Global standards miss the nuance in local child labour

In this blog for The Conversation Africa, Alula Pankhurst agues that work is neither all good nor all bad for children. It is often both.  Images of children working in hazardous and abusive conditions naturally provoke strong emotional reactions. For this reason, measures designed to stop children from working, and make sure they go to school, attract little opposition or debate. Yet the reality is that a rigid approach to child labour has a downside.