Since its 2002 launch by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Day Against Child Labour is annually celebrated on June 12 to “focus attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it.”
The day brings together governments, employers and workers organizations, civil society, as well as millions of people from around the world to highlight the plight of child labourers and what can be done to help them, according to the United Nations.
The global body says 152 million children are still in child labour, with seven out of every ten in agriculture.
Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by world leaders in 2015, include a call to the global community to take “immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms."
On World Day Against Child Labour 2019, the International Labour Organization is celebrating 100 years of advancing social justice and promoting decent work and looking back on progress achieved in view of support to countries on tackling child labour.
The theme for World Day Against Child Labour 2019 is ‘Children shouldn’t work in fields, but on dreams!’
Since its founding in 1919, the ILO says, protection of children has been embedded inits Preamble. In fact, one of the first Conventions adopted by the ILO was on Minimum Age in Industry in 1919.
On World Day Against Child Labour 2019, the ILO says it is also looking forward towards UN Sustainable Development Goal Target 8.7 set by the international community calling for an end to child labour in all its forms by 2025.
The ILO has called for immediate action to address the remaining challenges in eliminating child labour.
This year also marks 20 years since the adoption of the ILO's Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999.
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