Advancing the Campaign

Against Child Labor

U.S. Department of Labor

Bureau of International Labor Affairs

2002

Volume II:

Addressing the Worst Forms of Child Labor
Advancing the Campaign

Against Child Labor

U.S. Department of Labor

Bureau of International Labor Affairs

Elaine L. Chao, Secretary of Labor

2002

Volume II:

Addressing the Worst Forms of Child Labor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This report was prepared under the direction of Thomas B. Moorhead, Deputy Under

Secretary for International Labor Affairs, Michael Magán and Jorge Perez-Lopez, Associate Deputy

Under Secretaries for International Labor Affairs, and Marcia Eugenio, Acting Director of the

International Child Labor Program. Coordination of the report was by Gregory K. Schoepfle,

Director of Foreign Economic Research, and Christine G. Camillo, International Child Labor

Program staff, and the writing, editing, and research was done by Sarah Gormly and Kenneth A.

Swinnerton, Foreign Economic Research staff.

Other staff of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, the Office of the Assistant Secretary

for Policy, and the Office of the Solicitor who made major contributions include: Charita Castro,

Meghan Cronin, Tina Faulkner, James A. Greene, Matthew Levin, Vivita Rozenbergs, Stephanie

Swirsky, Ami Thakkar, and Mirellise Vazquez.

This report was published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor

Affairs (ILAB). Copies of this and other reports in ILAB’s child labor series may be obtained by

contacting the International Child Labor Program, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S.

Department of Labor, Room S-5307, 200 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20210.

Telephone: (202) 693-4843; Fax: (202) 693-4830; Email: GlobalKids@dol.gov. The reports are

available on the Internet at: http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction and Executive Summary

A. Overview..................................................................................................................... 1

B. Congressional Request ............................................................................................... 1

C. ILO Convention 182 ................................................................................................... 2

D. The Development of a Social Consensus on the Benefits of the Elimination

of the Worst Forms of Child Labor ............................................................................. 4

E. Structure and Content of the Report ........................................................................... 6

II. Strategies to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labor

A. Overview..................................................................................................................... 9

B. Legal Strategies ........................................................................................................ 10

1. Bans on Child Labor ..................................................................................... 10

2. Compulsory Education Laws........................................................................ 12

C. Strategies that Encourage Education ........................................................................ 13

1. The Role of Credit Constraints and Poverty ................................................. 14

2. Overcoming Credit Constraints and Poverty ................................................ 15

3. Other Factors Affecting the Success of Education Strategies....................... 16

D. Market-Based Strategies ........................................................................................... 17

E. Rescue, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration Strategies ............................................... 19

1. Rescue........................................................................................................... 19

2. Rehabilitation and Reintegration .................................................................. 20

F. Facilitating Actions ................................................................................................... 21

1. Identification ................................................................................................. 21

a. Household-Based Random Sampling ............................................... 21

b. Rapid Assessment ............................................................................. 23

c. Integrated Data Collection ................................................................ 24

2. Awareness Raising ........................................................................................ 25

3. Capacity Building ......................................................................................... 27

G. Implications for Implementing Strategies ................................................................ 27

III. Strategies in Action: Examples of Projects from the Commercial Sex Sector

A. Overview................................................................................................................... 31

B. The Bus Station in León, Nicaragua......................................................................... 32

C. Combating Child Prostitution in San José, Costa Rica ............................................ 35

D. Addressing the Trafficking and Prostitution of Girls in Nepal ................................. 37

E. Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................ 40
IV. Appendix: Background on Child Labor

A. Overview................................................................................................................... 41

B. What is Child Labor?................................................................................................ 41

C. Why do Children Work? ........................................................................................... 42

D. What Kinds of Work do Children Do? ..................................................................... 43

E. How has the International Community Taken Action to Address Child Labor? ...... 44

F. List of Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) Publications on

Child Labor ............................................................................................................... 47
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A. Overview

This report examines some action strategies related to efforts to eliminate the worst forms of

child labor, some issues in developing these strategies, and some examples of how strategies have

been implemented in actual projects. The report suggests that there is no one strategy or mix of

strategies that can be isolated as appropriate or most cost-effective for addressing all cases of the

worst forms of child labor. Actions taken need to be designed according to the context in which

child labor is found.

