Observation (CEACR) - adopted 2015, published 105th ILC session (2016)

Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182) - Jordan (Ratification: 2000)

Article 7(2) of the Convention. Effective and time-bound measures. Clause (d). Identifying and reaching out to children at special risk. Refugee children. The Committee notes that according to the UNHCR–Jordan review of 2014, there were a total of 673,051 registered refugees (with 623,112 from Syria) by the end of December 2014 of which 50 per cent are children under the age of 18 years. The Committee notes from the ILO–IPEC report of the rapid assessment on: Child Labour in the Urban Informal Sector in three governorates of Jordan, 2014 that one in ten Syrian refugee children are engaged in child labour. This report also indicates that access to education constitutes a significant vulnerability among Syrians with an estimated 60 per cent of the school-age children not attending school. Moreover, the Committee notes that according to a report by UNICEF and Save the Children, close to half of all Syrian refugee children in Jordan are now the joint or sole family breadwinners with most of them involved in armed conflict, sexual exploitation and illicit activities including organized begging and child trafficking. The Committee finally notes from the ILO report entitled “ILO response to the Syrian Refugee crisis in Jordan and Lebanon”, of March 2014 that many refugee children are working in hazardous conditions in the agricultural and urban informal sector, street peddling or begging, with an estimated 30,000 child labourers in Jordan vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The Committee expresses its deep concern at the situation and high number of Syrian refugee children in Jordan who are exposed to the worst forms of child labour, including in hazardous work. The Committee therefore urges the Government to take effective and time-bound measures to protect Syrian refugee children from the worst forms of child labour and to provide the necessary and appropriate direct assistance for their removal and for their rehabilitation and social integration. It requests the Government to provide information on the measures taken in this regard.

The Committee is also raising other matters in a request addressed directly to the Government.