Child labor isn’t necessarily always hard excessive work, child labor is actually any economic activity done by a individual under 15 years of age. It ranges from favorable work that doesn’t put implication on a child’s education like helping out on the family farm to detrimental or cruel work like working in a sweat shop.

Some families live in poverty and in order to make ends meet, children under 14 are working. Some of which aren’t in school and have to work in dangerous, noxious conditions. Between the ages of five and fourteen, 250 million children work either part time of full time. About half of that 250 million work full time and all year. Around 61% are in Asia, 32% in Africa and 7% in Latin America. 70% of them work in risky environments and 70% work in agriculture. Although child labor is most common in undeveloped countries, it persists in advanced countries as well. For instance in the United States over 230,000 children work in agriculture and more than 13,000 kids work in sweatshops.

An example of one of these children is Iqbal. He was sold by his family to pay off dept. He was just four when he was sold. He was forced to work a carpet factory for twelve hours each day. He was beaten repetitively, abused verbally, and chained to his loom for six years. Severe undernourishment and many years of immobility in front of a loom stunted his growth. In 1992 this began to change when some of his friends from the carpet factory secretly attended a freedom day celebration to end bonded labor. Iqbal was free and he became a well known opponent of child labor. His movement frightened many of the people who used kids as bonded labor. After he received a human rights award in the United States in December, he was killed by a gunman hired by factory owners.