1. Child labour presents a serious challenge to the courage and imagination of nations and the international community. It is not just a question of a few thousand, but of several tens of millions of children throughout the world, that are exploited at work or employed under conditions that seriously jeopardize their health, safety, education, morals and dignity. The cost of child labour is high: for the children themselves, many of whom reach adult age physically diminished, emotionally destabilized and intellectually retarded; and for society, which is thus deprived of a large proportion of the skilled human resources it needs in order to develop.

2. The international community should show its solidarity with the poorer countries through bilateral and multilateral, financial and technical cooperation. The background document presented by the ILO to the Amsterdam Conference indicates ways in which this cooperation can be effected in the various fields of action against child labour. This note is therefore limited to emphasizing a number of points considered to be of particular importance:

(i) International cooperation cannot do everything in the countries where it is put to use, nor indeed does it have the resources to do so. Action against child labour requires interventions on many fronts, and they should be substantially financed by the national budget. Under no circumstances, can they be limited to those that can be funded externally.

(ii) International cooperation has no ready-made solutions to the problems of child labour, such as can be applied indiscriminately to all countries. It should be borne in mind that only recently have international organizations such as the ILO and UNICEF been called upon for assistance. They still have a great deal to learn, as do the recipient countries. Moreover, uniform solutions are not desirable. Indeed, when it comes to child labour, each country is unique and needs its own tailor-made international assistance programme. The extent of the problems and the human and material resources that can be mobilized to remedy them vary from country to country. It is for each country, within the limits imposed by its own particular economic and socio-cultural circumstances, to set itself realistic objectives in its fight against child labour, to decide on a programme of interventions suited to its specific needs, limitations and possibilities, and to identify those interventions for which international assistance would be especially advantageous. International assistance does very valuable work where it is used to encourage and facilitate dialogue on countries' objectives, and on the requisite interventions, between government departments and interested groups in civil society (employers' and workers' organizations, NGOs, universities, etc.).

(iii) National institutions, both public and private, should alone be responsible for carrying out interventions thus decided upon to combat child labour. International cooperation can help these institutions, for example by providing the necessary funding or by giving technical advice. Under no circumstances, however, should it be a substitute for national institutions. Thus, international assistance should not take the place of national efforts, but should encourage and support them and act as a catalyst for positive changes.

(iv) Although international cooperation should occur in the context of a national plan of action to combat child labour decided upon by the countries concerned, this does not mean that it should be used indiscriminately. Countries and international or regional organizations that provide assistance should make it a condition that it be used primarily to combat the most intolerable forms of child labour, even if these are a politically sensitive issue, or if the possibility of achieving significant results may appear uncertain at the beginning. In other words, international cooperation should be seen not as window-dressing to satisfy the curiosity or appease the anxieties of national or international public opinion, but as a means of finding sustainable solutions to truly serious cases of child labour. It should also give priority to supporting interventions to help very young children and girls, because of their greater vulnerability to economic exploitation.

(v) International cooperation should adopt an integrated multi-sectoral approach designed to improve national capacities for tackling the child labour issue in the following areas:

(a) collecting detailed and reliable data on cases of child labour and thus identifying the types of work that are harmful to children, as well as assessing the seriousness of the harm done;

(b) formulating specific action plans to combat the most intolerable forms of child labour;

(c) organizing public information and awareness-raising campaigns to change mentalities and attitudes with regard to child labour, and to establish a social and political climate conducive to action;

(d) planning and implementing pilot schemes designed to prevent the employment of children in degrading and particularly hazardous types of work, or to remove them from such work, rehabilitate them and keep them out of the labour market;

(e) incorporating child labour concerns into economic and social development policies and programmes, especially those concerning employment, education and training, small enterprise promotion and the diffusion of appropriate production techniques, so that they contribute effectively to the attainment of the objectives assigned to national action against child labour;

(f) improving child labour legislation so as to ensure, at the very least, that it categorically prohibits, in all sectors of activity and in all types of enterprise or employment, work by children under the age of 12, and up to a later age, the employment of children in types of work or under conditions likely to jeopardize their health, safety, education, morals or dignity;

(g) reinforcing inspection in respect of the application of such protective legislation, in particular by increasing the human and material resources available to the inspection services, and by involving local communities in monitoring the working conditions of their own children;

(h) establishing an institutional mechanism within the state apparatus to organize action against child labour and, in particular, to coordinate public and private sector interventions at the various levels at which they take place;

(i) training participants in this action, not only decision-makers, but also those working in the field;

(j) evaluating the results of different types of intervention, identifying factors contributing to their success or failure and, on that basis, adapting intervention methods with a view to their use on a larger scale.

(vi) International cooperation should seek to establish, in those countries where it is effected, a careful balance between two types of intervention. The first, focused on the short term, is aimed at removing as many children as possible from degrading or particularly hazardous work situations and rehabilitating them (removal and rehabilitation). The second is designed to influence the economic and socio-cultural factors which give rise to child labour, and which for that reason will produce visible effects in the longer term only (prevention). Many countries have tended to give preference to the first type over the second. However, experience has shown that it is easier, cheaper and more cost-effective to prevent child labour than to withdraw children from work and rehabilitate them.

