RIO DE JANEIRO (Xinhua): Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua and Chile on Thursday marked the World Day Against Child Labor by appealing for an end to child exploitation.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed a decree that widens the scope of what can be classified as child labor in the country, including domestic work in the same category as slavery, sexual exploitation and drug trafficking.

The president said the decree provided government inspectors with instruments to punish slavery.

Lula, who worked as a bootblack on the streets of Sao Paulo in his childhood, added that many children in the country help their parents in their daily jobs.

In Brazil, 15.1 million children and teenagers aged from five to 17 years old are employed in working activities, according to the National Household Sample Survey, held in 2006, which represents 11.5 percent of all Brazilians of that age group.

The president urged adults to ensure the access to education for their children.

It is necessary to treat each type of activity in a humanitarian and differentiated manner, said the president.

It is unacceptable, for instance, that an entrepreneur keeps a child as an employee. If he needs a child as an apprentice, then he may be careful so as not to hinder the child studies, he said.

In Colombia, the coordinator to eradicate child labor, Liliana Obregon, said 1 million children work in the country and that 1.4 million do not have access to education.

Obregon listed Monteria, Ibague, Bucaramanga and Cali as cities with a high rate of child labor, citing the National Department of Statistics.

President of the United Center of Workers of Colombia Carlos Rodriguez said "this is proof of the poverty we have in the country, of their parents' precarious salaries that provoke many children to be obliged to work in the street and even sexually exploited."

There are still about 253,000 children working in Nicaragua, a country of 6 million people, despite the government's efforts to bring street children back to school, according to Deputy Education Minister Milena Nunez.

Nunez said it is important to give good education to those children and teenagers in order to prepare them to get a better job and future.

The official vowed to intensify efforts to provide those children with access to education.

Children are exploited in mining, agriculture, fishing, car shops and other areas in Nicaragua. An 11-year-old girl told reporters that she used to sell candies in the streets of Managua before being rescued by the government to go to school.

The girl, who declined to give her name, accused her parents of sending her to work and taking her money for alcohol.

Chilean Labor Minister Osvaldo Andrade told the International Labor Organization (ILO) on Thursday that there are some 196,000 children working in Chile.

Andrade, who was attending the 97th annual session of the ILO in Geneva, Switzerland, the number may be even higher as "all attempts of study or intervention are slinking."

"The government believes that only from a community attentive to this problem will we be able to materialize a desire that concerns all the society, this is, our children and adolescents concentrate on the only matter that is a guarantee of their future development: studying," Andrade added.

According to the ILO, up to 218 million children in the world are being exploited in a variety of jobs, including 72 million at the elementary school age and a bigger number at the secondary school age.