Tag Archive for: ILO

thumbnail

New Estimate of Global Child Labor in 2024 (138 million): Progress Made, but Challenges Remain

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Author: Michael Rivas

In commemoration of World Day Against Child Labor on June 12, 2025, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) released their joint report on the status of global child labor. This report, titled Child Labour: Global estimates 2024, trends and the road forward, is part of both organizations’ broader research and data collection initiative. Issued once every four years, these estimates play a key role in directing child labor responses around the world.

The recent data from the 2024 report estimates that there are roughly 22 million fewer children engaging in child labor than there were in 2020. This means, in total, there are an estimated 138 million children engaged in child labor worldwide, with 54 million of them in “hazardous work” (defined as jeopardizing their health, safety, or development) in 2024. 

The report notes this recent progress as “welcome news” amidst the fear of a continual increase in global child labor brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Historically, higher levels of socio-economic disparities correlate with an increase in child labor. However, the feared loss of progress did not materialize. While world governments did not meet their goal to end child labor globally by 2025, they have been able to return to a “path of progress.”

While all regions of the world have seen progress in lowering child labor, there remains large variations between regions. The report notes that significant progress was made in both Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in Asia and the Pacific, with both regions showing an “absolute decline” in child labour. The Sub-Saharan region of Africa remains the most prevalent in terms of rates of child labor, with an estimated 87 million children engaging in child labor, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the global total. Progress in the region has remained stagnant as the population continues to rise, meaning the total number of children in child labor within the region has remained the same. 

 The report also emphasizes the gender disparities within child labor. As seen in past reports, trends of boys engaging in higher levels of child labor remain, with 9 percent of boys aged 5 through 17 in child labor, compared to 7 percent of girls. However, the report authors acknowledge an important caveat, namely that “…the child labour definition underlying it does not consider involvement in household chores within children’s own homes.” This is important to note, as girls are disproportionately found to be engaged in domestic work, which often goes unrecorded. Taking this into account, researchers state that the gender gap would reverse. 

Within the recorded cases included in the report, the world continues to see specific economic sectors with prevalent levels of child labor. Specifically, the agricultural industry accounts for 61 percent of global child labor. Also of concern, hazardous work remains a grave issue across all sectors. In the industrial sector for example, more than 60 percent of all child labor is hazardous, and in the services sector, nearly half of all recorded child labor is hazardous. 

These are just the cases that the report was able to track. Many of the worst forms of child labor—as defined in the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182—remain complicated to track. As a result of their often hidden and sensitive nature, these cases of child labor continually remain underreported, and subsequently undercounted in the report’s findings. 

Looking forward, both the ILO and UNICEF make the call for an increase in international effort towards eliminating child labor. While the abolition of child labor by 2025 was not met, both organizations remain committed to helping governments put an end to it within the near future. Eliminating child labor by 2030 would require “a pace of change that is 11 times faster than it has been in the last four years.” An accelerated pace of 7 times the current amount would meet the target by 2045, and a pace 4 times the present would meet the target by 2060. No matter the timeframe, it is evident that more work needs to be done to combat child labor in all its forms.

Addressing child labor requires constant vigilance from both governments, remediation organizations, and child labor advocacy groups. The ILO and UNICEF stress that governments must implement proper policy responses as well as establish or strengthen social protection systems. The report highlights the importance of fulfilling children’s human rights to quality education as critically important in combating child labor. Education is essential in both removing children from exploitative work, as well as in equipping them to avoid future violations of their rights. Report authors highlight how children working in child labor struggle to balance both school and work, sometimes causing students to drop out of school entirely, which can further push families into inter-generational cycles of poverty.

Lastly, UNICEF and the ILO have both expressed concerns over potential cuts to global funding, which could rollback some of the hard-earned gains in combating child labor. These funds not only aid in preventing the root causes of child labor, but also help fund research and data collection, which remains essential to creating strategies to address the issue. Now, as much as ever, there is a need for sustained and increased funding, instead of cuts towards child labor resources. 

