Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

Durban Call to Action
on the Eliminationof Child Labour1Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

Durban Call to Action
on the Eliminationof Child Labour
PREAMBLE
We, the representatives of governments, employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations,
together with United Nations Agencies, international and civil society organizations, businesses,
children and academic institutions, the participants of the 5th Global Conference on the Eliminationof Child Labour, gathered in Durban, South Africa and around the world, stand together in ourcommitment to prevent and eliminate child labour and forced labour;
Welcoming the universal ratification of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182)
by all ILO Member States, an historic first, which is also the most rapidly ratified Convention in thehistory of the ILO, and the decisive strides made by governments, employers’ organizations, andworkers’ organizations resulting in a decline in child labour of some 86 million since 2000;
Alarmed that, according to the 2020 Global Estimates of Child Labour, 160 million girls and boys
remain in child labour, half of whom are in hazardous work; 112 million are in agriculture; and therecruitment of child soldiers continues; and that in the 2016-2020 period, child labour increased by
8.9 million, entirely among children aged 5-11;
Noting with grave concern the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts, andhumanitarian and environmental crises, which threaten to reverse years of progress against childlabour;Convinced that meeting target 8.7 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to end
child labour in all its forms by 2025, requires immediate, intensified, gender-responsive, wellcoordinated, multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder, rights-based action to scale up efforts to eliminate
child labour and forced labour;
Recalling target 8.7, the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), the Minimum
Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) and the Protocolof 2014 to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930, the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention,
1957 (No. 105); the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and its first and second
Optional Protocols; the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against
Transnational Organized Crime, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 1.31 and the African
Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child;

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SDG target 1.3: “to implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors,and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable”

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Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

Reaffirming the importance of employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations and the central
role of social dialogue in the elimination of child labour;
Recognizing the dynamic role of Alliance 8.7 as an important worldwide partnership, to accelerateaction, conduct research and share knowledge, drive innovation and leverage resources;
Acknowledging the African Union Ten-Year Action Plan on Child Labour; the Declaration of
Abidjan; the Accra Declaration of the International Partnership for Cooperation on Child Labour inAgriculture (IPCCLA); the Paris Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces
or Armed Groups; the ASEAN Roadmap on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour
by 2025; the 2022-2027 Council of Europe Strategy for the Rights of the Child; the European
Union Child Guarantee; the 2021-2024 EU strategy on the rights of the child and the 2020-2024
EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy; the 2022-2025 Strategic Plan of the Regional
Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour; the SAIEVAC Regional Action Planon the Elimination of Child Labour;
Building upon the commitments made in the context of the 2021 International Year for the
Elimination of Child Labour, as well as on the outcomes of previous Global Child Labour Conferences,namely: the Oslo International Conference on Child Labour, 1997, which mobilized a worldwide
movement against child labour; the Hague Global Child Labour Conference, 2010, resulting in apractical Roadmap for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour; the III Global Conferenceon Child Labour, Brasilia, 2013, which embedded efforts against child labour within a frameworkof fundamental labour rights; and the IV Global Conference on the Sustained Eradication of Child
Labour, Buenos Aires, 2017, where some one hundred pledges for action to eliminate child labourand forced labour were made, resulting, inter alia, in ratifications of ILO child labour conventions,
new major funding commitments, and tangible interventions for the elimination of child labour;
Underlining the need to improve legal frameworks for a strong economic recovery from the
COVID-19 crisis and the promotion of decent work for all; to create an enabling environment
for innovation, productivity and sustainable enterprises; and to take measures to formalize theinformal economy;
Reaffirming the fundamental principles and rights at work, namely the effective abolition of childlabour, the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour, freedom of association and theeffective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, and the elimination of discrimination in
respect of employment and occupation;
Recalling the right of a child to education and the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard ofhealth as well as protection from all forms of violence;
Reminding that the right to education is a human right and that providing children with universal
access to free, compulsory, quality basic education is important to ensure that human beings reach
their full potential, that socially excluded children and adults have greater opportunities to lift
themselves out of poverty, and to support national development; and that digital education opens
new learning opportunities that should be accessible to all without exacerbating inequalities orcreating new vulnerabilities for children;
Acknowledging the importance of building a culture of life-long learning and improving access to
skills development opportunity, quality education and training to meet labour market needs oftoday and the future of work, given the changing nature of work;3

Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

Recognizing that decent work for all, including for women, in all their diversity, and adequate
income for adults, inclusive and well-performing education systems, and adequate social protection
systems are essential for child labour elimination and for protection against poverty, the maincause of child labour;
Respecting children’s capacity to form their own views and their right to effectively participate andexpress those views freely in all matters affecting them;
Recognizing the responsibility of businesses and their contribution to the elimination of child labourand forced labour by carrying out due diligence in their operations and supply chains and ensuring
responsible and sustainable business practices that address the root causes of child labourand forced labour, in line with the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational
Enterprises and Social Policy, and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights;
further acknowledging the role of guidance from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment, including the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Due Diligence Guidancefor Responsible Business Conduct.

