The International Labor Organisation (ILO), in a depressing report of the times, has released figures of child labourers around the world, which have been recorded at a whopping more than 10.5 million.

Overall, 6.5 million of these children are aged between five and 14 years old. Over 71 per cent of the child labour population are girls.

These children, who should be out playing and studying, have been found working as domestic workers in hazardous, sometimes slave-like conditions. Often employed to work in the homes of a third party or employer, these domestic tasks include cleaning, ironing, cooking, gardening, looking after other children, and caring for the elderly.

To be spared from whatever legal impediments, employers isolate the children from their families and hid them from the public eye. As such, they are very much at risk to physical, psychological and sexual violence and abusive working conditions.

What's more, "they can become in a state of high dependence on the family or the people in whose household they are working. We also have evidence that some do end up becoming commercially sexually exploited," Constance Thomas, director of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor, said.

These children work for long hours each day and are given no time for rest or leisure.

"The child is working, but is not considered as a worker, and although the child lives in a family setting, she or he is not treated like a family member," the 87-page ILO report said.

It is a reality that many children work to support their families. "However, when children are forced into the most dangerous forms of labor and they then miss school in this context and their health and well-being are impaired than this is unacceptable," UNICEF's Global Head of Child Protection Susan Bissell said in a message on Wednesday on the commemoration of the World Day Against Child Labor.

According to the report:

  • Rural families in Pakistan and Nepal are forced to send their children into domestic service to pay off their debts
  • In Haiti, hundreds of thousands of children, including those who have escaped natural disasters, have ended up in domestic work little better than slavery
  • Thousands of young girls from Ethiopia are sent every year to the Middle East to work as servants

"We need a robust legal framework to clearly identify, prevent and eliminate child labour in domestic work, and to provide decent working conditions to adolescents when they can legally work," Ms Thomas said.

She noted that Ghana now has an existing programme addressing child labor in agriculture, in fishing and in domestic work.

"We have some good examples of some great, great progress. But they are calling on more action because domestic work is one of those that is going to be the hardest to root out because it is hidden - very much because it is hidden," the ILO executive stated.

"The situation of many child domestic workers not only constitutes a serious violation of child rights, but remains an obstacle to the achievement of many national and international development objectives," she added.