To date most legal and other protective action has tended to focus on the small minority of children who work in the formal export sector. SCF's own work in the football stitching industry in Sialkot would fall into this category. Whilst international standards have an important role to play, particularly in the definition of minimum ages and hazard, definitions of exploitation vary significantly and must primarily be assessed in local context. Hazardous work is probably easier to define - it can be identified using a variety of environmental and medical indicators. The degree of hazard is related to the child's age, for example a fifteen year old might be able to carry a load that would be harmful to a six year old.
Some employers prefer to employ children because they can be cheaper, and more docile than adults.
Poverty and inequality create the conditions in which exploitation will flourish. In much of the world poverty and inequality are increasing as one of the consequences of the rapid, unregulated growth of market economies and retrenchment of state provision. For example in Mongolia as a result of this, women dismissed from recently privatised or closed factories have had to leave their villages and with their children seek work as traders or sex workers on the streets of Ulan Bataar. These situations are also exacerbated by the promotion of migration for work in some countries with the resulting break down in community and family structures which leads to increasing vulnerability of children in such situations. Growing dependency on the income from such migration can also create other dangers when such opportunities are cut off.