ILO Policy: a summary

1.  The foundations of the International Labour Organization's policy on child labour are set out in the Preamble of the Constitution, the Declaration of Philadelphia and relevant international labour standards, as well as in resolutions adopted by the International Labour Conference and in decisions taken by the ILO Governing Body.

2.  The fundamental objective of ILO policy in this matter is the abolition of child labour. The International Labour Organization set this as the goal in the very year of its creation, by adopting Convention No. 5, prohibiting work done by children less than 14 years of age in industrial undertakings. Sectoral Conventions and Recommendations on the minimum age for admission to employment which were adopted after 1919 (employment at sea, agriculture, trimmers and stokers, non-industrial employment, industry, fishing and underground work) also adopted this perspective, as did the most recent ILO instruments on this subject, the Minimum Age Convention (No. 138) and Recommendation (No. 146), 1973. The International Labour Conference, in the preamble of Convention No. 138, considered that "the time has come to establish a general instrument on the subject, which would gradually replace the existing ones applicable to limited economic sectors, with a view to achieving the total abolition of child labour".

3.  The emphasis placed by international labour standards on the abolition of child labour attests to the conviction of the ILO's constituents that childhood is a period of life which should be consecrated not to work but to education and development; that child labour, by its nature or because of the conditions in which it is undertaken, often jeopardizes children's possibilities of becoming productive adults, able to take their place in the community, and finally that child labour is not inevitable and that progress towards its reduction and even its elimination is possible when the political will to fight it exists.

4.  This conviction is especially reflected in Convention No. 138 which requires member States to pursue a national policy designed to ensure the effective abolition of child labour, to set a minimum age for admission to employment or work and to raise this progressively to a level consistent with the fullest physical and mental development of young people. This minimum age must not be less than the age of completion of compulsory schooling and, in any case, not less than 15 years. It should be noted that Convention No. 138 applies to work done by children both for another person (wage employment) and on their own behalf (self-employment).

5. Convention No. 138 is a flexible instrument. This flexibility is illustrated by provisions which:

1. permit employment or work by children on light work from 13 years of age;
2. allow for lower minimum ages (14 years in general and 12 years for light work) in the case of countries whose economy and educational facilities are insufficiently developed (for as long as this situation lasts);
3. permit exclusion from the Convention's application for limited categories of employment or work in respect of which special and substantial problems of application arise (for as long as these problems exist);
4. authorize member States whose economy and administrative facilities are insufficiently developed to initially limit the scope of application of the Convention, provided that it should be applicable as a minimum to: mining and quarrying; manufacturing; construction; electricity, gas and water; sanitary services; transport, storage and communication; and plantations and other agricultural undertakings mainly producing for commercial purposes.

6.  Convention No. 138 and especially Recommendation No. 146 also contain some provisions concerning the protection of working children. It should be noted that:

1. these provisions apply only in the following cases, which are provided for in the Convention: light work; limited categories of employment or work excluded because the application to them of the Convention would give rise to special and substantial problems; and branches of activity and types of enterprise excluded pursuant to the option granted to member States to initially limit the scope of application of the Convention;
2. protection basically concerns conditions of work (remuneration; hours of work, rest and leave; social security; and occupational safety and health).

Implications for ILO technical cooperation activities

7.   In the field of child labour, as in the International Labour Organization's other fields of action, the role of technical cooperation is to bring national law and practice closer to the model set out in international labour standards, so as to promote their application or their eventual ratification. All ILO field activities relating to child labour should therefore be in line with ILO policy on this subject.

8.   ILO technical cooperation, to conform with relevant international labour standards, particularly Convention No. 138 and Recommendation No. 146, should aim primarily to promote and support action in ILO member States which contributes to the effective abolition of child labour. Protection of working children, especially in terms of improving their conditions of work, can constitute another objective of technical cooperation. Nonetheless, this second objective is of a transitional nature, in the sense that it is pursued in anticipation of a comprehensive application of the prohibition of child labour.

9.   It is generally recognized that the complete abolition of child labour will take a long time, in view of the deep-seated causes of such work, such as family poverty resulting from parents' unemployment or underemployment, from their limited access to training and from weaknesses in the system of social protection; quantative and qualitative deficiencies in the education system; and passivity or even resignation about the problem, in Third World countries. The role of ILO technical cooperation is thus to ensure that a real start is made towards abolition and, in particular, that the intolerable is not longer tolerated. To this end, it should focus especially on encouraging and supporting action aimed at eliminating child labour in the types of employment (forced labour or bonded labour, for example), in the industries (mines and glassworks, for instance) and in the occupations (such as prostitution or sugar cane cutting) which are clearly dangerous, i.e. detrimental to the safety, health or morals of the children concerned. Such elimination should be sought even if child labour in these dangerous types of home work which involve exposure to toxic substances, to the use of pesticides or insecticides in agriculture, and to the recycling of household waste in public garbage dumpsites. Another priority should be the reduction of the incidence of child labour amongst the youngest and therefore most vulnerable children (those less than 12 years old, the age at which primary schooling generally ceases).

