Events in the international community

United Nations General Assembly

57th Session, New York, 2002

Statement by Caroline Lewis, ILO Liaison Office, New York, and
Frans Roselaers, Director, International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour

Agenda Item 105: Promotion and protection of the rights of children
Agenda Item 43: Follow-up to the outcome of the special session on children

Over the years, this Committee has paid close attention to the issue of child labour. During successive recent sessions of UNGA, you have discussed and adopted resolutions for the problem to be addressed urgently. We are grateful for your support, and we believe it has helped greatly in moving forward.

On behalf of the ILO, I should like to thank you for all that was done, over the last twelve months, by governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations and by the NGO community. We are satisfied that the renewed commitment and calls for urgent action contained in the Declaration and Plan of Action of this year’s Special Session on Children will reassure and help those member States in this worthy endeavour. A massive number of 130 countries have already ratified the ILO’s new Convention (No. 182) on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, making it the fastest ratified in ILO history.

An additional 40 countries have ratified the ILO Convention (No.138) on Minimum Age since the beginning of 1999. Several dozen other countries are well advanced in the ratification process. We hope that this momentum can be maintained so that we can arrive in a short period at universal ratification of both these fundamental ILO Conventions.

To implement C.182, governments take immediate measures to ban such practices as slave labour and bondage of children, their exploitation by way of prostitution or pornography, their use in armed conflict, in the production and trafficking of drugs, and in all forms of hazardous work. I should like to recall that ILO Conventions like C.182 call for the enactment of laws to that effect, implementation and enforcement of such laws, monitoring and reporting on progress made, and standing accountable. In addition to focusing on the worst forms of child labour in a single instrument that applies to all persons under the age of 18, C.182 provides a framework for global action and calls for international cooperation and assistance.

The ratification record of C.182 could not have been achieved without the moral indignation and the determination to rapidly eliminate this injustice done to children in all regions of the world. The ILO is grateful for the strong support received by our national partners, as well as by UN agencies, especially UNICEF, which is collaborating with us in our worldwide ratification campaign.

The ILO is not only promoting the ratification and application of its Convention. It is also actively working with more than 75 developing countries, through the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), to effectively reduce and possibly eradicate child labour as quickly as possible.

For ten years now, IPEC, the global leader in the struggle against child labour, has shown that child labour can be reduced and eliminated effectively and sustainably. At first, this was demonstrated through pilot projects or experiments. Now, we have managed for entire industries, or complete geographical areas, to get child workers out of factories or workshops, and into schools, while simultaneously improving employment and incomes for parents, and preventing siblings from ending up in child labour. Our experience shows that results can best be achieved by forging broad-based in-country partnerships.

We are developing new programme approaches. A number of countries have asked for our assistance in an attempt to entirely eliminate, over a defined period of time, all incidence of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. This time-bound programme approach is now taking off in a dozen countries worldwide.

I should also like to inform you that we have made real progress in collaborating with our sister agencies in the UN system and the World Bank in aligning data collection and analysis, research and research capacity building on child labour.

We seek to deal with child labour in a developmental context, linking it to the national development effort and mainstreaming action against child labour into economic and social policies. We want to place it in the context of poverty alleviation and of combating parents’ un- and-under-employment.

Together with legislative action and large-scale technical support and cooperation, we are on course for providing a decent childhood to 250 million children working worldwide.