Child Work: A Strategy to Fitting Children to the Macro-Environment in the Ethiopian Context

Abstract

The understanding that children’s involvement in over demanding activities at home and outside is recognized as harmful to their development and should be replaced with universal primary education is an established social goal (Larsen, 2003). Indeed, engaging children in unacceptable forms of child labor continues to exist in all parts of the world. Poverty, household situations and school environment force children to participate in labor and ultimately threaten their future physical, psychological and social development. These children could also be victims of discrimination and all forms of maltreatments which eventually deprive them from their human rights and more particularly child rights. In its comprehensive sense, therefore, harmful practices including child labor can be perceived as one form of child abuse. According to Befekadu and Tsegaye cited in Deaslegn(1998, p. 21), child abuse is defined as “ any act of omission by individuals, institutions or society as a whole and any condition resulting from such acts which deprive children of their equal rights and liberties and/or interfere with their optimal development