Child labour in Bangladesh: Recent Trends and Labour Standards

The relationship between child labour in Bangladesh and labour standards is part of a wider discourse concerning child labour in the global economy and how child labour relates to other core international standards. In the past decade, the more general debate on child labour has progressed from a broad attack on child labour initiated by the Western media, trade unions, advocacy groups and international organisations (such as the International Programme for Elimination of Child Labour) to the problem of how the varying forms of child labour should be dealt with, and to the even more fundamental question of whether any mode of intervention can achieve a positive result. As well, child labour in Bangladesh has often been treated as a discrete workplace condition which can be dealt with in isolation. But it cannot be divorced from international standards such as the elimination of all forms of compulsory labour — or a range of other local and cultural factors.