“In Lebanon, more and more boys and girls are being forced to work to help support their families. Child labour is not a choice: it is the result of poverty, displacement, insecurity, and a lack of alternatives.
They are not yet eighteen years old; often, they are much younger. In most cases, they do not go to school but spend their days in fields, on construction sites, in mechanic workshops, markets, and car washes. Others collect scrap metal or do domestic work. Many work between eight and twelve hours a day, often six days a week, for very low pay. This is the daily reality for countless children in Lebanon, where, after years of economic crisis, political instability, and reduced humanitarian assistance, child labour has become an extreme survival strategy for many families.
On the occasion of World Day Against Child Labour, [June 12, 2026] we want to draw attention to this violation, which deprives millions of children of the right to grow, learn, play, and be protected. In Lebanon, this reality has become increasingly visible and urgent. What INTERSOS observes on the ground is not the consequence of cultural norms, but of growing pressure on families, worsened by war and displacement
Boys account for 60% of the cases identified by INTERSOS and are more often involved in physically demanding and dangerous work. Girls account for 40% of cases, but this figure risks underestimating the true scale of the problem: many forms of work performed by girls remain hidden because they take place inside homes, through domestic work, caregiving, or other informal activities that often remain invisible..”
https://www.intersos.org/en/child-labour-lebanon/
The potteries of Staffordshire have, during the last 22 years, been the subject of three parliamentary inquiries. The result is embodied in Mr. Scriven’s Report of 1841 to the “ Children’s Employment Commissioners,” in the report of Dr. Greenhow of 1860 published by order of the medical officer of the Privy Council (Public Health, 3rd Report, 112-113), lastly, in the report of Mr. Longe of 1862 in the “First Report of the Children’s Employment Commission, of the 13th June, 1863.” For my purpose it is enough to take, from the reports of 1860 and 1863, some depositions of the exploited children themselves. From the children we may form an opinion as to the adults, especially the girls and women, and that in a branch of industry by the side of which cotton-spinning appears an agreeable and healthful occupation.
William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he began to work. He “ran moulds” (carried ready-moulded articles into the drying-room, afterwards bringing back the empty mould) from the beginning. He came to work every day in the week at 6 a.m., and left off about 9 p.m. “I work till 9 o’clock at night six days in the week. I have done so seven or eight weeks.”
Fifteen hours of labour for a child 7 years old! J. Murray, 12 years of age, says: “I turn jigger, and run moulds. I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I worked all night last night, till 6 o’clock this morning. I have not been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or nine other boys working last night. All but one have come this morning. I get 3 shillings and sixpence. I do not get any more for working at night. I worked two nights last week.”
The manufacture of lucifer matches dates from 1833, from the discovery of the method of applying phosphorus to the match itself. Since 1845 this manufacture has rapidly developed in England, and has extended especially amongst the thickly populated parts of London as well as in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle and Glasgow. With it has spread the form of lockjaw, which a Vienna physician in 1845 discovered to be a disease peculiar to lucifer-matchmakers. Half the workers are children under thirteen, and young persons under eighteen. The manufacture is on account of its unhealthiness and unpleasantness in such bad odour that only the most miserable part of the labouring class, half-starved widows and so forth, deliver up their children to it, “the ragged, half-starved, untaught children.”
Of the witnesses that Commissioner White examined (1863), 270 were under 18, 50 under 10, 10 only 8, and 5 only 6 years old. A range of the working-day from 12 to 14 or 15 hours, night-labour, irregular meal-times, meals for the most part taken in the very workrooms that are pestilent with phosphorus. Dante would have found the worst horrors of his Inferno surpassed in this manufacture.
In the manufacture of paper-hangings the coarser sorts are printed by machine; the finer by hand (block-printing). The most active business months are from the beginning of October to the end of April. During this time the work goes on fast and furious without intermission from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or further into the night.
J. Leach deposes:
“Last winter six out of nineteen girls were away from ill-health at one time from over-work. I have to bawl at them to keep them awake.” W. Duffy: “I have seen when the children could none of them keep their eyes open for the work; indeed, none of us could.” J. Lightbourne: “Am 13 … We worked last winter till 9 (evening), and the winter before till 10. I used to cry with sore feet every night last winter.” G. Apsden: “That boy of mine when he was 7 years old I used to carry him on my back to and fro through the snow, and he used to have 16 hours a day … I have often knelt down to feed him as he stood by the machine, for he could not leave it or stop.” Smith, the managing partner of a Manchester factory: “We (he means his “hands” who work for “us”) work on with no stoppage for meals, so that day’s work of 10½ hours is finished by 4.30 p.m., and all after that is over-time.” ( For all these, children and adults alike (152 children and young persons and 140 adults), the average work for the last 18 months has been at the very least 7 days, 5 hours, or 78 1/2 hours a week. For the six weeks ending May 2nd this year (1862), the average was higher — 8 days or 84 hours a week.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S1
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The computer guesstimates child labour exploitation at; ‘Approximately 138 to 160 million children are engaged in child labour globally, with 79 million involved in hazardous work.’
How are you going to resolve that issue? Make capitalism history.