UN And ILO Call On Business To Help Eliminate Child Labor

Following the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Children’s Rights and Business Principles last month, Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Georg Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact and Guy Ryder, Director-General of the

Around 88 million of the world’s child laborers are young girls under 18

International Labour Organization, issued a joint letter on April 5, 2013, urging business to do more to help deliver a world fit for all children.

UN Global Compact, New York/Geneva – The joint letter calls on business to effectively address child labour within business operations and the value chain, as a concrete and core business contribution towards achieving this goal. Investment in education is also a key opportunity for business to reinforce community and government efforts to protect and fulfill children’s rights, thereby helping to secure everyone’s future.

The ILO has estimated that there are 215 million children around the world who are in some form of child labor. As many as a quarter of all children out of school globally are denied an education because they are forced to work instead.

The Children’s Principles elaborate the corporate responsibility to respect children’s rights and invite the corporate commitment to support these human rights in the workplace, marketplace and community. One of the key themes is the effective abolition of child labor, which is also Principle 5 of the UN Global Compact. Both of these are underpinned by the ILO’s Minimum Age Convention No. 138 andWorst Forms of Child Labor Convention No. 182.
By contrast, when children have access to quality education, child labour prevalence is greatly reduced and economic and social development is promoted. According to the joint letter, “Time is running out to meet the 2015 deadline for the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goal on universal primary education for boys and girls, and the 2016 deadline for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor.”

At a special meeting in April in Washington, D.C., the three leaders will call for a new global commitment and action through the United Nations to abolish all forms of child slavery by the end of 2015, in order to meet the education goal of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As progress is accelerated towards 2015, companies are invited to strengthen their efforts in the following ways:

1. consult key resources for employers on children’s rights, supply chain, and child labor resources to raise awareness;
2. acknowledge receipt of this letter by emailing humanrights@unglobalcompact.org with a brief example of what their firm is doing or plans to do, or with their words of support;
3. step up efforts to respect and support children’s rights in alignment with the Children’s Principles;
4. consider making a commitment about their plans and actions; and
5. consider joining the ILO/UN Global Compact Child Labor Platform.

Learn more:

• Read the joint letter from Gordon Brown, Guy Ryder and Georg Kell
• Learn more about the Children’s Rights and Business Principles

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