The most recent studies from the ILO itself enable a closer reconstruction of the issue in Latin America.
Box 1 shows a breakdown, by region and age, of the 19.7 million children and adolescents working in Latin America.
These figures are particularly interesting when they give figures as a percentage of the total for childhood and adolescence, as can be seen in Box 2:
This shows that the final category of childhood, represented by children between 12 and 14, is critical, because this is when much of children's future is decided (the end of primary school and beginning of secondary), and the proportion of child workers reaches almost 20% of the total.
Of course, these average values often mask extremely alarming situations, as warned in Box 3, where we can see that if we look only at the 10 to 14 age group, there is a group of countries in which 1 out of every 5 child is working.
As before, also of special importance are the so-called worst forms of child labour, that is to say those that place children in most danger. In Latin America, some 6.9 million children are in this situation, that is to say that 1 out of 3 child workers work in the most dangerous and risky areas.
The box below shows the scale of this cruel reality: