IPEC Action in India
The cooperation between the ILO and the Government of India in the field of child labour started in 1992 with the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This agreement laid down the principles, areas and modalities of cooperation for the progressive elimination of child labour. Under the provisions of the MoU, the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child labour (IPEC) established a national programme, and a National Steering Committee (NSC) responsible for policy guidance and monitoring. The NSC is chaired by the Secretary of the Ministry of Labour and Employment and has representatives from government agencies, including the Department of Education of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, employers' and workers' organizations and representatives of NGOs and civil society.
IPEC in India, moved away from relatively small action programmes, as implemented in the framework of the
national programme, to more holistic programmes integrated into national efforts to combat child labour
through the NCLPs. Two of the approaches tried included the integrated projects and the state-based projects.
The idea behind the integrated approach was not only to address the issue of putting children into non-formal
schools, and later into formal schools, but also to tackle other factors that had a bearing on sustaining the
movement of rehabilitation, and, more importantly, preventing the accretion of more children into the labour
force. The Integrated Area Specific Programme (IASP), which was based on this concept, comprised an integrated
set of interventions simultaneously addressing all the interlinked issues that perpetuate child labour at
the district level. This programme, which started in 2000, is now completed and a comprehensive evaluation
has been undertaken.
The second approach consisted in moving from a district level to a state level perspective in
designing interventions. Taking into consideration the crucial role of state governments in issues
of enforcement, awareness raising, and admission of children into schools, state-based projects were designed.
The Andhra Pradesh State Based Project (APSBP) for the elimination of child labour is an example of this kind of
intervention. The APSBP worked closely with the State Government and its departments to address the issue of
child labour across the State in a holistic manner, both in terms of geographical reach as well as in terms of
the sectors targeted. The commencement of the APSBP in early 2000 was in a sense the fruition of the evolution
of the IPEC programme in India during the first decade of its existence.
Both the integrated and state based approaches, which have been implemented since 1997,
contributed to the largest collaboration between the Government of India and the ILO on the issue
of child labour: the INDUS Project which focused on the prevention and elimination of child labour
in ten identified hazardous sectors through an area-based approach in five states of India.
Besides the INDUS project, which ended in March 2009, a state based project is ongoing in Karnataka.
This project is financed by the Italian government, targets the worst forms of child labour in the
agricultural sector with the aim of combating child labour and economic exploitation in selected communities.
Overview of ongoing projects
Overview of recently concluded projects
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