Introduction: The worst forms of child labour in Latin America

Abstract

Child labour, despite a broadly accepted understanding that it must be eradicated, and despite the International Conventions, national legislation and various time-bound programmes, lingers on in many parts of the world, including Latin America, which albeit has a much higher GDP than countries in Africa and South Asia. Despite the commitment to include universal primary education leading to the elimination of child labour as one of the millennium development goals, to be achieved by 2015, it has remained difficult to tackle the problem. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.