CALL TO ACTION
We adopt on the twentieth day of May of the year two thousand and twenty-two this Durban Callto Action on the Elimination of Child Labour. We commit to scale up action to:I

Accelerate multi-stakeholder efforts to prevent and eliminate child labour, with priority given to
the worst forms of child labour, by making decent work a reality for adults and youth above theminimum age for work.

II

End child labour in agriculture.

III

Strengthen the prevention and elimination of child labour, including its worst forms, forced
labour, modern slavery and trafficking in persons, and the protection of survivors through datadriven and survivor-informed policy and programmatic responses.

IV

Realize children’s right to education and ensure universal access to free, compulsory, quality,
equitable and inclusive education and training.

V

Achieve universal access to social protection.

VI

Increase financing and international cooperation for the elimination of child labour and forced
labour.

I M P L E M E N TAT I O N
Implementing the Durban Call to Action
A

We commit to take measures, including gender-responsive measures, to tackle child labour,
particularly its root causes, and reignite and upscale activities toward SDG target 8.7 toend child labour in all its forms by 2025, recognizing the central role of public labour
administrations, in coordination with other relevant authorities.

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Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child LabourB

To assist in the implementation of and communication of progress related to the Call to Action,
the ILO will create and host a centralized information repository that collates relevant policies,
plans, efforts and achievements of Member States in meeting their commitments to achieve
SDG target 8.7.

C

The universally-ratified ILO Convention No. 182 requires ILO Member States to design andimplement programmes of action to eliminate as a matter of urgency the worst forms of childlabour. ILO Convention No. 138 requires Member States that have ratified the Convention
to create a national policy designed to ensure the effective abolition of child labour. Suchprogrammes and policies often take the form of National Action Plans for the elimination ofchild labour.

D

Member States commit to submit such National Action Plans, and other relevant policies, to the
ILO for presentation in the centralized repository. Member States that have not yet developed
such plans are encouraged to do so. Member States are encouraged to include information on
the implementation of this Call to Action and the outcome documents of previous Global Child
Labour Conferences, and other efforts to combat child labour, in the reports that they submit on
their ratified Conventions and under the Annual Review procedures of the ILO Declaration on
Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, 1998.

E

Civil society organizations, including women’s rights organizations, the private sector and otherentities, including survivor leaders and small producers’ organizations, should take measures
within their own competence to support and work together with governments, employers’organizations and workers’ organizations in the implementation of this Call to Action.

F

Member States commit to take stock of progress made toward achievement of target 8.7 during
the period from 2022 until 2025 and at the VI Global Conference on Child Labour. They areencouraged to share information on good practices to eliminate child labour based on lessons
learned and evidence from national and regional initiatives.

F O R T Y- N I N E I M M E D I A T E A N D E F F E C T I V E M E A S U R E S
T O TA K E
Making decent work a reality for adults and youth above the minimum age
for work
1

Strengthening integrated efforts to promote, respect and realize all fundamental principles andrights at work, recognizing their inseparable, interrelated and mutually reinforcing character;2

ensuring safe and healthy working conditions, which are fundamental to decent work, and theprotection of young persons from hazardous work;

3

taking into account an adequate minimum wage, either statutory or negotiated;4

developing and strengthening mechanisms of social dialogue;

5

increasing efforts to formalize the informal economy, and to extend the coverage of labour law,particularly in agriculture, where most child labour occurs;5Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

6generating economic and productivity growth, and decent employment in the context of a justtransition, digitalization and demographic shifts;

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implementing a transformative agenda for equality, diversity and inclusion and eliminating
discrimination;

8

strengthening the prevention of and fight against forced labour, modern slavery and trafficking
in persons for all forms of exploitation, and the protection of its victims or survivors;

9

implementing risk assessment mechanisms for child victims of trafficking for labour
exploitation, and monitoring long-term reintegration of child victims or survivors;

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creating an enabling environment for sustainable enterprises to prosper, invest and create
decent work opportunities;

Ending child labour in agriculture
11

increasing investment in the economic and social development of rural areas as a strategy for
reducing poverty, recognizing that the elimination of child labour is an essential prerequisite fordecent work in the sector and can contribute to sustainable food systems;

12

facilitating increased access to finance and credit, including for smallholder farmers, particularly
in Africa, to promote investment and innovation;