Sources:

Access the Child Labour: Global estimates 2024, trends and the road forward here

 

Michael Rivas is a graduate student at the University of Connecticut studying Human Rights and Political Science. 

thumbnail

Surging Child Labor Demands Government Action New Global Numbers Show Backsliding Even Before Covid-19 Pandemic

/in , /by

 

By Jo Becker

Advocacy Director, Children’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch
 
Ahead of the World Day Against Child Labor this weekend, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have just released shocking new figures. They estimate that 160 million children were engaged in child labor in 2020. This is 8.4 million more children than since the last estimate issued in 2016, and the first time in two decades that the numbers have increased. Previously, countries globally had made impressive strides, reducing child labor by nearly 40 percent between 2000 and 2016.

Alarmingly, these numbers pre-date the Covid-19 pandemic, which is forcing even more children into exploitative and dangerous child labor. Human Rights Watch, Friends of the Nation, and the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights recently interviewed dozens of children in Ghana, Nepal, and Uganda to document the impact of the pandemic on their lives. They told us how their parents lost jobs when businesses closed, couldn’t get to markets to sell their goods, or lost customers during lockdowns. Their schools closed, and with little or no government assistance, the children felt they had no choice but to work to help their families survive.The children worked at brick kilns, carpet factories, gold mines, stone quarries, fisheries, in construction, and in agriculture. Others sold food or goods on the street. They described working long hours for meager wages, often under dangerous conditions. One 12-year-old girl crushed rocks at a stone quarry for seven hours a day. Her salary was just US$1.11 a week, she said, but if her employer was unhappy with the size of the stones, he paid her even less.

Child labor is not an inevitable consequence of the pandemic. Many governments have successfully reduced child labor in the past by providing regular cash allowances to help families meet their basic needs without sending their children to work. But 1.3 billion children – mostly in Africa and Asia – are not covered by such programs. Scaling up cash allowances can help governments meet their international legal obligations to guarantee children an adequate standard of living, their right to education, and protection from child labor. In the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, this powerful policy tool is more important than ever.

Human Rights Watch is a member of the Child Labor Coalition and this article appears with its permission. The article originally appeared on their web site here.

 

thumbnail

The World Gathers to Fight Child Labor at the Fourth “Global Conference on the Sustained Eradication of Child Labour”

/in /by

The world is making significant progress in removing the scourge of child labor—there are 94 million fewer child laborers today than there were 16 years ago. I believe one of the reasons for this progress is the coming together of governments, worker groups, and human rights and child rights groups every four years for an international conference for focused strategy sessions on reducing child labor. I realize that there might be some skepticism that a conference could make much difference, but hear me out.

This year’s conference, organized by the government of Argentina and the International Labour Organization, took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina November 14-16 and brought together over 150 countries and about 3,000 individuals who are in some way involved in the fight against child labor. I was there representing the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which is co-chaired by the National Consumers League and the American Federation of Teachers, and has been fighting to reduce child labor for nearly three decades.

The CLC's Norma Flores Lopez

The CLC’s Norma Flores Lopez

The conference featured many great panels. Several were about trying to confront work in agriculture—the most ubiquitous form of child labor (comprising 70 percent of the problem. Others confronted hazardous work, which involves 73 million children—almost half of the child labor population which is currently 152 million.

The CLC’s Norma Flores Lopez, the chair of our Domestic Issues Committee, spoke movingly about her own experiences working in US fields as a child farmworker. Norma noted her belief that racial discrimination plays a part in persistence of child labor. Most children impacted by child labor are children of color, she noted. Authorities, she suggested, feel less pressure to remedy the exploitation of racial and ethnic minorities. Conference participants seemed stunned to learn that the US has a child labor problem—our lax child labor laws allow children to work in agriculture beginning at age 12 and kids are allowed to work unlimited hours as long as they do not miss school. Some children work 80-90 hour weeks, performing back-breaking labor in stifling heat.

