NYT: Child workers in sharp decline, but sub-Saharan Africa is exception

[DeepModem Mom]

Africa Adds to Miserable Ranks of Child Workers
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: August 24, 2006


(Jeffrey Barbee for The New York Times)
Children as young as 4 work six and seven days a week in quarries near Lusaka, Zambia, breaking stones into gravel sold at roadside stalls.

....Across the globe, the number of children forced to work is in sharp decline.

But sub-Saharan Africa...is the exception. Here, more than one in four children below age 14 works, whether full time or for a few hours a week, nearly the same percentage as the worldwide average in 1960.

It is by far the greatest proportion of working children in the world.

By the United Nations’ latest estimate, more than 49 million sub-Saharan children age 14 and younger worked in 2004, 1.3 million more than at the turn of the century just four years earlier....

***

They are prostitutes, miners, construction workers, pesticide sprayers, haulers, street vendors, full-time servants, and they are not necessarily even paid for their labor....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/world/africa/24zambia.html?ei=5094&en=9df4968af9e31383&hp=&ex=1156392000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all