The Government of Bangladesh ratified the ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (WFCL) in 2001. Although prohibited by the Labour Act (2006), nearly 3.2 million children aged 5-17 work in Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2003). Out of these child labourers, 1.3 million are engaged in hazardous work. The vast majority of them are found in informal sectors, relegating workers in general and child labourers in particular to hazardous and exploitative working conditions.
To address these conditions, the ILO International Programme on Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), ADB and UNICEF supported the Government of Bangladesh in developing a National Time-Bound Programme (TBP) towards eliminating all forms of worst forms of child labour by 2015. The programme strategies include development and implementation of the regulatory and monitoring mechanisms, and provision of non-formal education, skills development training for children trapped in the WFCL, socio-economic empowerment programmes for their families, and workplace improvement programmes.
The current ILO Urban Informal Economy (UIE) Project of Support to the National Time Bound Programme towards the Elimination of Worst Forms of Child Labour in Bangladesh, supported by the Government of the Netherlands, contributes to the National TBP. It focuses on strengthening the knowledge base and preparing models that regulate, monitor and address hazardous child labour in an urban informal economy for country replication.