Brief

All work and no play

Using a systemic lens to determine the economic root causes to child labour

Short description

Today, around 152 million children are victims of child labour, including 73 million involved in its worst forms. While ILO projects are tackling child labour by integrating international standards into national legislative frameworks, facilitating access to education, increasing labour inspection capacity and raising awareness on the consequences of child labour, it will not be enough to reach SDG target 8.7 – the eradication of child labour – by 2030.

Given the complexity and diversity of the causes of child labour, ILO projects have struggled to effectively identify and address one of the its main drivers – low household incomes. To shed more light on this, the ILO Lab project collaborated with ILO FUNDAMENTALS to analyse and synthesise key lessons from projects that have effectively identified the underlying economic determinants to child labour. This brief outlines the various ways in which the systemic approach to decent work can help child labour projects effectively determine and evaluate the economic root causes for the existence of poverty-induced child labour.

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