Child Domestic Workers

Abstract

This article discusses the nature of child domestic work (where children are employed as servants in the households of families other than their own) based on the experience of Anti-Slavery International and its partners and illustrates how this gives rise to the problems encountered in attempts to protect children from abuse. In particular, it demonstrates how the failure of previous international standards has occurred as a result of their failure to recognize the significance of societal perceptions of the problem. Rather than merely banning all forms of domestic work, new standards (such as the ILO's proposed convention on `intolerable' child labout) must be able to set practical and achievable targets, in order to set practical and achievable targets, in order to have any effect on the way in which child domestic work is perceived throughout society. The article concludes by suggesting a number of practical steps that can be taken to ensure that, at least in the first instance, child domestic workers are afforded a measure of protection which they do not currently receive.