13

creating mechanisms to improve the labour conditions of smallholder and family farms inorder to end their functional dependence on child labour, as well as of families who earn theirlivelihood in fishing, forestry and livestock herding, and to secure adequate incomes for small
producers and owner-operators, through, for example, increasing productivity and supporting
diversification; supporting, in line with relevant ILO instruments including the Promotionof Cooperatives Recommendation, 2002 (No. 193), the establishment and functioning ofcooperatives, as well as representative organizations of small producers; reassessing piece-ratewage systems in agriculture and recognizing the need to guarantee adequate minimum wages
for agricultural workers, sufficient to meet their families’ needs;

14

adopting an action plan to eliminate obstacles to the establishment, growth and the pursuit of
their lawful activities of organisations of rural workers, to give agricultural workers a role ineconomic and social development, in line with ILO Rural Workers’ Organisations Convention,
1975 (No. 141), in law and in practice;15

ensuring the participation of agriculture-related ministries and other agricultural stakeholders,
including employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations, in national policy and legislative
frameworks and action plans, and cooperation between agricultural extension services andlabour inspection and other relevant authorities;

16

enabling and encouraging, through regulatory measures and other approaches, agricultural
stakeholders and communities to adopt safe agricultural practices and to eliminate or minimize
work-related hazards and risks, including exposure to harmful substances, such as hazardous
pesticides, promoting increased availability of more efficient and safer machinery, equipment
and tools, and employing the use of sustainable technologies in order to improve occupationalsafety and health and eliminate the need for child labour;6

Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

17strengthening agricultural labour markets and creating decent work opportunities for youth,
women and men and supporting innovative vocational education and training in agri-foodproduction and processing services;18

improving data collection and collaborating with relevant United Nations Agencies such UNICEF
and the FAO, to jointly progress towards the elimination of child labour in agriculture, including
in fisheries and aquaculture and supporting the 2020 FAO Framework on Ending Child Labourin Agriculture and the International Partnership for Cooperation on Child Labour in Agriculture;

Preventing and eliminating child and forced labour through data-driven
policy and programmatic responses
19

reinforcing the effective implementation of national laws, regulations and policies on childlabour and forced labour by strengthening the capacity of law enforcement bodies, labour
inspectorates, agricultural extension services, child protection and education services, andother relevant authorities to investigate, prevent and remediate child labour and forced labour,
modern slavery and trafficking in persons;

20

strengthening systematic, gender-sensitive responses to protect children, including bypromoting universal access to birth registration, adequate nutrition, accessible and affordable
quality childcare, psycho-social support, child protection and quality education services;21

strengthening the regular collection and management of disaggregated data, including by sex
and age, as the basis for evidence-informed policies and programmes against child labour andforced labour;

22

integrating ethical and effective survivor engagement, where appropriate, in child andforced labour research, policy development, and programming (including through thedesign, implementation, evaluation and lesson learning phases of the programme cycle); andempowering survivors and supporting their leadership capacity and capability;23

improving data collection and knowledge generation on child labour in agriculture, mining,domestic work, the larger service sector, and in manufacturing, in order to inform tailoredresponses;

24

fostering systemic behavioural changes at community level, particularly in rural areas, andraising awareness, using participatory methods, of the right to education and the need for
immediate action to abandon child labour practices;25

strengthening efforts to eradicate child labour, forced labour and other violations offundamental rights at work in crisis situations arising from conflicts and disasters, in particular
by incorporating child protection concerns, including child labour, in all phases of humanitarian
action and protecting the right to compulsory education;

26

incorporating the elimination of child labour, fundamental rights and decent work into climate
action plans and just transition policies;

27

ending child labour in supply chains by promoting and supporting transparency, due diligenceand remediation in private and public supply chains and procurement policies, including thoseof multilateral organizations, in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights and the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises

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Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

and Social Policy; mitigating child labour risk, including by addressing decent work deficits insupply chains and tackling the root causes of child labour; recognizing the importance of using
multi-stakeholder, whole-of-supply chain approaches and integrated area-based approaches;
strengthening capacity, including among small and medium-sized enterprises along supply
chains and in areas where the production of raw materials occurs; and promoting responsible
recruitment, greater coherence between public and private initiatives and increased awarenessof consumers;