B. Congressional Request

Since 1993, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs has been

reporting regularly on international child labor issues at the request of Congressional committees.1

This report is written in response to a request made in fiscal year 2001 by the U.S. Senate

Committee on Appropriations:

The Committee notes that in June 1999, 174 nations of the world

came together at the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Labor

Conference and unanimously passed ILO Convention No. 182, on the

Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor. The United States

was one of the first countries to ratify this important convention. The

Committee recognizes that conventions alone will not eradicate

abusive and exploitative child labor and that international and

national strategies need to be developed in order to reduce the

scourge of child labor. Consequently, the Committee requests that the

Bureau [of International Labor Affairs] undertake a study on the cost

and benefits associated with the implementation of ILO Convention

182. As part of this study, the Bureau should develop and assess the

feasibility of targeted strategies to reduce by 50 percent the worst

forms of child labor. This study should be completed by November

2001.2

I. INTRODUCTION AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1 Much of the material presented here builds on and extends the discussions contained in earlier U.S. Department of

Labor reports. Among the previous reports, those most closely related to this report are: By the Sweat and Toil of

Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor (Washington, DC: USDOL/ILAB, 2000) for

material related to assessing costs and benefits; By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume V): Efforts to Eliminate

Child Labor (Washington, DC: USDOL/ILAB, 1998) for a wide-ranging consideration of strategies aimed at eliminating child labor; and Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children [Symposium Proceedings] (Washington, DC: USDOL/

ILAB 1996) for a variety of perspectives related to one particular worst form of child labor. Prior reports may be

accessed on the Internet at http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/.

2 U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and

Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 2001, Report to Accompany S. 2553, 106th Cong., 2d sess., May 12, 2000, Senate

Report No. 106-293, 45 [cited October 17, 2002]; available from: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app01.htm.
2

C. ILO Convention 182

At the June 1999 International Labor Conference, delegates from the 174 member

governments, and representatives from employer and worker organizations, unanimously adopted

International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 182 concerning the Prohibition and Immediate

Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor.3 Adoption of an ILO Convention

means that member-states consider it worthy for ratification by national governments. To date, 132

countries have ratified ILO Convention 182.4 In fact, the rate of ratification of this convention has

been faster than any other in the 83-year history of the ILO, an indication of the consensus in the

international community for the elimination of the worst forms of child labor.5

ILO Convention 182 applies to persons under the age of 18 years. The objective of the

Convention is set out in Article 1:

Each Member which ratifies this Convention shall take immediate

and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of

the worst forms of child labour as a matter of urgency.

Article 3 defines the worst forms of child labor as follows:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term the worst forms of child

labour comprises:

(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery,

such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt

bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory

labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of

children for use in armed conflict;

(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for

prostitution, for the production of pornography or for

pornographic performances;

3 For the remainder of this report, ILO Convention 182 on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of

the Worst Forms of Child Labor, also cited in short form as the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, 1999, will be

referred to as “ILO Convention 182.” The text of ILO Convention 182 can be found in ILOLEX Database on

International Labor Standards [cited October 15, 2002]; available from: http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/scripts/

convde.pl?C182.

4 For a listing of the countries that have ratified ILO Convention 182, including the date of ratification, see “Convention

No. C182 was ratified by 132 countries,” in ILOLEX Database on International Labor Standards [cited November 8,

2002]; available from: http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/cgi-lex/ratifce.pl?C182 .

5 See, e.g., “Support for the Global Ratification Campaign: The World is Uniting,” ILO-IPEC [cited October 15, 2002];

available from: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/index.htm.
3

(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit

activities, in particular for the production and

trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant

international treaties;

(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in

which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health,

safety or morals of children.

Article 4, Section 1, indicates that the types of work referred to under Article 3(d) should be

determined “by national laws or regulations or by the competent authority, after consultation with

the organizations of employers and workers concerned, taking into consideration relevant

international standards, in particular Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the Worst Forms of Child Labour

Recommendation, 1999.” Section 2 of the Article calls for identification of where these sodetermined types of work exist, and Section 3 calls for their periodic review and revision.

Article 7, Section 1, requires ratifying countries to “take all necessary measures to ensure

the effective implementation and enforcement” of the Convention, including the provision and

application of penal sanctions or, as appropriate, other sanctions. A great deal of energy has been

devoted to evaluating the merits of strategies that will realize the goal of eliminating the worst

forms, including enforcing an outright ban on child labor, which is the most stringent form of legal

intervention possible.

