Child labour in Lesotho

Significant levels of child labour exist in

Lesotho Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked country, landlocked as an Enclave and exclave, enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the Thabana Ntlenyana, highest mountains in Sou ...

. The 1997 Lesotho Labour Force Survey found that 4.6% of males who were working full-time, 14.1% of males who were working part-time and 1.3% of male job seekers in Lesotho were aged between 10 and 15 years. Many of these would have been involved in herding and those with part-time work were not necessarily earning an income but may well have been working on family land in subsistence agriculture (i.e. they were economically active but not earning an income). Boys are most likely to be engaged in paid work, usually herding as reported in the U.S. Department of Labor's ''

List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor The ''List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor'' is an annual publication issued by the United States Government’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. It has been published within the December 2014 D ...

''. Girls who are paid are primarily engaged in domestic work. It is likely that both boys and girls are engaged in seasonal agricultural work across the border in South Africa, but no data on the extent of this phenomenon is available. Lesotho is in the process of formulating an Action Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (APEC), with the assistance of the

International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...

's (ILO) programme

Towards the Elimination of the worst forms of Child Labour The programme Towards the Elimination of the worst forms of Child Labour (TECL) is a programme on child labour and related issues that is run in all the countries of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), namely Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Sout ...

. A Programme Advisory Committee on Child Labour (PACC), representing government departments, organised labour and business, and civil society guides the development and implementation of the programme. The different elements of process are described in this article. Lesotho ratified both the ILO

Minimum Age Convention The ILO Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment C138, is a convention adopted in 1973 by the International Labour Organization. It requires ratifying states to pursue a national policy designed to ensure the effective abol ...

(C138) and the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (C182) in 2001. In addition, the country has also ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992 and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (in 1990). Lesotho’s Labour Code is the principal law governing employment-related matters in Lesotho. This law defines a “child” as a person under the age of 15, and a “young person” as a person over the age of 15 but under the age of 18.

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Labour in Lesotho Human rights abuses in Lesotho {{Lesotho-stub