ILO's Flagship Programmes

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour and Forced Labour (IPEC+)

Today, there are 152 million children in child labour, and 40 million women, men and children in modern slavery, including 24.9 million in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage. The IPEC+ Flagship provides ILO leadership in global efforts to eliminate these persistent global challenges that violate fundamental human rights.

  1. The new IPEC+ Flagship Programme joins together two of the ILO’s leading TC programmes on child labour and forced labour to establish a major new force in the fight against child labour and forced labour, which recognises that these practices share many common root causes. 

    The objective of the IPEC+ Flagship is to provide global leadership in tackling these root causes and so free millions of people from all forms of child labour and forced labour.

    IPEC+ works with governments, employers and workers to:
    • Strengthen technical and governance capacity to create transformative change in public institutions, laws, and practices at all levels;
    • Encourage effective engagement and cooperation between the constituents and other stakeholders; and
    • Significantly expand knowledge and policy-oriented advice and information.

The IPEC+ Flagship is built on the foundations of the ILO’s Fundamental Principles and Rights At Work and their corresponding international instruments dealing with child labour (Minimum age Convention C138 and Convention on Worst Forms of Child Labour C182) and forced labour (Forced Labour Convention C29, Abolition of Forced Labour Convention C105 and the new Forced Labour Protocol P29). These instruments together provide members with the necessary framework to understand and fight against these two types of human right violations. Simply by virtue of membership, all ILO members are called upon to respect, promote and realize, in good faith, the rights contained in these instruments, regardless of their ratification status.

The IPEC+ Flagship is developing cutting edge tools and policy prescriptions to eliminate all forms of child labour by 2025 and to dismantle systems of forced labour and human trafficking by 2030, thus making possible one vital element of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, adopted by the United Nations in 2015.

More information

  1. Brochure

    IPEC+ Strategy
  2. Brochure

    IPEC+ Implementation
  1. ILO action on

    Child Labour
  2. ILO action on

    Forced labour