Around the world, millions of children under the age of fifteen are engaged in the work force, often lacking proper education and schooling. Child labour has remained one of the great dilemmas of our time in particular, but not exclusively, in developing countries. Families still depend upon income generated by children who in turn miss out on education, and fail to make progress and build prosperity for coming generations in a world that is increasingly shaped by knowledge and information. Child labour causes social, educational and economic problems, primarily in the domestic realm of each country and society. It is a core issue of domestic educational and economic policies. It cannot be ignored in development cooperation. As a problem of human rights protection with implications for the conditions of competition in international trade, it also features prominently in public international law. This is the topic of the present book. Franziska Humbert offers a rich and detailed account of the causes, instruments and problems relating to the monitoring and implementation of what essentially amounts to a ban of child labour in international law.

The book expounds the distressing facts and context of exploiting child labour and its various forms at different levels of social and economic development in great detail. The exploration of the legal framework amounts to a careful analysis of the various instruments. The author starts with the impact of the human rights instruments of the United Nations and the numerous instruments of the International Labour Organization.