All the signs are there.

Begging, mass unemployment, soup kitchens, and now the reappearance of a social class that is living proof of how far our society has been dehumanised by the creation of the global economy in the latter part of this century : the child labourer.

Earlier, in the nineteenth century, worsening social inequality was reflected in the phenomenon of rampant child labour.

In 1840 Louis Villermé wrote a famous report in which he described the condition of child labourers in France, where a 14-hour working day was the norm. He wrote of "this multitude of children, some of them barely seven years of age, gaunt, emaciated, dressed in rags, going barefoot to the factory through rain and mud, pale, debilitated, and with misery, suffering and defeat etched on their faces".

Far from being alarmed by such a situation - which had also been denounced by novelists like Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Hector Malot, Jules Vallès, Emile Zola and Edmondo de Amicis - some liberals actually considered it a "necessary evil". As one of them put it, "this poverty offers a salutary spectacle to those sections of the less fortunate classes which have remained healthy ; it works to instil fear in them ; it reminds them of the difficult virtues that they need, if they are to attain a better standard of living".

In the face of such cynicism, one can understand the revulsion of Karl Marx, for example, who, in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, denounces "modern industry" in which "all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour" and calls for "the abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form".

History shows how, in Europe and North America, the progressive abolition of child labour and the establishment of compulsory education were necessary preconditions for economic and social development.

However, the world had to wait many years - until 1990, in fact - before the Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force (a UN convention ratified by almost every country in the world, with the notable exception of the United States). As the International Labour Organisation had been urging since 1973, this set an age limit for children’s entry into the world of work.

Despite this, it is estimated that around 250 million children are at work today, of whom the youngest are below the age of five.

Although most of them are to be found in the poor countries of the South, there is also considerable exploitation in the countries of the North.

In the European Union, it is estimated that there are over two million working children - not least in those areas of Europe affected by radical free-market restructuring, like the United Kingdom in the 1980s.

But the phenomenon of working children has even reappeared in countries which are usually thought to be "socially progressive", such as Denmark and the Netherlands.

An expert from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that "in France, too, several tens of thousands of children are engaged in waged labour in the guise of apprenticeships, and 59% of apprentices work more than 40 hours a week, sometimes as many as 60 hours".

Around the world, the number of child labourers is growing continuously.

In some countries, it is a mass phenomenon, with tens of millions of children under the age of six being exploited.

In Latin America, one child in every five works ; in Africa, the figure is one in three ; and in Asia, it is every second child. The main sector using child labour is agriculture.

Employment is often a direct result of debt bondage, with the children paying off debts incurred by their parents or even their grandparents.

As de facto slaves, these children will never be able to break out of the cycle of slavery : they will spend their lives on the plantations, marrying there and giving birth to the next generation of slaves.

Large numbers of these children are employed in the informal economy, in artisan activities, in small-scale trading and in begging.

Domestic work (in North Africa, the Middle East, West Africa and Latin America) is one of the most pernicious areas, because here the child is exposed to every kind of humiliation and violence, in particular, sexual.

The prime cause of child labour is poverty. A poverty that is being spread and worsened by the current process of economic globalisation.

Of the six billion inhabitants of our planet, five billion are poor.

This fact has stirred increasing numbers of organisations worldwide to mobilise alongside UNICEF and the ILO in order to put an end to child labour, which now ranks as one of the most shameful scandals of our age.

As a result of this mobilisation, a World March against Child Labour was initiated on 1 January 1998, involving more than 400 non-governmental organisations (including trade unions) from 82 countries.

Its various strands will converge on Geneva in Switzerland on 4 June 1998 in order to meet delegates at the International Labour Conference. Under the aegis of the ILO, this conference is expected to adopt a convention banning the more unacceptable forms of child labour.

How can we fail to support a project aimed at re-establishing the sacred right of all children everywhere to a decent life ?