infoChild Labour by Fernando Moleres
Saturday 1 October to Saturday 19 November 2005
An estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labour. Of those, almost three-quarters work in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations. Millions of girls work as domestic servants and unpaid household help and are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Millions of others work under horrific circumstances. They may be trafficked (1.2 million), forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery (5.7 million), into prostitution and pornography (1.8 million), into participating in armed conflict (0.3 million) or other illicit activities (0.6 million). However, the vast majority of child labourers, 70 per cent or more, work in agriculture. (Source: UNICEF)
Fernando Moleres has photographed children working in the street, on sugar cane harvests, in mines, on ship breaking, in prostitution and more, in a project that has taken five years to complete and has won him a World Press Photo award in 1998. Side Gallery first showed a small selection of these images in 2000, as part of its exhibition on the work of the photo agency Panos Pictures.
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