The ILO estimates that there are 152 million child labourers between the ages of 5 and 14. Most of these children belong to the most marginalised groups in society and come from families living in poverty. At the same time some 67 million children are not enrolled in primary school and a similar number are not enrolled in junior secondary school level. On present trends the international community will fail to meet the Millennium Development Goal of achieving universal primary education by 2015.

It is against this background that the ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), with the support of the Netherland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is implementing a project aimed at combating child labour through education (project INT/10/07/NET).

The project will support work to follow-up on the Roadmap for achieving the elimination of the worst forms of child labour by 2016, agreed by representatives of 97 countries at the The Hague Global Child Labour Conference  in 2010. Action to improve access to free, compulsory, quality education for all children is a central part of the Roadmap. 

Main objective

To strengthen the policy level linkages between work on child labour and education, leading to action which will improve the opportunities for those in or vulnerable to child labour to benefit from education. This will be pursued particularly through:

• integrating attention to child labour in education sector planning and programme discussions;
• initiatives to tackle child labour through education and to integrate knowledge of successful interventions in policy discussions;
• building capacity of stakeholders to actively engage in advocacy on the child labour and education linkage.

Strategies

• Promoting attention to child labour in national education sector plans;
• Building capacity of partners;
• Programmes to tackle child labour;
• Utilising data on child labour to target child labour in education plans;
• Strengthening international partnerships and global advocacy on child labour and education;
• Strengthening skills training programmes.

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