General Security forces trained on Combating Child Labour in Agriculture

Workshop is one in a series of events organized by the ILO to support a wide range of practitioners and officials working to combat child labour in agriculture in Lebanon.

Child Labour in agriculture has been on the rise in Lebanon since the onset of the crisis in neighbouring Syria, with hundreds of Syrian children in particular engaged in highly exploitative forms of child labour, especially at harvest times.

In light of this increasing phenomenon, the ILO, in coordination with the Ministry of Labour and other national partners, is organizing a workshop under the Patronage of the Director-General of the General Security Forces, Major-General Abbas Ibrahim, and in the presence of the Norwegian Ambassador to Lebanon.

The workshop will take place from 16-18 March 2017 at the Tamar Lancaster Hotel in Beirut, from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM every day.

This workshop is one in a series of workshops and orientation meetings organized by the ILO project “Combatting the Worst Forms of Child Labour among Syrian Refugees and Host Communities,” funded by the Norway Ministry of Foreign Affair, to support a wide range of practitioners and officials working to combat child labour in agriculture. These include General Security forces, Ministry of Labour officials, NGO’s, the Farmers Union and other relevant agricultural unions.

This workshop will introduce the General Security Forces to ILO Conventions 182 and 138, relevant Lebanese Labour Laws, the problem of child labour in agriculture and its root causes, it health and psycho-social effects on children and how to attend to it based on General Security’s new Decree No. 111 for combating child labour in agriculture, administratively as well as based on the best interest of the child. Participants in workshop include high-level officers from the General Security and especially those covering rural areas in Lebanon such as Bekaa, Hermel, Akkar and South Lebanon.

The workshop will capacitate General Security Forces to implement Decree No. 111 especially in the rural areas of Lebanon ( Beqaa, Hermel, Akkar and south Lebanon) therefore limiting exploitative child labour in agriculture especially amongst Syrian refugees.