Realizing children’s right to education28

eliminating direct and indirect barriers to quality, compulsory education for girls and boys, suchas distance, cost, safety, security and gender- and disability-specific barriers; eliminating fees,
as appropriate, and promoting universal scholarships and school feeding; ensuring no one is
excluded from quality education by taking into account the particular needs of children in themost vulnerable situations, including those with disabilities and marginalised children, including
migrant children; taking account of the special situation of girls, including girls at risk of sexualand gender-based violence and exploitation; and ensuring alignment between the minimum age
for admission to work or employment and the age of completion of compulsory education, inline with ILO Convention No. 138;29

expanding education infrastructure for schools and safe commuting solutions, particularly inrural and remote areas; ensuring universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene in schools
as well as equitable access to digital education, reinforcing national and international efforts
to close the digital divide, and supporting educational curriculum development in primary andsecondary schools by including subjects related to food and agriculture;30

improving teaching and learning outcomes, including by recruiting qualified teachers in
sufficient numbers to close the teacher gap and providing them with good conditions of workand supporting teachers’ unions; promoting the teaching of foundational skills as the basis forhigher order learning, learner-centred approaches and relevant learning content; and improving
literacy on a large scale, particularly in Least Developed Countries;

31

taking action to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence and harassment in schools, suchas prohibiting corporal punishment and supporting teachers and pupils to adopt non-violent
behaviours and adopting whole school approaches;

32

providing adequate and relevant training, skills development and vocational education forgirls and boys above the minimum age for employment, including quality apprenticeships,
particularly in rural areas to improve employability and increase attractiveness of jobs inagriculture; building foundational skills, especially among young women and girls, children
from minority groups, and children with disabilities; and matching labour market needs andopportunities;

33

ensuring support to ensure successful school-to-work transitions;34

ensuring, in accordance with national contexts, the necessary funding of compulsory education
so that all governments seek to commit at least four to six per cent of GDP and/or at least 15
to 20 per cent of public expenditure to education, as recommended by the UNESCO Education
2030 Framework;8

Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

Achieving universal access to social protection
35

progressively extending access to comprehensive, adequate, sustainable, gender- and ageresponsive, disability-inclusive social protection, including through the establishment of
national social protection floors;

36

promoting universal child benefit payments, such as cash transfers, and child dependent
allowances in social welfare payments; promoting basic household income security for all,including children and young persons in extreme poverty and those with disabilities (including
covering disability-related extra costs), to increase household resilience to shocks, reduce therisk of child labour and remove children from child labour;

37

improving access of communities depending on agriculture for their livelihoods to social andagricultural insurances;38

expanding child labour monitoring systems, linked to the provision of social protection services;39

supporting robust parental benefit systems including through support for maternity andpaternity benefit systems;

40

providing for equitable and sustainable financing for social protection systems through effective
domestic and international resource mobilization, including official development assistance,
particularly for Least Developed Countries and in light of demographic trends and the impact ofclimate change;

Increasing financing and international cooperation
41

mobilizing domestic resources, developing and adequately funding national action plans,
statistics and other data on child labour, and integrating child labour concerns into relevant
national development policies and plans;

42

promoting policy coherence, particularly between social, trade, agricultural, financial, labour,
economic, education and training and environmental policies, in pursuit of a human-centred
approach to a future of work free of child labour and forced labour;43

coordinating more closely objectives related to child labour, forced labour, and decent work,and related capacity-building assistance, with fiscal, monetary, international trade andinvestment policies, in order to widen their benefits and achieve inclusive, sustainable andresilient economic growth, full, productive and freely chosen employment and decent work, andsustainable production throughout domestic and global supply chains;

44

assisting developing countries, particularly in Africa, in attaining long-term debt sustainability
and enhancing their ability to sustainably finance programmes to eliminate child and forced
labour through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt
restructuring, and sound debt management, as appropriate, and address the external debt ofheavily indebted poor countries to reduce debt distress;

45

calling on the relevant international and regional financial institutions to consider how best to
enable sufficient and timely access to funds for the effective implementation of the Durban Callto Action;9

Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour

46

supporting multilateralism, South-South and triangular cooperation and the leading role of the
ILO, Alliance 8.7, particularly through its support for Pathfinder Countries to accelerate progress
toward achieving SDG target 8.7, as well as cooperation among multiple States, civil society
organizations, businesses, employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations, and otherentities to eliminate child labour, including through regional initiatives such as the Regional
Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour, which provides a model that
other regions could adapt to their circumstances, as appropriate;47

strengthening cross-sectoral cooperation to mainstream child labour elimination in otherinternational priorities, notably climate change, environmental protection, hunger eradication,
poverty reduction, fighting inequalities, decent jobs, clean energy, digitalisation, water andsanitation, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, migration, youth empowerment, and genderequality;48

enhancing international cooperation to eliminate child labour and forced labour amongindigenous and tribal peoples, minority groups, migrant populations and other vulnerable
groups, and to mobilize national and regional responses to eliminate the commercial sexual
exploitation of children;49

exploring the possibility of bilateral and multilateral initiatives to increase corporate
accountability.

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