International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour and Forced Labour (IPEC+)

IPEC+ Flagship Programme

The IPEC+ Flagship Programme brings together two leading ILO technical cooperation programmes – the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and the Special Action Programme to combat Forced Labour (SAP/FL) – to establish a major new force in the fight against child labour, forced labour and human trafficking. It recognizes that these unacceptable forms of work deny workers their basic human rights at work and that, while their overlap concerns millions of children trapped in contemporary forms of slavery, they share root causes of poor governance, discrimination and social exclusion, family and community poverty and lack of access to decent work and to the rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining.

The objective of the IPEC+ Flagship Programme – in line with target 8.7 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, is to provide ILO leadership in global efforts to eradicate all forms of child labour by 2025 and all forms of contemporary slavery and human trafficking by 2030. It also aims to ensure that all people are protected from – and can protect themselves against – these gross human rights violations.

IPEC+ Flagship Programme works, from the village to the global stage, with the ILO’s constituents (governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations), as well as with enterprises and small producers’ organizations, NGOs and civil society organizations, to promote the eradication of child labour and forced labour and the realisation of all fundamental rights at work, with a focus on:
  • the rural and informal economies;
  • enterprises and global supply chains;
  • countries in crisis and fragile situations.

The IPEC+ Flagship Programme pursues those aims by supporting the constituents in:
 
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IPEC+ Flagship Programme and COVID-19

COVID-19 has plunged the world into a crisis of unprecedented scope and scale. The harmful effects of this pandemic will not be distributed equally. They are expected to be most damaging for those in already disadvantaged or vulnerable situations, such as children in child labour and victims of forced labour and human trafficking, particularly women and girls. These vulnerable groups are more affected by income shocks due to the lack of access to social protection, including health insurance and unemployment benefits.

IPEC+ Flagship Programme has developed plans to mitigate the risks and to repurpose its strategy and is seeking to allocate additional funding to support efforts to monitor the impact of COVID-19 on child labour and forced labour. The recently launched brief COVID-19 impact on child labour and forced labour: The response of the IPEC+ Flagship Programme presents 6 key interventions aimed to reach around 1 million vulnerable children, communities and families in an additional 10 countries:
  1. Leveraging our field presence
  2. Mobilizing our global and regional networks
  3. Producing knowledge and data
  4. Investing in gender-responsive monitoring and compliance solutions
  5. Building resilience through social dialogue
  6. Repurposing and innovating our operations