Study on child labour, child marriage

It is worrying, to say the least, that more than 1.4 million children in Bangladesh do not or cannot attend schools, with an estimated 1 million children of the age 10-14 engaged in labour. Meanwhile, 1.3 million children are married off before they reach the age of 15 and 3.8 million before the age of 18 years, according to studies conducted by Unicef in collaboration with the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS). Equally alarming is the finding that about 17 percent of the capital's 10 to 14-year-olds are engaged in child labour, in stark contrast to the national average, 6 percent.

These statistics indicate that despite the tremendous progress made by Bangladesh in achieving the MDG goals, we have not been able to address the burning issue of child rights' violation in an effective manner. At a time when they should be in school, children from poor and marginalised communities are compelled to find work, often in unsafe environments and under exploitative conditions, to sustain themselves and their families; the situation is even worse in urban areas with high levels of poverty and homelessness. Girl children are married off at an early age by their families who think of them as financial burdens and of investing in their education as a waste. 

Merely the promise of free education to a certain age cannot alleviate the living standard of the economically impoverished populace and prevent them from taking desperate measures to make ends meet. Stipends, especially for girl children, can be an important measure to encourage parents to send their children to school, but beyond that, coordinated action needs to be taken by relevant stakeholders to address the multifaceted structural causes of child labour and child marriage on a priority basis.