(vii) One of the best means by which the international community can contribute to preventing child labour in developing countries is to help the latter increase the capacity and improve the relevance of education services for children of the poorest families. One of the best ways of keeping children away from work is to make available to all children a public school system that is genuinely free of charge and provides a relevant education, i.e. an education which is suited to their economic and social environment and gives them good chances of future employment. Putting such a system in place requires considerable state investment, bearing in mind the present qualitative and quantitative shortcomings in most developing countries' education systems. International cooperation should therefore be particularly generous in this area and provide effective financial and technical support to countries endeavouring to remedy these shortcomings. It should also help those countries to articulate their education and child labour policies. It is indeed essential that one of the major objectives of government education programmes be prevention of child labour. This means that these programmes should be conducted actively and concretely in the geographical areas on which the government has decided to focus national action against child labour.

(viii) While legislation and education have an important and necessary role to play in combating child labour, their effects will be to no avail unless the international community is committed to combating poverty, wherever it exists, through an extensive programme of cooperation in the socio-economic field. The fight against the most intolerable forms of child labour should be supported by an international campaign to establish productive and freely chosen employment, and to provide safety nets for the poorest. The challenge is, for developing countries' governments, to address the needs of the poorest of their poor, and for the rich countries, to back up their insistence on observance of universal standards with a commensurate commitment to increased resources to tackle world poverty. This requires the former to pursue, and the latter to help them to pursue, a more active economic growth policy, which should result in the creation of productive and remunerative employment for the poorest families, relieving them of the economic pressures that compel them to set their children to work. As in the field of education, international cooperation should help the poorer countries to link their employment creation programmes to their programmes of action against child labour, and to ensure that employment creation primarily benefits those local communities where child labour is most prevalent.

(ix) International cooperation should be accessible to all actual or potential actors in the fight against child labour. No organization on its own can successfully deal with this issue, which requires the efforts of the ILO constituents and of many other sectors of society in both formulating and implementing policies. International cooperation should enable governments to orchestrate the national campaign against child labour. One of the state's main responsibilities is to protect its children; and governments indeed have the necessary authority to set things in motion. International assistance should be provided not only at central government level, but also at the municipal level. Given the vital part they can play in the fight against child labour, national employers' and workers' organizations should be given special consideration in respect of international aid. The ILO and the international employers' and workers' organizations are the most appropriate bodies to afford them this aid. Action by non-governmental organizations should also be supported. These organizations have many assets when it comes to devising and implementing direct action programmes aimed at children who are already working: they are close to the children, know their needs, are generally trusted by the communities in which they operate, and are therefore in a position to mobilize the energy and resources available at local level. Universities can also be valuable allies in the fight against child labour. International assistance should encourage them to conduct surveys, to train field staff or to evaluate the impact of pilot projects targeted at specific child worker groups. Above all, international cooperation should induce the actors mentioned above, and possible others, to work together and coordinate their efforts to attain commonly agreed objectives.

(x) Since the family is the child's first line of defence against economic exploitation and hazardous work, international cooperation should give priority to local initiatives designed to strengthen the capacity of families to provide the living conditions necessary for their children's development. It should ensure that children and parents are not passive targets of such initiatives but can put forward their own point of view, or at least express their opinions, participate and be organized for that purpose.

(xi) International cooperation should be provided for a sufficiently long period to those countries that have requested it. Since it takes a great deal of time to strengthen national capacities to provide lasting solutions to the problems of child labour, the IPEC has set itself a time-frame of approximately ten years for the provision of technical assistance. By applying a strategy of progressive introduction of this assistance, followed by a gradual withdrawal, this international programme seeks to bring about a situation in which, by the end of this period, child labour concerns will have been incorporated into the policies, programmes and budgets of the national institutions which have been its partners.

(xii) International cooperation should encourage collaboration and exchange of experience between developing countries. These countries have little to learn from the industrialized countries, whose experience in combating child labour lies too far back in the past to be relevant today. On the other hand, they have a great deal to learn from those developing countries that are ahead of them in this crusade and therefore have useful experience to pass on. Moreover, since some forms of child labour exploitation, such as trafficking in children for purposes of employment or prostitution, go beyond national boundaries, their solution requires concerted action by a number of countries. International cooperation should vigorously encourage and support this action.

(xiii) In conformity with Article 3 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is the child's best interest, and not other interests, that should always guide international action against child labour. Thus the destination of goods and services produced with such labour - be it for export or domestic consumption -is of little importance. What is essential is that international assistance be available to all areas of activity in which children are employed under degrading or particularly hazardous conditions. Similarly, and again in the best interest of the child, international cooperation should adopt a global view of children's needs, one which takes into account not only their need to be protected against forms of work that jeopardize their normal development, but also their need to be educated and trained for adult life and their families' need for an adequate income.

4. Because of its deep-rooted causes (inadequate economic growth, poverty of families as a result of unemployment or under-employment among their adult members, shortcomings in the education services, etc.), the fight against child labour requires the participation and support of a number of international organizations, both intergovernmental and non-governmental. Some intergovernmental organizations - the ILO, UNICEF and the UN through its Human Rights Committee and its Committee on the Rights of the Child - are already actively engaged in the fight against this scourge. Others have so far been involved only in limited interventions or have not intervened directly. It is therefore imperative to encourage all international organizations with the potential for contributing to the fight against child labour actually to do so. It is also necessary that the diversity of competences to be brought into play be reflected at international level by increased cooperation between all the organizations concerned. Such cooperation should emphasize the complementarity of their respective actions as well as the need to avoid overlapping and to put each organization's particular strength to the best possible use.