Recent global estimates based on data of UNICEF, the ILO and the World Bank indicate that 215 million children aged 5 to 17 are engaged in child labour working under conditions that are considered illegal, hazardous, or extremely exploitative.Underage children work at all sorts of jobs around the world, usually because they and their families are extremely poor. Large numbers of children work in commercial agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining and domestic service. Some children work in illicit activities like the drug trade and prostitution or other traumatic activities such as serving as soldiers.
Child labour is a complex problem and numerous factors influence whether children work or not. Poverty is not the only factor in child labour and cannot justify all types of employment and servitude. Countries may be equally poor and yet have relatively high or relatively low levels of child labour.Other factors include barriers to education, as basic education is not free in all countries and is not always available for all children, especially in remote rural areas .Besides that, there are cases in which parents are likely to share a cultural norm in which labour is seen as the most productive use of a child?s time. In addition,employers may prefer to hire children because they are ?cheaper? than their adult counterparts and also form a docile, obedient work-force that will not seek to organize itself for protection and support.
An estimated 60% of child labor occurs in agriculture, fishing, hunting, and forestry. Children have been found harvesting, whereas about 14 million children are estimated to be directly involved in manufacturing goods. Children work in a range of mining operations suffering extremely high illness and injury rates in underground mines. Many children, especially girls, work in domestic service, sometimes starting as young as 5 or 6. This type of child labour is linked to child trafficking. Domestic child labourers can be victims of physical, emotional, and sometimes sexual abuse.

Child labourers are at a high risk of illness, injury and even death due to a wide variety of machinery, biological, physical, chemical, ergonomic and psychosocial hazards, as well as from long hours of work and poor living conditions.They often also suffer psychological damage from working and living in an environment where they are denigrated, harassed or experience violence and abuse. In addition, child labour has a profound effect on a child?s future. Denied the right to a quality education, as adults they have little chance of obtaining a decent job and escaping the cycle of poverty and exploitation.