The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) stipulates that children have “the right to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development” .
However, two international labor conventions give us the most detailed understanding of what constitutes child labor: the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) sets down the minimum legal age at which children can enter work, and calls on ratifying states to ensure that this is enshrined in national law. The age is set at 15 years, or 14 if a country’s economic status requires this and then only until such time as this can be raised to 15. The convention also says that for the two years before they reach the minimum working age, children may perform “light work” as long as this is for a limited number of hours per week (notionally 14 hours, or 2 hours a day) and that it does not interfere in any way with their schooling. Additionally, no child under the age of 18 may at any time be engaged in work that is considered to be a “worst form of child labour.”