cleaning, ironing, cooking, gardening, collecting water, looking after other children or caring for the elderly.Some children receive no pay at all, with teenagers quoted in the report from third party sources saying that their employers told them that they were doing them a favor.  More than 59% of the workers were girls.Recent statistics by non-governmental organizations like the ILO have showed that more than a quarter (26.6-%) of all female wage workers in Latin America and the Caribbean are domestic workers and 13.6-% in Africa. In the Asia Pacific region, more than 20 million people are employed as maids, or around 3-% of all paid employees. Eighty -per-cent of them are women.Age groups are distributed quite evenly, according to the ILO study. Around 30% are between the ages of five and 11; 12 and 14 and 38% are older teens, between 15 and 17 years of age.

Domestic work warrants particular attention because of the conditions under which the children – many of whom “livein” with their employers – are working. Time and again, child domestic workers report that their daily experience of discrimination and isolation in the household is the most difficult part of their burden. Their situation, and how they got to be there, also makes them highly dependent on their employers for their basic needs. This seclusion and dependency makes child domestic workers particularly vulnerable to child labor, and at times can result in physical, psychological and sexual violence, the report said.The ILO report is a call for policy makers to ratify treaties to eliminate child labor.In countries like Brazil, around 250,000 children, most of them residing in poorer states north of São Paulo, still work as maids. The state has created a welfare program called Bolsa Familia that requires children remain in school full time in order for families to be a part of the program.