28 November 2017: Governments at the Fourth Global Conference on the Eradication of Child Labour pledged to take immediate action towards eradicating child labor in all its forms by 2025. A declaration highlights the importance of rural poverty reduction, social protection and free primary and secondary education as contributing factors to bringing about a world free of child labor. SDG target 8.7 calls for ending forced labou, modern slavery and human trafficking, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
More than 3,800 people attended the Global Conference, convening in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 14-16 November 2017. Delegations from more than 100 countries and 45 ministers took part. The conference, organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO), follows on the Third Global Conference on Child Labour in Brasilia, Brazil, in 2013.
Around 73 million children globally are involved in hazardous work.
In the Buenos Aires Declaration on Child Labour, Forced Labour and Youth Employment, governments note progress made at national, regional and international levels towards eradicating child labor and forced labor approaches, and call for accelerating approaches to ensure the SDG target is reached. ILO Director-General Guy Ryder noted that around 152 million children globally are working, with the majority involved in agriculture, including farming, fishing, forestry and livestock, and around 73 million children in hazardous work. He added that “the goals cannot be clearer.” The ILO’s previous goal of ending child labor by 2016 was not met.
At the opening of the workshop, ILO launched a report titled, ‘Ending Child Labour By 2025: A review of policies and programmes.’ The report lists four key policy “pillars” on child labor: improving legal protections, improving the governance of labor markets and family enterprises, strengthening social protection and investing in free, quality education.
On human trafficking in children, the Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative released data showing the extent of family involvement in child trafficking cases. CTDC is a data portal initiated by the International Organization on Migration (IOM) in partnership with Polaris, an NGO. It is the first human trafficking data portal to include data from multiple agencies, and is the world’s largest open-access, multi-stakeholder repository of human trafficking data.
The data released on 28 November show that almost half of identified child trafficking cases begin with a family member’s involvement. Children are most commonly trafficked into forced sexual exploitation, begging and domestic work, and they are most likely to be coerced into trafficking through physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Boys are more likely to be recruited by a family member than girls.
IOM is calling for increased counter-trafficking interventions aimed at children by helping household heads to make long-term plans for themselves and their family, as well as by helping children identify potentially dangerous or exploitative situations and know how to get support, and by ensuring that protection and systems are accessible to all children, regardless of their migration status. [ILO Press Release] [Press Release on Child Labor Report] [Full Report] [Final Communique from Host Country] [UN Press Release on Trafficking Data] [IOM Press Release on Trafficking Data]