Preventing children from pesticides – visual facilitator’s guide contextualized to Pakistan

ILO and FAO’s co-produced tool “Protecting children from pesticides - Visual facilitator's guide” contextualized to Pakistan for simplified understanding and appropriate navigating the risks associated with pesticides.

Press release | Islamabad, Pakistan | 13 April 2021
Islamabad (ILO News): The ILO under its project "Elimination of child labor and forced labor in the cotton, textile and clothing value chains: An integrated approach", co-funded by the European Union and implemented in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Pakistan, Mali, Burkina Faso and Peru has produced a Pakistani contextualized version of the visual guide on “Protecting children from pesticides - Visual facilitator's guide”.

This visual guide is an easy to access training tool with expertly made illustrations and globally recognized signs of toxic exposure for straightforward understanding and appropriate navigating.

The guide has three main modules: how children are exposed to pesticides, what the health risks are and why children are particularly vulnerable, and what can be done to reduce those risks.

This tool was initially developed in 2015 jointly by ILO and FAO in Mali and adapted to different regional contexts, including Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia Pacific.

In Pakistan, this tool has been adapted with a collaborative effort between ILO and FAO under the Clear Cotton Project through a rigorous process including consultations and feedback sessions with stakeholders comprising representatives from agriculture extension and research departments, academia, private sector, pesticide companies, farmer organization, workers’ organisations, local health and labour departments and other experts. A final validation workshop was held on 23rd October, 2020.

The adaption mainly includes contextual illustrations, local examples and national language to make the knowledge easy to understand in the Pakistani context.

The guide is aimed at helping agricultural extension workers, rural educators, labour inspectors and producer organizations in teaching farmers and other workers as well as their families from the cotton sector to identify and minimize risks at home, at the pesticide stores and on the farm.