World Day Against Child Labour

The International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it. Each year on 12 June, the World Day brings together governments, employers and workers organizations, civil society, as well as millions of people from around the world to highlight the plight of child labourers and what can be done to help them.

What is Child Labour

Not all work done by children should be classified as child labour that is to be targeted for elimination. Children’s or adolescents’ participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling, is generally regarded as being something positive. This includes activities such as helping their parents around the home, assisting in a family business or earning pocket money outside school hours and during school holidays. These kinds of activities contribute to children’s development and to the welfare of their families; they provide them with skills and experience, and help to prepare them to be productive members of society during their adult life.

The term “child labour” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. It refers to work that:

• is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and/or
• interferes with their schooling by: depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

The worst forms of child labour involves children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of large cities – often at a very early age. Whether or not particular forms of “work” can be called “child labour” depends on the child’s age, the type and hours of work performed, the conditions under which it is performed and the objectives pursued by individual countries. The answer varies from country to country, as well as among sectors within countries.

SDGs and Child Labour

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by world leaders in 2015, include a renewed global commitment to ending child labour. Specifically, target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls on the global community to: "Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms."

2024 theme: Let’s act on our commitments: End Child Labour!

This year’s World Day will focus on celebrating the 25th anniversary of the adoption of ILO Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999), which, in 2020, was the first ILO Convention to be universally ratified. While we will call on all remaining member States that have not done so to ratify Convention No. 138, the World Day will also be an opportunity for reminding all stakeholders to improve their implementation of  the two fundamental  ILO Conventions on child labour – ILO Convention No. 182 and ILO Convention No. 138 for Minimum Age for Admission to Employment or Work (1973).

While much progress has been made in reducing child labour over the years, recent years have seen global trends reverse, and, now more than ever it is important to join forces to accelerate action towards ending child labour in all its forms.    

With the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal Target 8.7, the international community made a commitment to the elimination of child labour in all its forms by 2025.  Governments around the world have ratified ILO Conventions on child labour (Convention No. 182 ratified by all 187 ILO member States, and Convention No. 138 ratified by 176 member States) and are committed to their implementation. The Durban Call to Action, adopted by delegates following the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in 2022, shows the way.   

Now is the time to make the elimination of child labour a reality.

Source : ILO