Life is unimaginably tough for many Cambodian children, as illustrated in this report that says some 1.5 million Cambodians under the age of 14 are forced to work, foregoing schooling, and often toiling long and hard under hazardous conditions.

According to the World Bank, somewhere around a quarter of a million Cambodian kids work in recognized areas of danger like the dumps, mines and on the streets as beggars. (No mention of prostitutes in this report.)

The Cambodian human rights NGO LIDADHO has just launched an "awareness-raising campaign that hopes to expose employers and government officials to the dangers faced by child laborers".

Excuse me for noticing, but I'll bet they already know this but don' t really care all that much, so I'm none too impressed with admonishments about how, "governmental authorities, civil society and the private sector must work together to rescue child labourers and provide them with physical and mental rehabilitation services."

It sounds like so much of the usual blather that offers nothing to hang a hat on, much less a hope with a chance in hell of coming true.

In fact, I'm wondering who in the mix of those making noise about child laborers is addressing how these kids and their families are supposed to eat if the kids are prevented from working to bring in some cash. Any honest appraisal of the situation would have to admit that many kids have to work for their keep, and perhaps the better solution would involve finding safer employment.

If a four-year-old has to work to keep from starving ... and that is the reality for millions of four-year-olds the world over ... isn't it just a tad disingenuous, not to mention pie-in-the-skyish, to insist that that child must rather be in school? And doesn't that thinking put the brakes on any chance of finding the kid a decent job that would pay reasonably well and not involve torture or perpetual danger?

What good does it do a child who scrambles around in garbage looking for used straws to recycle back into Phnom Penh hotels and restaurants to rant and rail against their lot and insist that education is the only answer? Would it not be more helpful if that child could be offered a safer, cleaner job?

I know that the idea of child labor leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth, that education is the long-term key to poverty relief, that in a perfect world every child would have their biggest responsibility be homework and picking up their socks, but I often wonder how tenaciously hanging on to that picture to the elimination of any possibility in between helps.

I recall a TV program Mark and I watched a while back about child labor in India that followed some kids who were working in some sort of factory. Conditions were not good, the pay was low, and the kids were 6-ish through 11-ish. It was brutal to see young kids toting heavy loads, standing on their feet for sometimes 12 hours a day, some literally working their fingers to the bone.

The factory was shut down through the efforts of an NGO appalled at the lives of the hundreds of kids working there.

Afterwards, many of the children were interviewed, and to a child the response to the closure of the factory was: "What will we do now?"

They understood that they would still need to eat, to provide for families that depended upon them for income. Some already knew exactly what the options were -- prostitution, crime, or death.