Like in many developing countries, child labor has been a longstanding social condition in Bangladesh. During its independence, Bangladesh was an impoverished nation with about 70 million people living in a small land area of approximately 148,000 square kilometers. Despite many political struggles, the country’s economic progress remained steady. The growth accelerated fast in the 2010s, and the World Bank upgraded Bangladesh from a low-income to a lower-middle income country in 2018. The country remained one of those few countries that could achieve solid economic growth during the Covid-19 pandemic years. The government has been trying to increase the amount of goods made in the country in order to increase exports. All these developments are strongly connected to child labor. Many children work in various capacities directly or indirectly (in the supply chains or third-party contractual productions) in all major manufacturing and service industries (formal and informal), such as clothing, leather, automobiles, agriculture, fishing, transportation, restaurants, waste recycling, and construction.

However, it is hard to estimate the actual number of child workers in Bangladesh. According to the latest National Child Labor Survey (NCLS) provisional report, In 2022, there were around 3.54 million children aged 5 to 17 in child labor, accounting for 8.9 percent of the total child population of 40 million in the country.