World Day Against Child Labour: Background, Significance, Theme and Quotes

World Day against Child Labour: Background

The International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it. Each year on 12 June, World 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.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by world leaders in 2015, include a renewed global commitment to ending child labour. Specifically, target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls on 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."

World Day against Child Labour - Significance

Not all work done by children should be classified as child labour that is to be targeted for elimination. Children’s or adolescents’ participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling, is generally regarded as being something positive. This includes activities such as helping their parents around the home, assisting in a family business or earning pocket money outside school hours and during school holidays. These kinds of activities contribute to children’s development and the welfare of their families; they provide them with skills and experience and help prepare them to be productive members of society during their adult lives.

Photo: New Europe

Child labour is work carried out to the detriment and endangerment of a child, in violation of international law and national legislation. It either deprives children of schooling or requires them to assume the dual burden of schooling and work. Child labour to be eliminated is a subset of children in employment.

Today, throughout the world, around 218 million children work, many full-time. They do not go to school and have little or no time to play. Many do not receive proper nutrition or care. They are denied the chance to be children. More than half of them are exposed to the worst forms of child labour such as work in hazardous environments, slavery, or other forms of forced labour, illicit activities including drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict.

Guided by the principles enshrined in ILO's Minimum Age Convention No. 138 and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182, the ILO Programme on Child Labour (IPEC) works to achieve the effective abolition of child labour.

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World Day against Child Labour: Theme

Act now: End child labour! This year’s World Day Against Child Labour focuses on action taken for the 2021 International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour. It is the first World Day since the universal ratification of the ILO’s Convention No. 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour and takes place at a time when the COVID-19 crisis threatens to reverse years of progress in tackling the problem.

In June for World Day, the ILO and UNICEF will release new global estimates and trends on child labour (2016-2020), under the aegis of Alliance 8.7. The report will include an assessment of how the pace of progress towards ending child labour is likely to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented economic crisis that has accompanied it.

Photo: ILO

For this year’s World Day, a “Week of Action” will be launched around 12 June, starting with the launch of the new global estimates on child labour. The events and activities carried out during this week will be an opportunity for partners to showcase progress in carrying out their “2021 Action Pledges.” All pledges made by regional, national and organizational stakeholders and individuals will be featured on the website for the 2021 International Year in April.

World Day against Child Labour: Quotes

Here are some quotes, posters to share if you want to bring about a change in the way the childhood of these vulnerable children is approached.

"No parent should ever have to look at a tiny infant and fear that one day that child would be a victim of exploitative child labour."- Former US Secretary of State John Kerry

"Child labour perpetuates poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, population growth and other social problems."- Kailash Satyarthi

"Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear."- Nelson Mandela

"If only compulsory education for children is made a law, would we be able to prevent the kinds of travails faced by children, including child labour and child marriage."-Padma Shri Professor Shantha Sinha

"Child is meant to learn, not to earn. Stop Child Labour

"Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains, but I will see the end of child labour in my lifetime.- Kailash Satyarthi

"Children should fill their mind instead of filling their pockets.

"It is estimated that there may be two hundred and fifty million children in the world engaged in some form of exploitative child labour.- Carol Bellamy

Photo: US Embassy Paris

"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man - Rabindranath Tagore

"Safety and security don’t just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear - Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa

"If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children - Mahatma Gandhi

"Children are our most valuable resource - Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States

"Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them - Lady Bird Johnson, Former First Lady of the United States

"Children need models rather than critics - Joseph Joubert, French moralist

"Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate - Anonymous

"Children are like wet cement whatever falls on them makes an impression - Haim Ginott, child psychologist

"The soul is healed by being with children - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist and philosopher

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy - Oscar Wilde, author and poet

"Child labour and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labour to the end of time - Grace Abbott

"Child labour perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth, and other social problems - Kailash Satyarthi

"You can’t regulate child labour. You can’t regulate slavery. Some things are just wrong - Michael Moore

"Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains, but I will see the end of child labour in my lifetime - Kailash Satyarthi

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