In developing strategies and programs to achieve the goals of Convention 182, the

preambular language of the Convention notes the connection of the worst forms of child labor to

poverty:

Recognizing that child labour is to a great extent caused by poverty

and that the long-term solution lies in sustained economic growth

leading to social progress, in particular poverty alleviation and

universal education . . .

Further, Article 7, Section 2 lists various additional actions6 that seem to indicate that the

effective elimination of the worst forms of child labor may not be immediate or that just removing

or keeping children out of the worst forms may not be enough:

Each Member shall, taking into account the importance of education

in eliminating child labour, take effective and time-bound measures

to:

(a) prevent the engagement of children in the worst forms of

child labour;

6 See also “R190, Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation,1999,” in ILOLEX Database on International Labor

Standards [cited October 15, 2002]; available at http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/scripts/convde.pl?R190.
4

(b) provide the necessary and appropriate direct assistance for

the removal of children from the worst forms of child labour

and for their rehabilitation and social integration;

(c) ensure access to free basic education, and, wherever

possible and appropriate, vocational training, for all children

removed from the worst forms of child labour;

(d) identify and reach out to children at special risk; and

(e) take account of the special situation of girls.

Finally, Article 8 requires ratifying countries to assist each other in implementing the

Convention “through enhanced international cooperation and/or assistance including support for

social and economic development, poverty eradication programs and universal education.”

Thus, ILO member-states ratifying ILO Convention 182 are obligated to take immediate and

effective steps to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. The implementation of this Convention

by ratifying nations signifies a renewed social commitment to improving the opportunities afforded

to children, and may entail developing new laws, enhancing law enforcement, identifying and

rescuing those at risk, and developing programs for prevention and rehabilitation, among others.

The development of effective strategies and programs at the national, local, and community levels

will be critical to the success of these efforts.

D. The Development of a Social Consensus on the Benefits of the

Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor

The unanimous adoption of ILO Convention 182 by delegates at the 1999 International

Labor Conference meant that the international community and ILO member states considered that

the social benefits of eliminating the worst forms of child labor clearly outweigh the costs.

Therefore, this report does not provide comprehensive estimates of the benefits and costs associated

with the implementation of ILO Convention 182.

The rapid ratification of ILO Convention 182 by ILO member countries also demonstrates

that an international consensus is indeed emerging to take actions to eliminate the worst forms of

child labor by national governments.7 This emerging consensus is founded upon several other

international instruments that also address rights and protections for children:

7 The distinction between adoption and ratification of an ILO Convention is as follows. Adoption essentially means that

the delegates to the body involved in negotiating the text of the Convention vote that it is ready to be submitted to

national governments for consideration. Ratification is the affirmative result that could follow from the process of

vetting the Convention at the national level. The “rules” governing the ratification process are defined by a nation’s

constitution and are generally those that govern how it considers treaties. Ratifications of ILO Convention 182 have

been occurring at the fastest rate of any Convention in ILO history. See “Support for the Global Ratification Campaign:

The World is Uniting,” ILO-IPEC.
5

• The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948) declares

in Article 25(2) that: “childhood is entitled to special care and assistance.”8

• The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (20 November 1959) notes in a

preambular paragraph: “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs

special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after

birth.”

• The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (20 November 1989)9

applies to every person under the age of 18 unless a child attains his/her majority under

applicable national law at an earlier age (Art. 1) and provides for the following rights and

protections related to a child’s education, development, and welfare, including: “the right of

the child to education,” including the obligation of states making available compulsory and

free primary education (Art. 28); “the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play

and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child” (Art. 31); “the right of the

child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is

likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the

child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development,” including the

obligation of states to take legislative and administrative measures to ensure this (Art. 32);

state actions “to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic

substances...and to prevent the use of children in illicit production and trafficking of such

substances” (Art. 33); actions “to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and

sexual abuse,” including exploitative use in prostitution and pornographic performances or

materials (Art. 34); “measures to prevent the abduction of, the sale of or traffic in children

for any purpose or in any form” (Art. 35); and ensuring that persons less 15 years of age “do

not take direct part in hostilities” and are not recruited into the armed forces of a nation

(Art. 38).10

This international consensus on the worst forms of child labor has been strengthened by several

more recent actions. On May 25, 2000, the United Nations General Assembly adopted and opened

for signature, ratification, and accession two optional protocols related to the CRC:

8 See All Human Rights for All: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948-1998, UN

General Assembly [cited October 15, 2002]; available from: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html.

