Child labour is work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. In the Philippines, there are 2.1 million child labourers aged 5 to 17 years old based on the 2011 Survey on Children of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). About 95 per cent of them are in hazardous work. Sixty-nine per cent of these are aged 15 to 17 years old, beyond the minimum allowable age for work but still exposed to hazardous work.

Children work in farms and plantations, in dangerous mines, on streets, in factories, and in private homes as child domestic workers. Agriculture remains to be the sector where most child labourers can be found at 58 per cent.

The Philippines has ratified the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182. It has adopted the Philippine Program Against Child Labor (PPACL)as the official national programme on the elimination of child labour. This is a convergence of the efforts of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), chaired by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) working together with the government, the private sector, workers and employers organizations, non-government organizations (NGOs) and international development institutions towards the prevention, protection and removal from hazardous and exploitative work of child labour victims and, as may be appropriate, healing and reintegrating them.

The ILO supports the Philippines in implementing the PPACL through its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC). The ILO, in partnership with the Government of Japan is also implementing the Achieving reduction of child labour in support of education: Programme to reduce the worst forms of child labour in agriculture in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.