Children's Exploitation in Italy

More than 5% of children are forced to work in Italy, and 30,000 boys between 14 and 15 years are at risk exploitation with consequences for health, safety or integrity.

More than 5% of children are forced to work in Italy, and 30,000 boys between 14 and 15 years are at risk exploitation with consequences for health, safety or integrity. It is the alarm raised by Save the Children on the occasion of the presentation of a research carried out in collaboration with the Association of Bruno Trentin.

"He lives in Naples, is 9 years old and works at a construction site to move bags of cement that weigh almost as much as he, for 10 Euros a week." It is one of many stories that emerged from this survey, the only one of its kind, conducted by interviewing 2,005 children enrolled in the two years of upper secondary school in 15 Italian provinces (Treviso, Vicenza, Turin, Genoa, Monza and Brianza, Lecco, Pisa, Rome, Frosinone, Caserta, Avellino, Naples, Bari, Palermo, Trapani), and 75 schools in the sample. Here's some evidence emerged.

There are 260,000 pre-teens "forced" to work already very young because of family circumstances, a relationship with the school that does not work or to cope on their own to their needs (the ratio comes to workers under the age of 16, Ed) ; and 30,000 14-15 year olds who do a dangerous job for their health, working at night or on an ongoing basis, with the real risk of compromising their studies, the fun, the rest you need.



It also starts very early, before the age of 11 (0.3%); but with increasing age, which increases the incidence of the phenomenon, to reach the peak (18.4%) between 14 and 15 years of age transition from school to higher education, which materializes in one of Italy's dropout rates among the highest in Europe (18.2% against an EU27 average of 13%). Child labor is not gender differences: almost half are female (46%). The work experiences are largely occasional (40%); you work for periods of up to one year and there are those who exceeds 5 hours of daily work (24%).

Exploitation begins at home. For 41% of children in the activity it is in fact a mini or micro family businesses, especially housework ongoing for several hours a day, even in conflict with school hours. More than 1 in 10 works at the activities carried out by relatives or friends, but there are some who lends his work to people outside the family environment (14%). And here it goes: bartenders, waiters, help in the kitchen, pastry bakeries, selling or itinerant permanent, committed, or where you do the cleaning, along with agricultural labor or farming and handling of the animals (13.6% ), but there is work in the pipeline (1.5%), often burdensome and full of risks, or to babysit (4%).

Less than half of the child-workers between 14 and 15 year old claims to receive compensation (45%).

Among the auspices launched by the authors of the research, to proceed promptly to the adoption of a National Action Plan on Child Labour for the creation of a system of regular monitoring of the phenomenon and to act effectively on prevention and counteraction of this, all too often elusive, shape of illegality and exploitation.