Economic root, cause of child labour – ILO

The International Labour Organisation, has described economy as the root cause of child labour, calling for urgent action to tackle such menace in the society.
ILO Director-General, Guy Ryder, made the observation while speaking on the importance of addressing the root causes of child labour, including an unpaid family work in agriculture.
He spoke as a panellist on child labour discourse, held on the sidelines of the International Labour Conference, organised ahead of World Day against Child Labour, marked on June 12.
According to her, attention needed to be paid not only to global supply chains, but also to unpaid family work in agriculture.
“The challenge is not just about globally-traded garments, tobacco and cocoa; it is also about local markets for sorghum, millet, bricks – and it’s about domestic work as well,” he said.
Ryder further pointed out that some 152 million children aged 5 to 17, are in child labour worldwide.
Between 2012 and 2016, he noted, there was “almost no reduction in the number of children aged 5 to 11 in child labour, and the number of these most vulnerable, youngest children in hazardous work actually increased.”
This, Ryder added, is partly because child labour in agriculture – which is mostly unpaid family work – increased. “These children typically begin child labour at the age of six or seven and they commonly perform hazardous work as they get older.”
The event in Geneva also marked the 20th anniversary of the Global March against Child Labour, which culminated in June 1998, when hundreds of marchers, including children, took to the stage at the International Labour Conference, where delegates paved the ground for the adoption in 1999 of ILO Convention No. 182 on “Eliminating the Worst Forms of Child Labour.”
“If the children are still trapped in the international supply chains, if the children are still enslaved, if the children are still sold and bought like animals – sometimes for less than the price of animals – to work in the fields and farms, and shops and factories, or for households as domestic workers, this is a blot on humanity,” he said.