10.   As for the protection of working children, it is necessary to bear in mind that the principal objective of ILO action is to abolish child labour for those children who have not yet reached a specified age or who are doing work which is liable to endanger their health, safety or morals. The ILO should assist governments to develop, implement and evaluate activities aimed at improving the lot of child workers with this aim strictly in mind. While the ILO can make proposals to member States for defining and setting priorities to alleviate the situation of the millions of children who work in order to survive, such proposals will be consistent with the priority objective mentioned above, which has been established by the International Labour Conference, only to the extent that they are framed within an overall goal to abolish child labour. The principle criterion for evaluating these measures should be the extent to which they have enabled progress, even in only in a particular sector of activity or region, towards the abolition of child labour, by reducing the extent of it or by mitigating its consequences for children's further development.

11.   It is of the greatest importance, in technical cooperation activities with a secondary aim of protecting or improving the lot of working children, not to legitimize what is prohibited by ILO standards. The content of such cooperation must therefore be reviewed carefully to ensure that activities in the field are compatible with ILO policy. In addition to the ILO technical unit responsible for child labour question, the International Labour Standards Department should be involved in this review at the stage of formulation of projects or action programmes (briefing officials and experts going to the field, assessing ideas for a project or programme) and at the stage of their evaluation (both interim and final).

12.   ILO technical cooperation should mainly be addressed to the ILO's natural partners (governments and employers' and workers' organizations) and aim to involve them more in the struggle against child labour. It should also support the NGOs which are active in this field.

13.   The primary aim of ILO technical cooperation should be to help governments to define and implement a national policy for the effective abolition of child labour (to use the terminology of Article 1 of Convention No. 138). This policy, the content of which should be determined in close consultation with employers' and workers' organizations and with other interested groups, should include or be linked with three main types of measure:

1. in the first place, measures aiming to put a stop urgently to the intolerable (the use of children in dangerous types of employment, industry or occupation, as well as the use of very young and therefore particularly vulnerable children);
2. secondly, measures aimed at changing attitudes and behaviours about child labour;
3. finally, measures which, without explicitly addressing child labour, attack its causes.

14.   The measures described in clauses (a) and (b) of point 13 above lend themselves well to ILO technical cooperation activities. They include:

1. knowledge of the problem: little is known about the extent and distribution (by branch of activity or type of occupation) of child workers, about the conditions in which these children work and about the effects of this work on their physical, intellectual, moral or social development. Because of this ignorance, most existing programmes of action have principally benefitted the most visible or "appealing" child workers (such as street children), and have helped very little those children who work out of the public eye (in domestic service, agriculture, or small workshops, as traders in the urban informal sector, or in home work). It is particularly urgent to identify the most dangerous forms of child labour. Likewise, a critical evaluation should be undertaken urgently of measures at the national level to combat child labour, so as to identify gaps and promising lines of intervention;
2. mobilization of the public opinion around the issue of child labour, especially by supporting pressure groups (human rights or children's rights committees, for example) in their efforts to keep a systematic tally of abuses, to make them public and to highlight the breaches of their responsibilities by the public authorities;
3. informing and sensitizing the general public, and in particular the actors in the struggle against child labour (governments, employers' and workers' circles, NGOs and other pressure groups), using the data gathered under (a) above and making wide use of the mass media (press, radio and TV);
4. education of children and of those responsible for them (parents and teachers) on children's rights as workers, on the long-term costs of child labour and the possible alternatives;
5. training of the people involved in the struggle against child labour (government ministry staff, labour inspectors, trade unionists, representatives of employers' organizations, NGO leaders, etc.);
6. review of protective legislation and better supervision of its application: the substantial disappearance of child labour in the organized sector of the economy is mainly due to the existence of legislation prohibiting it. In many Third World countries there are gaps in legislation on child labour. Its scope does not include certain activities, occupations, or enterprises (agriculture, home work, domestic service, small enterprises) in which child labour is very widespread and often performed in dangerous conditions. Further, where work by children has not been outlawed their conditions of employment are often unregulated. These deficiencies should be corrected. Likewise, labour inspection has frequently not fully lived up to its responsibilities as regards supervision of protective legislation. Measures are needed to reinforce its effectiveness;
7. implementation of programmes of action aimed at preventing child labour, at withdrawing children from dangers working situations, at facilitating their access to education, apprenticeship and vocational training services, or at improving their conditions of work and life; evaluation of the results of these programmes; their adaptation in the light of this evaluation, and their application on a larger scale;
8. creation of an institutional mechanism within government, with responsibility for setting the main policy priorities, for coordinating the activities of the various Ministries and state institutions, for ensuring that the measures taken by the public sector and those of the private sector complement each other, and for giving financial and technical support to the programmes of direct action referred to in clause (g) above.