The Commemoration of the World Day against Child Labour

Background

The ILO’s most recent global estimate is that 115 million children are involved in hazardous work. This is work that by its nature or the circumstances, in which it is carried out, is likely to harm children’s health, safety or morals. Children working in many different industries and occupations can be exposed to such risks and the problem is global, affecting industrialized as well as developing countries. Hazardous work is among the worst forms of child labour which the international community has targeted for elimination by 2016. The need for urgent action in order to reach this target was both the theme of the Hague Global Child Labour Conference in 2010 which adopted a Roadmap for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour and has been endorsed in the ILO’s Global Action Plan.

The 2011 World Day against Child Labour will provide a global spotlight on hazardous child labour and call for urgent action to tackle the problem. On this World Day, The ILO calls for:

• New urgency in identifying and tackling hazardous child labour, as an important means to make progress on the global goal of eliminating the worst forms of child labour.
• Recognising that hazardous work is part of the larger child labour problem, scaling up global, national and local level efforts against all forms of child labour through education, social protection and strategies to promote decent and productive work for youth and adults.
• Building strong tripartite action on the issue of the hazardous work of children, using international standards and the experience of employers and workers organisations in the area of safety and health.

In Indonesia, since year 2000, some important developments in the efforts to eliminate child labour in Indonesia continue to take place. Not only child labour and in particular the need to tackle the Worst Forms of Child Labour, has been integrated in many key policy statements in various local level policy and programs (including the Medium Term development Plan (PJM), the Poverty Reduction Strategic Paper (PRSP), the UN Development Assistance Framework for Indonesia), but also in the better access to education for children at-risk, including child labour.

However, despite all of the progress, the problem of child labours remains significant in Indonesia. Thus, in order to continue strengthen the public support on the elimination of child labour and WFCL, one strategy that can be taken to better support the initiative is scaling up the awareness of various parties and layers of society in Indonesia regarding the issue through an awareness rising strategy.

Considering that the WDACL 2011 is yet another good opportunity to attract attention from wider public on child labour, ILO EAST, a four-year project funded by the Government of Netherlands, is planning to conduct a local scale awareness rising campaign through a talk show and a kite drawing, making and flying competition for children. Students, child labourers, former child labourers and children at risk would be facilitated to speak up their voices, concerns, aspirations and experiences regarding child labour and hazardous works through their drawing in a group.

Objectives

This year WDACL 2010 theme is “Warning! Children in Hazardous Work - End Child Labour “

The child labour talk show and kite flying competition overarching objective is to increase and scale up awareness especially of policy, program makers and public at-large, especially about the OSH dangers and risks of children / child labourers who work in the hazardous sectors, in order to ensure for more actions to reduce, prevent and eliminate this works can be initiated and can take place.

Expected outputs and activities

A series of activities in six provinces will be conducted as follows:

• Jakarta: 12 June - Kite making and flying competition and child labour talkshow;
• Makassar: 26 June - Child carnival and street theater;
• Jayapura: 28 June - Awareness rising campaign through children’s drawing and writing event;
• Ambon: 16 June - Kite flying competition and child labour workshop; and
• Kupang: 17 June - Kite flying competition and child labour workshop.