Dar es Salaam (ILO NEWS) – Japan Tobacco International (JIT) in collaboration with ILO and Winrock International will launch a child labour project dubbed Achieving Reduction of Child Labour in Support of Education (ARISE) in Morogoro, Tanzania on 25th May 2016.
ARISE aims at reducing child labour through increasing access to quality education, awareness raising and improving the livelihoods of the tobacco growing communities.
The launch, to be attended by representatives from Government Ministries, workers’ and employers’ organizations, participating regions, NGOs and CSOs will be officiated by the Minister, Prime Minister`s Office, Policy, Parliamentary Affairs, Labour, Youth, Employment and Persons with Disabilities, Hon. Jenista Mhagama (MP).
The project will target child labourers and their families in tobacco-growing areas mainly in Uyui, Urambo and Kaliua districts, Tabora region. The project was initiated in 2011 and now operating in Malawi, Brazil and Zambia since 2012.
According to Ms. Charlotte Goemans, Associate Expert, Child Labour and Youth Employment, ILO Office, Dar es Salaam, the program will focus on access to quality education and awareness raising on child labour. The interventions will include improving local schooling, providing vocational training for older children, and helping marginal farms to improve productivity and working conditions.
“We aim at reducing child labour through this programme, this will be done by improving education, opportunity and awareness, economic empowerment for the communities that grow tobacco and contribution to improving the regulatory framework to reduce child labour,” Goemans said.
The root causes of child labour are complex. ARISE therefore addresses the scourge from multiple angles as achieving success depends on understanding child labour in the context of wider economic, social and cultural factors. The approach therefore draws on representatives of governments, social partners and tobacco growing communities.
Background Information
Since the 1990’s, the ILO - as the UN agency which sets international standards on child labour as well as on other fundamental principles and rights at work - has led a global effort to raise awareness of the child labour problem, to encourage member States to put in place appropriate legal and policy frameworks, and to ensure that appropriate attention is paid to child labour in wider development policies and programmes.
The ILO’s global estimates of child labour indicate that significant progress is being made. In the period 2000-2012, there had been a decline of over 30 percent in the number of children trapped in child labour from 246 million to 168 million.
