Child Labour

Launching ceremony of project on enhancing national capacity to prevent and reduce Child labour in Viet Nam

Together with MOLISA, the ILO and national stakeholders commit to preventing and reducing child labour by 2020.

Press release | 20 November 2015
HANOI (ILO News) – The Enhancing National Capacity to prevent and Reduce Child Labour in Viet Nam (ENHANCE) project will be jointly launched on 20 November 2015 by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA), International Labour Organization (ILO) and the US Department of Labor (USDOL) with the participation of MoLISA Deputy Minister, Dao Hong Lan, the US Ambassador to Viet Nam, Ted Osius, the Director of ILO Country Office for Viet Nam, Chang-Hee Lee, and other national and local stakeholders.


The ENHANCE project’s overall development objective is to support the efforts to prevent and reduce child labour in Vietnam. By achieving this objective, the project will contribute to the implementation of Vietnam’s commitments to ILO’s declarations to Fundamental principles and rights at work which were endorsed at International Labour Conference on 18 June 1998.

With financial support of US$ 8 million from USDOL, the ENHANCE project will be executed from 2015 to 2019 by ILO in close collaboration with MoLISA which is the project management agency. MoLISA is also going to contribute $1.2 million to the project implementation. The project will build a comprehensive and efficient multi-stakeholder response for the prevention and reduction of child labour in Viet Nam. Placing capacity building for sustainable solutions at the heart of its interventions, ENHANCE will deliver interventions under three mutually reinforcing components to achieve the following immediate objectives:
  1. Capacity building component: By the end of the project, the capacity of national institutions and stakeholders to identify, monitor and respond to child labour, as part of the promotion of international labour standards, will have been strengthened.
  2. Awareness raising component: By the end of the project, awareness of child labour, the associated hazards and prohibitions against it will have been raised among all levels of society.
  3. Direct interventions component: By the end of the project, intervention models for preventing and withdrawing child labour in selected geographical areas and sectors will have been implemented and documented and ready for replication.
Child labour has harmful effects on children’s health and psychological development, limits their school attendance and inhibits their transition to decent productive work. According to the National Child Labour Survey conducted in 2012 by the General Statistical Office in cooperation with MoLISA and ILO, 1.75 million children are engaged in child labour in Viet Nam.

ENHANCE will work in geographical sites where four priority production sectors with child labour predominate garments and handicrafts in HCM City, agriculture and fisheries in An Giang Province, and handicrafts in Hanoi.

Deputy Minister Lan
said “In recent years, Viet Nam has made significant achievements in the fight against child labour, establishing a strong legal framework to a great extent aligned with international labour standards, and implementing a number of programmes and projects to counter child labour nationally and locally. However, child labour in Viet Nam persists despite these efforts, especially in the informal sector of the economy.[...] Together with ILO and national stakeholders, MoLISA is highly committed and supportive of ENHANCE implementation to reach the purposes of preventing and reducing child labour as stated in the approved detailed project outline by the Prime Minister."

“Working with our colleagues from the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs and the International Labour Organization, we look forward to supporting the Government of Viet Nam’s efforts to address child labor most effectively,” said USDOL’s Associate Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs, Mark Mittelhauser. “We all share in this commitment to helping Viet Nam enhance its capacity to protect vulnerable children and promote opportunity for their families.”

The head of ILO Viet Nam said: “Child labour is a complex phenomenon requiring comprehensive responses that involves simultaneous action across a range of policy sectors. Changing perceptions and motivating action to eliminate child labour and worst forms of child labour among all levels of society is very important. The ILO is committed to cooperating with MOLISA to implement the project in order to strengthen national capacity for reduction and prevention of child labour in Viet Nam."

It is anticipated that a total of 5,000 children who are engaged in child labour or at high-risk of entering child labour will receive the project’s support through the provision of educational services or improvement of working conditions for those above legal working age. In addition, a total of 2,000 household members of children targeted will be provided with supports for improving their livelihood through value chain development and value-adding approaches. Other thousands of children and their households will also benefit indirectly as a result of increased capacity and awareness.

For more information, please contact:

Mr. Minoru Ogasawara
Chief Technical Advisor
ILO Country Office for Viet Nam
Address: 40-50 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, Ba Dinh, Hanoi
Tel: +84 4 3734 0907
Website: /hanoi
Email: ogasawara@ilo.org

Ms. Vu Thi Kim Hoa
Deputy Director
Department of Child Care and Protection, MOLISA
Address: 35 Tran Phu Street, Ba Dinh, Hanoi
Tel: +84 4 37475629
Website: http://treem.gov.vn
Email: vukimhoa67@gmail.com