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Child Domestic Labour

Child domestic labour refers to situations where children are engaged to perform domestic tasks in the home of a third party or employer that are exploitative. Whenever such exploitation is extreme - and includes trafficking, slavery-like situations, or work that is hazardous and harmful to a child's physical or mental health - it is considered one of the worst forms of child labour.

Domestic work undertaken by children under the legal minimum working age, as well as by children above the legal minimum age but under the age of 18 under slavery-like, hazardous or other exploitative conditions – a form of ‘child labour to be eliminated’ as defined in international treaties.

Child Domestic Labourers

Child domestic servants are children under the age of 18 who work in households that are not their own undertaking household chores such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of other children, and running errands.

Child Domestic Labour is Hazardous

Almost without exception, children who are in domestic labour are victims of exploitation, often of several different kinds. They are exploited economically: forced to work long hours with no time off, low or no wages. They are exploited because they generally have no social or legal protection, and suffer harsh working conditions. They invariably are deprived of the rights due to them as children in international law, including the right to play, health, and freedom from sexual abuse and harassment, visits to or from their family, association with friends, decent accommodation, and protection from physical and mental abuse.

Child Domestic Labour is one of the Worst Forms of Child Labour

Child domestic labour that is extremely hazardous to the child because of the tasks given, conditions of work or physical, emotional and sexual abuse; practices similar to slavery such as debt bondage or forced labour, and child domestic labour into which a child has been trafficked.Where a child under the age of 18 is engaged in domestic labour and works under conditions that are hazardous, then this constitutes a "worst form of child labour" and must be eliminated as a matter of urgency. This would also be true of situations where the child has been trafficked into domestic labour, or where debt bondage or other practices similar to slavery exist. The term worst form of child domestic labour is used for such exploitation, to reflect the extreme risk to the child and echoing the immediate elimination called for in the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No.182).Once a child is inside an employer’s home, s/he is effectively hidden from view. As a result, employers of children in domestic service have total control over their lives. This is a high-risk situation for the child. Violence and abuse (of many different kinds) can take place behind closed doors, unnoticed by the outside world, and in such cases the child is considered to be in a worst form of child labour.

Understanding Child Domestic Labour

• Domestic work is among the lowest status, least regulated, and poorest remunerated of all occupations, whether preformed by adults or children;
• Most child domestics live in, and are under the exclusive, round the clock control of the employer, they have little freedom or free time;
• About 90 percent of child domestics are girls, their powerlessness within the household renders them especially vulnerable to sexual abuse;
• The “invisibility” of child domestic labour also derives from the fact that the majority are girls. Doing domestic work in a household other than their own is seen as merely an extension of their duties and the concept of employment is missing.
• Since it is possible for very young children to undertake light household tasks, the age of entry can be as young as five;
• Most child domestics do not get paid, the meagre earnings of others are commonly given to parents or people often referred to as “aunties” or “uncles”, but who in reality are unrelated recruitment/ placement agents.
• The live in child domestic is cut off from her or his family, has little opportunity to make friends, almost no social exchange with peers and is invariably denied her or his right to education and development;
• In India, particular groups regarded as subservient have traditionally supplied others with domestic work. For example, children of low-status groups may be ‘bonded’ to an employer to work as domestic worker to pay off the debt incurred by their parents or even grandparents.
• Children tend to be moved from their rural villages to urban centres to cater to the growing middle-class need for domestic servants. Many ‘job placement agents’ have proliferated and driven the growth in trafficking. These agents pick up children on the streets or traffic them from villages to sell them into employment.
• Typically, there are no specific hours or tasks allocated to child domestics. They do what their employers ask them to do, at any time of day or night. Typical tasks include cooking, washing and ironing clothes, cleaning, shopping and looking after the employers’ children – including escorting them to and from school and carrying their bags.
• Sleeping and eating arrangements typically separate child domestics from other members of the household and reinforce their sense of inferiority. Child domestics rarely have a place of their own to sleep, and are expected to sleep on any available space, such as the kitchen floor or on the bedroom floor of their employers’ children. The often eat the leftovers after the entire family has eaten. Meals are regularly withheld as a means of punishment as well.
• The health risks and the risk to well-being are mainly related to the 24 hour x 7 days on call nature of the work. Accidents associated with the household tasks are also common – burning, branding, cuts, etc. In case of breakages or poor performance, the child domestics are severely and violently punished, often to the extent of beatings within an inch of their lives or sexually abused.
• Few child domestics attend school, and those that do drop out at an early age, as the demands of the household tasks takes precedence over school. Lack of schooling not only reduces skills and knowledge, but limits personal development.