Good practices
Good practices for tackling child labour in Cambodia
This report provides information on five good practices (GPs), which those working on child labour in Cambodia have developed to stop child labour, improve the welfare and opportunities for child labourers and their families, and sustain these efforts for the long term. This report is intend to provide child labour practitioners with information on how to replicate these good practices in other parts of Cambodia and other countries with high levels of poverty and child labour.
Content also available in:
Khmer
This report was commissioned at the end of ILO-IPEC’s "Time-bound Support Project" Phase II (TBSP Phase II, CMB/08/50/USA). ILO-IPEC considers documenting good practices in combating child labour to be a crucial end-of-project activity in countries implementing ILO-IPEC projects as it ensures that information on the strengths and weaknesses of past initiatives are used to inform and improve future initiatives.
Between 2008 and 2012, TBSP Phase II was implemented in 15 Cambodian provinces, 8 of which took direct action. The target for the number of children to be withdrawn from or prevented from taking up the worst forms of child labour was 12,000. Of this number, 11,000 children were to receive support to help them complete their education to Grade 9, or if over age 15, to take vocational training. One thousand children were also to receive non-educational support. Over the four years of TBSP Phase II, a total of 12,951 children were withdrawn from or prevented from taking up the worst forms of child labour and provided with education, training and non-educational services.
These five good practices were chosen out of many developed by ILO-IPEC’s stakeholders and staff because: they are large-scale initiatives of significant importance, adequate information is available to explain how they operate, there was evidence of their positive impact, and their selection was endorsed by several hundred ILO-IPEC partners.
Each good practice in this report is presented in the same format: what the good practice is intended to achieve; how the good practice is carried out; what challenges can arise in carrying out the good practice; how to address potential challenges; and conditions for sustaining the good practice.
The five good practices presented in this report concern:
Between 2008 and 2012, TBSP Phase II was implemented in 15 Cambodian provinces, 8 of which took direct action. The target for the number of children to be withdrawn from or prevented from taking up the worst forms of child labour was 12,000. Of this number, 11,000 children were to receive support to help them complete their education to Grade 9, or if over age 15, to take vocational training. One thousand children were also to receive non-educational support. Over the four years of TBSP Phase II, a total of 12,951 children were withdrawn from or prevented from taking up the worst forms of child labour and provided with education, training and non-educational services.
These five good practices were chosen out of many developed by ILO-IPEC’s stakeholders and staff because: they are large-scale initiatives of significant importance, adequate information is available to explain how they operate, there was evidence of their positive impact, and their selection was endorsed by several hundred ILO-IPEC partners.
Each good practice in this report is presented in the same format: what the good practice is intended to achieve; how the good practice is carried out; what challenges can arise in carrying out the good practice; how to address potential challenges; and conditions for sustaining the good practice.
The five good practices presented in this report concern:
- Inter-linked committees from the national to the village level that coordinate those working on child labour and allow them to share information, fill gaps, avoid overlaps, discuss how to solve problems, collaborate, and leverage each others’ efforts.
- Proven procedures for removing children from labour, preventing them from taking up child labour and providing children with financial, in-kind and social support so that they can complete their education or vocational training.
- How ILO-IPEC partners and technical advisers at all levels have collaborated to effectively bring an end to child labour in one of Cambodia’s worst forms of labour - the salt fields of Kep and Kampot Provinces.
- Setting up and operating self-help groups for the parents of child labourers to help them save, increase their financial literacy, and improve their income generation skills so that they do not need to put their children to work.
- Developing a sector-wide plan to combat child labour through extensive consultation to ensure that the plan is feasible and that collaborators will carry it out.
Additional details
References
- ISBN: 978-92-2-828985-5