Brasília – Representatives from Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, and the ILO met on April 12th to share information, discuss challenges and progress on data collection and analysis for the eradication of child labour.

The virtual exchange aimed at supporting national actors’ current efforts to develop a child labour module to be included in Trinidad and Tobago's "Continuous Population Sample Survey (CSSP)”. This exchange of knowledge will enable Trinidad and Tobago to leverage the lessons learned and best practices from Brazil's experience in data collection and analysis, thereby supporting public policies aimed at eradicating child labour.

The activity was conducted under the Brazil-ILO South-South Cooperation Program, as part of its project titled titled "Consolidating the Progress of The Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour." One of the components of this project is "Support for the Collection and Analysis of Statistical Data on Child Labour to Generate Knowledge on Child Labour."

The meeting brought together representatives from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MTE), and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ABC/MRE) on the Brazilian side. On the Trinidad and Tobago side, representatives from the Labour Market Information Unit, the Central Statistical Office (CSO), and the National Child Labour Steering Committee participated, along with officials from the ILO offices in Brazil, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica.

Maria Lucia França Pontes Vieira, the Deputy Director of Research and Surveys at IBGE, gave a presentation on the collection of data on child labour, focusing on the National Continuous Household Sample Survey (PNAD) as the main survey.

PNAD has been providing annual information on the labour market, including structural topics such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), health, and child labour since 2015.
"It is not easy to collect information on child labour due to two reasons: inaccurate reporting of data and cultural attitudes towards what constitutes child labour. Therefore, there is a need to create a questionnaire that can broaden the possibilities of identifying child labour and accurately capture this reality," explained Maria Lúcia.

Roberto Padilha Guimarães, a Labour Inspector at the National Coordination of Inspection of Child Labour and Brazil's focal point in the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Initiative Free from Child Labour, emphasized the significance of the data collected to understand the scale and characteristics of child labour in Brazil, a complex and multi-causal issue.

"Knowledge of the problem is fundamental to guide more efficient policies for the eradication of child labour in the country. It is important for the country to measure its efforts and advances in eradicating child labour, and the historical series of data is a relevant point.", said Roberto.

Bruce Spencer, Head of the Labour Market Information Unit at the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Labour, highlighted similar challenges faced by his country in collecting and obtaining information from responding households. "We have a similar data collection technique to Brazil in terms of respondent households, and we face similar challenges when visiting these households. It requires a data collection method that uses multiple forms of sampling to capture the dynamism of the labour market in Trinidad and Tobago." Bruce assessed.

The Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour was established in 2014 as an intergovernmental cooperation instrument that builds on more than 20 years of regional experience on the prevention and eradication of child labour. Its objective is to foster innovative strategies against child labour and contribute to achieving Target 8.7 of the 2030 Agenda. The initiative’s role in information and knowledge generation and in facilitating targeted exchanges and collaboration between governments, workers, the private sector, and civil society actors has been a catalyst for South-South cooperation becoming a primary modality for development cooperation between regional stakeholders.

This regional Initiative was also able to recognize a common demand for capacity building within the Caribbean to address the school to work transition and identified Brazil as the most appropriate service provider based on its experience and good practices in apprenticeships and child labour inspections.