There are 152 million child labourers globally. Efforts since the dawn of the new millennium have helped shrink the number but the goal of eliminating child labour by 2025 already appears to be ambitious.

The target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations requires the member states to “take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms”.

Pakistan has an estimated 3.708 million child labourers in the 10-17 years age bracket, according to Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2014-15.

The LFS estimate excludes children below the age of 10 years. The last national Child Labour Survey, conducted in 1996, had found that 3.3 million children in the 5-14 years age bracket were economically active.

Apparently, some of the child labour population doesn’t appear on our statistical radar. Pakistan needs a more rigorous practical agenda in order to meet this challenge.

Children have been engaged in economic activities since ages in both developed and developing countries. It is generally accepted that children should be involved in productive activities to have opportunities to learn life skills. Thus, not all the work performed by children falls in the definition of undesirable child labour.

Child labour is broadly understood as employment, which by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to jeopardize the health, safety or morals of young persons. Poverty is often listed as being a major cause of child labour. However, it has been shown scientifically that child labour perpetuates poverty.

Child labour has been one of the foremost challenges to be addressed since the creation of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ILO set this as a key goal in 1919, the year of its creation, through the adoption of the Minimum Age (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 5), prohibiting work performed by children of less than 14 years of age in industrial enterprises.

Since then, several international covenants have come into force to effectively abolish child labour. These covenants provide legal definitions of child labour in terms of determining age brackets, work hours, types of work and working conditions.

Pakistan’s ratification of the ILO’s two most pertinent conventions [i.e. Minimum Age Convention-1973 and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention-1999] obligate us to unleash fast-paced actions.

Pakistan’s ratification of the ILO’s two most pertinent conventions [i.e. Minimum Age Convention-1973 and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention-1999] obligates us to unleash fast-paced actions in order to eliminating child labour in all its forms. However, a snapshot of our national statistics on child labour indicates a lack of apt response.

There’s hardly a day when we don’t mourn the plight of children in Pakistan. Everyday we see some neighbourhoods where children are suffering from worst forms of child labour. The number of children falling victim to child labour is increasing. It is also exposing children to violence and denying them access to education.

Simply put, the children who are denied their basic right to education have no better place to go. Any workshop, street or house where children are recruited as servants, push such children into poverty and a life of misery.

There are three major things that we need to understand and address in order to guarantee a decent childhood: first, our approach towards child labour remains parochial. A large part of the society besides the poor parents approves of child labour in one form or the other. The argument is what else will the poor child do to survive?

Many parents see a large number of children as a means of better livelihood prospects for themselves. The societal disapproval of child labour remains weak. This has resulted in accelerating our population growth. Consequently, we have a huge child population. Children trapped in labour are a consequence of wrong policies.

We lack accurate knowledge of the number of child labourers in our country. The scope of our national Labour Force Survey (LFS) falls critically short of enumerating child labour in accordance with the guidelines of internationally adopted covenants. A national-level Child Labour Survey needs to be conducted without delay to curb the menace of child labour.

Lastly, laws that deal with child labour need to be extended to the informal sectors of the economy.

The writer is a development professional