Jo Becker, a child rights specialist for Human Rights Watch and an active member of the CLC, spoke about hazardous work and the dangers children are routinely subjected to in the fields and other dangerous locations. Becker has been a leader in campaigns to remove children from combat, from mines, and from tobacco farms in recent years. She noted that Brazil lists child tobacco work as hazardous but the U.S. does not—something that the US government needs to fix. In 2014, Human Rights Watch published a ground-breaking report, “Tobacco’s Hidden Children: Hazardous Child Labor in US Tobacco Farming,” based on interviews with children working on American tobacco farms found that more than half had suffered symptoms that correlated with nicotine poisoning.

Both Norma Flores Lopez and Sue Longley of the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Association both spoke about sexual harassment that girls and young women experience in agriculture.

Read more

thumbnail

CHILD LABOR COALITION statement on new estimates of child labor

/in , /by

Two 13 year old boys digging for gold in a mine in Mbeya region, Tanzania. (c) 2013

Two 13 year old boys digging for gold in a mine in Mbeya region, Tanzania.

 

The Child Labor Coalition applauds progress in child labor remediation indicated by new estimates released by the International Labour Organization, but expresses concern that progress in fighting child labor is slowing

September 22, 2017
Contact: Reid Maki, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org

(Washington, DC) The Child Labor Coalition (CLC), whose 37 member organizations fight exploitative child labor and represent millions of Americans, welcomed new child labor estimates released Tuesday, September 19th by the International Labour Organization (ILO) which found that the number of children in child labor is 10 percent lower than 2012. The CLC, however, is concerned that the pace of ending child labor has slowed decidedly.

During the period of 2000 to 2012, the ILO found “significant progress” in the reduction of child labor as the estimate of children in child labor fell from 246 million to 168 million—a reduction of 78 million. Progress was pronounced among younger children and girls, who experienced a 40 percent decline in child labor. The greatest portion of that decline occurred in the period 2008-2012, despite a global economic recession.

The new data from the ILO estimates child labor trends from 2012 to 2016 and found that child labor dropped from 168 million to 152 million—16 million fewer children representing a 10 percent drop. Between 2008 and 2012, the level dropped from 215 million to 168 million—47 million children or 22 percent. The most recent data represents a one-third reduction of the prior four years.

Children in the most dangerous forms of work labeled “hazardous labor” dropped from 171 million to 85 million from 2000 to 2012—a reduction of 50 percent. The number of hazardous child workers dropped 30 million between 2008 and 2012 but only 10 million in the last four years—once again, about one-third the level of the prior four years.

Infographic from the ILO.

Infographic from the ILO.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A jointly released estimate by the ILO and the Walk-Free Foundation also released on Tuesday estimates that there are 40 million victims of modern slavery in the world and that about one in four of these victims are children.

The following statement may be attributed to Reid Maki, Director of Child Advocacy for the National Consumers League and Coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition:

“The United Nation’s sustainable development goal 8.7 targets the complete elimination of child labor by 2025. If we are to achieve this extremely difficult objective or come close to achieving it, it is imperative that we pick up the pace of child labor reduction significantly.

This means more resources to fight child labor–not less as the Trump Administration is trying to push through as it tries to end US financed child labor remediation projects. At this critical juncture, we must continue to fund the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, which has helped reduce the number of child laborers in the world by nearly 100 million since 2000. But governments alone cannot end child labor, the corporate entities that benefit from labor exploitation must do more to remove child labor from their supply chains. A massive international effort is needed. We must declare war on poverty, provide living wages for adults so they do not feel compelled to have their children work and we must fight to protect the labor rights of all adult workers. Government must administer financial assistance for the neediest families, provide quality education for all children, pass stronger child labor laws and enforce those laws more robustly.

