Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi says, Child working means one job less for adults

A child working means one job less for adults, Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi said here Wednesday, underlining the connection between illiteracy, exploitation of children and unemployment.

Delivering a lecture here, Satyarthi also said one cannot think of social and economic justice, alleviation of poverty and gender equality without education.

"Child labour, poverty and illiteracy is the triangular paradigm of exploitation of children. 210 million adults are jobless in the world....(then) why are 152 million children being engaged in work? Every child working is working at the cost of an adult job," he said.

The children who work full time often have parents who can not get a job for more than 100 days a year, he said.

Children are hired because they are cheap labour, they cannot go to the courts and they can be sexually abused, he said. "If we spend one dollar on eradication of child labour in the country, according to the United Nations and World Bank, the return would be 7 dollars over the next 20 years.

"But if a country spends one dollar on education, the return would be 20 times over the next 20 years. So it has been proven that the best investment is an investment in education," Satyarthi said.