violence against children WORLD REPORT ON - CRIN

242Violence against children in places of worksexual harassment, bullying or mobbing (ganging-upon and intimidating another worker). 27The existing knowledge basePrevalence statistics on violence according toworker age group are lacking. In the regulatedworkplace where young workers are legallyemployed, safety codes and standards apply.However, these may not adequately protectyoung workers. They may be reluctant toreport violence against them. Where employmentis under-age and illegal, incidents areeven less likely to be reported.Child labour surveys may not be conducted insuch a way as to elicit the reality of the violenceunder-aged workers experience. 28 In Cambodia,in a 2002 survey of working children, only0.5% of the children indicated that they wereexposed to mental and physical abuse. Thiscontrasted with statements made at a 1997workshop where the children reported widespreademployer violence, including severebeatings, sexual abuse and electric shocks. 29This example illustrates how hard accurateinformation is to obtain.Where children are exploited in the informalsector, the knowledge base is more severelylacking while risks are greatly enhanced.NGOs and human rights organisations haveundertaken qualitative surveys among relativelysmall groups of child workers in ‘dangerous’or violence-prone occupations. Butchild workplaces are notoriously difficult toresearch. The Indian Government is rare inhaving made an effort to identify workplaceviolence and abuse perpetrated on children,and comments that most of it occurs in theinformal workplace where regulation is nonexistentand solid data is lacking. 30Types of workplace violenceThe most common forms of violence againstchildren in the workplace are:• Physical violence, including beatings,kicking, slapping, whipping, scaldingand in extreme cases, even murder;• Psychological (emotional) violenceincluding shouting, scolding, insults,threats, obscene language, bullying,mobbing, isolation, marginalisation,repeated discriminatory treatment;• Sexual violence, including sexualharassment, fondling and rape.The most frequent harm to working children’swell-being from the violence they experienceappears to be low self-esteem resulting fromverbal abuse, humiliation and bullying. 31 Childrenfrequently complain of the lack of respectin the way they are treated; in one study inBangladesh, 84% of working children complainedof insults and other hurtful words. 32The violence working children experience isoften systematic and part of a collective workplaceculture of physical brutality, shouting,bad language, and casual violence includingsexual taunts.Child labour statisticsNew global estimates published by the ILO in2006 indicated that, in 2004, 218 million childrenwere involved in child labour. Of these,more than 60% (126 million) were deemed to