###

 

 

About the Child Labor Coalition

The Child Labor Coalition, which has 37 member organizations, represents consumers, labor unions, educators, human rights and labor rights groups, child advocacy groups, and religious and women’s groups. It was established in 1989, and is co-chaired by the National Consumers League and the American Federation of Teachers. Its mission is to protect working youth and to promote legislation, programs, and initiatives to end child labor exploitation in the United States and abroad. The CLC’s website and membership list can be found at www.stopchildlabor.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

thumbnail

International Labour Organizaton (ILO) Experts Comment on U.S. Government Efforts to Implement Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor

/in , , , , /by
[Adopted in 2016 and published in 2017]
 
Articles 4(1), 5 and 7(1) of the Convention. Determination of types of hazardous work, monitoring mechanisms and penalties. Hazardous work in agriculture from 16 years of age. The Committee previously noted that section 213 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) permits children aged 16 years and above to undertake, in the agricultural sector, occupations declared to be hazardous or detrimental to their health or well-being by the Secretary of Labor. The Government, referring to Paragraph 4 of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation, 1999 (No. 190), stated that Congress considered it as safe and appropriate for children from the age of 16 years to perform work in the agricultural sector. However, the Committee noted the allegation of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) that a significant number of children under 18 years were employed in agriculture under dangerous conditions, including long hours and exposure to pesticides, with risk of serious injury. The Committee also took note of the observations of the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and the United States Council for International Business (USCIB) that section 213 of the FLSA, which was the product of extensive consultation with the social partners, is in compliance with the text of the Convention and Paragraph 4 of Recommendation No. 190.
 
The Committee took note that the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) continued to focus on improving the safety of children working in agriculture and protecting the greatest number of agricultural workers. In addition, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) increased its focus on agriculture by creating the Office of Maritime and Agriculture (OMA) in 2012, which is responsible for the planning, development and publication of safety and health regulations covering workers in the agricultural industry, as well as guidance documents on specific topics, such as ladder safety in orchards and tractor safety.
 

Read more

thumbnail

HRW Lauds New Landmark Treaty to Protect Domestic Workers Global Labor Standards for up to 100 Million People Worldwide

/in , , /by

(Geneva, June 16, 2011) – The adoption by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on June 16, 2011, of a new, groundbreaking treaty to extend key labor protections to domestic workers will protect millions of people who have been without guarantees of their basic rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Governments, trade unions, and employers’ organizations that make up the ILO overwhelmingly voted to adopt the  ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, which establishes the first global standards for the estimated 50 to 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom are women and girls.

ILO members spent three years developing the convention to address the routine exclusion of domestic workers from labor protections guaranteed to other workers, such as weekly days off, limits to hours of work, and a minimum wage. Domestic workers face a wide range of grave abuses and labor exploitation, including excessive working hours without rest, non-payment of wages, forced confinement, physical and sexual abuse, forced labor, and trafficking.

“Discrimination against women and poor legal protections have allowed abuses against domestic workers to flourish in every corner of the world,” said Nisha Varia, senior women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This new convention is a long overdue recognition of housekeepers, nannies, and caregivers as workers who deserve respect and equal treatment under the law.”
Read more

thumbnail

Uzbekistan Weekly Roundup

/in /by

by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick [From Eurasia.Net]

The annual meeting of the International Labour Conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) proved to be a forum for a serious and methodical condemnation of Uzbekistan’s failure to eliminate the use of forced child labor in the cotton industry. Prior to the meeting, the ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations prepared a exhaustive report based on the testimony of non-governmental groups as well as UN agencies, notably UNICEF, detailing the state-sponsored practice of removing students from school to work in the fields, and threatening them and their parents for failure to comply with orders of local administrators to meet quotas. The Committee noted that Uzbekistan had failed to submit reports about compliance and failed to implement the two conventions signed on the worst forms of child labor.

On June 6, the ILO’s Committee on Application of Standards then discussed the Experts’ report. As a result of ongoing concerns about forced child labor in Uzbekistan, the ILO Committee was set to include a paragraph in its conclusions that would flag Uzbekistan as an egregious case of violations of ILO conventions. Uzbekistan sent Botir Alimukhamedov, first deputy minister of labour and social protection to the ILO meeting, along with the smooth-talking Akmal Saidov, director of the National Human Rights Centre, who is dispatched to every international meeting to refute criticism of Uzbekistan’s human rights record. Read more

thumbnail

Child Soldier Resources

/in , /by

There has been a range of data collected about the plight of child soldiers in the world today. For further resources on the ongoing campaigns, on the ground conditions, and diplomatic situation surrounding child soldiers around the world please see the links below:

 Read more