Children throughout the world are engaged in a great number of activities classifiable as work. These range from fairly harmless, even laudable, activities like helping out in the home, to physically dangerous and morally objectionable ones like soldiering and prostitution. In the middle, we have the bulk of what is generally called ‘economic activity’. According to currently available ILO estimates (see Table 0.1), throughout the world, 211 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 were ‘economically active’ in the year 2000. That is a very large proportion, 18 per cent, of the age group. The participation rate is even higher, 23 per cent, if we include youngsters up to the age of 17.