Preventing and Responding to Child Labour in Humanitarian Action

Worldwide, an estimated 152 million girls and boys are in child labour, almost half of them, 73 million, work in hazardous child labour. The incidence of child labour in humanitarian crises is an imminent concern. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to push millions more children into child labour.

However, there are great opportunities for the global community to act. In 2020, Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour achieved universal ratification – a milestone in reaching the Sustainable Development Goal and target to end child labour. This commitment can be accelerated in 2021, the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.

The Global Child Labour Task Force, co-led by Plan International and the International
Labour Organization (ILO), within the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, has developed a toolkit to guide humanitarian actors and other agencies in the global community to effectively prevent and respond to child labour in humanitarian action.

The toolkit is based on evidence from multiple contexts includes practical tools and more than thirty case studies from Iraq, Jordan, Turkey or Syria to Niger, Burkina Faso and Myanmar.

Key recommendations are included in each part:

Part1: Why we should act on child labour in humanitarian action.
Part 2: Ensuring a quality response.
Part 3: Prevention and response programme actions.
Part 4: Core implementation actions.

- Opening Remarks
1. Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action Coordinator
2. Francesco D'Ovidio,Officer in Charge for Fundamentals and Head of the Solutions and Innovations Unit, ILO (TBC)
3. Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, CEO Plan International