Introduction
1. The effective abolition of child labour is one of the most urgent challenges of our time. Today, we have a better grasp of the size and the shape of the problem: of the more than 200 million child labourers worldwide, some 180 million are now suspected to be toiling in the ?worst forms? of child labour ? those activities that the global community has unanimously agreed are inexcusable under any circumstances and must be eliminated without delay.
The persistence on such a scale of this violation of children?s basic human rights casts a shadow over us all.
2. We also have a better understanding of the factors that give rise to child labour and of its consequences. Child labour is clearly detrimental to individual children, preventing them from enjoying their childhood, hampering their development and sometimes causing lifelong physical or psychological damage; it is also detrimental to families, to communities and to society as a whole. As both a result and a cause of poverty, child labour perpetuates disadvantage and social exclusion. It undermines national development by keepingchildren out of school, preventing them from gaining the education and skills that would enable them as adults to contribute to economic growth and prosperity. As long as child labour continues, the ILO?s goal of decent work can never be achieved.
3. In recent years, a sea change in awareness of child labour has occurred across the world and this has strengthened countries? attitudes with regard to its abolition. Little more than a decade ago, child labour was dismissed by many as an inevitable cultural phenomenon, and by some as non-existent. Before the early 1990s, there was no tripartite consensus on the urgency of dealing with child labour. Countries were hesitant to admit that it might exist within their borders, for fear of a negative international reaction, including possible trade sanctions. The situation at that time regarding child labour was largely one of denial, much as it has been for the related occurrence of forced labour.
4. A worldwide movement, involving the ILO?s constituents ? governments and employers? and workers? organizations ? and many other partners working together at international, national and local levels, has altered that irrevocably.
The end of the cold war created the political space for a franker discus- sion of the problem. Developing, transition and developed countries are today linked by a shared acknowledgement that child labour touches them all in some form and to some degree, and by partnerships to tackle the problem.
5. The past decade has seen an unprecedented convergence of thought and action around this cause, in recognition of the fact that the abolition of child labour is an issue at the heart of social and economic development and not at its margins. The ILO?s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) has, over its ten years of existence, become the largest single technical cooperation programme of the Organization. The ILO will mark the first World Day against Child Labour on 12 June 2002.
6. It is thus no accident that the effective abolition of child labour features as one of the four principles concerning fundamental rights in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, along with freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. This followed directly on from its earlier inclusion in the indivisible package of rights at work endorsed in the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development.
7. The world?s gathering resolve to combat child labour is evidenced by a number of key milestones and actions:
? the long tradition of ILO standard setting and supervision in the field of child labour, dating from the very first session of the International Labour Conference in 1919 and leading up to the adoption of the umbrella Minimum Age Convention, 1973;
? the impetus given by the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989;
? the experience gained by national governments working with IPEC;
? increased activism on child labour by employers? and workers? organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs);
? the unanimous adoption of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), and the subsequent campaign for its universal ratification and implementation;
? the designation of Conventions Nos. 138 and 182 as fundamental Conventions;