9 The Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on November 20,

1989 and entered into force on September 2, 1990. For the text of the Convention, see Convention on the Rights of the

Child, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, [cited July 10, 2002]; available from: http://

www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm. As of July 10, 2002, 189 member-states of the United Nations and 4 nonmember states were a party to one or more UN human rights treaties; for the Convention on the Rights of the Child,

there were 186 country accessions or ratifications, 2 signatory countries, and 5 country denouncements (successions).

10 The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires acceding or ratifying state parties to submit reports through

the UN Secretary-General to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, a UN “treaty body” comprised of experts and

established to monitor the implementation of the Convention. The Committee reviews the submitted reports on

measures state parties have adopted to effect these rights, within two years after entry into force for the state party and

every five years thereafter (Art. 44).
6

• The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children,

Child Prostitution and Child Pornography,11 which entered into force on January 18, 2002

and extends measures that the state parties should undertake to guarantee the protection of

children from sale, prostitution, and pornography; and

• The Optional Protocol to the Convention of the Child on the Involvement of Children in

Armed Conflicts,12 which entered into force on February 13, 2002 and calls for all persons

under the age of 18 not to participate in hostilities nor be compulsorily recruited into the

armed forces and raises the voluntary military recruitment age to 18.

E. Structure and Content of the Report

Chapter 2 presents an analysis of various national strategies aimed at eliminating the worst

forms of child labor. Four general strategies for direct action are considered: (1) legal; (2) education

and poverty alleviation; (3) market-based; and (4) rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration. These

general strategies have been prominent in academic and policy discussions on eliminating child

labor, including the worst forms of child labor. Some assessments of the feasibility of alternative

strategies are also offered. The effectiveness of the strategies for direct action depends critically on

the willingness and capacity of society to identify and help the children in or at risk of entry into

the worst forms of child labor. That is, it may be necessary to raise awareness and empower

different segments of society in order to facilitate the implementation of directly targeted action

programs to eliminate the worst forms of child labor. Accordingly, the second half of Chapter 2

considers the identification, awareness raising, and capacity building aspects of implementing

strategies. The chapter concludes with some lessons for the development of programs to eliminate

the worst forms of child labor as well as some limitations in making quantitative assessments of the

cost-effectiveness of these action programs.

Chapter 3 views the process of implementation from a more practiced angle, namely, how

various strategies have been applied in actual country projects. To illustrate the complexity in

designing and implementing actual child labor interventions, projects that seek to eliminate the use

of children in the commercial sex sector (i.e., prostitution and pornography), are described. Each

project relies on a unique combination of strategies, different from the mix in other projects facing

a different set of challenges. While program costs are provided for each example along with the

number of children served or rescued, these costs are only illustrative and do not provide a sound

basis for calculating the cost of the general elimination of this worst form of child labor.

11 See Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and

Child Pornography, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, [cited October 15, 2002]; available from:

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/dopchild.htm. As of July 10, 2002, there were 32 country ratifications or accessions

and 72 signatory countries to this protocol.

12 See Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict,

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, [cited July 10, 2002]; available from http://www.unhchr.ch/html/

menu2/6/protocolchild.htm. As of July 10, 2002, there were 33 country ratifications or accessions and 70 signatory

countries to this protocol.
7

This report demonstrates that the actions that can be taken to eliminate child labor are not

the same for all cases. While it is possible to identify broad strategy areas, e.g., legal, education,

and so forth, the precise mix will differ greatly from context to context. Both in theory and in the

examination of examples of actual projects aimed at elimination of the worst forms, it becomes

apparent that the precise conditions under which any given action can bring about the elimination

of child labor are highly context specific. Among the key variables are: the particular form of child

labor; wealth, at both the society and family levels; societal attitudes toward discrimination,

particularly gender discrimination; geographic context; and the views of the child and his or her

family about what is best for the child. A basic component to all strategies is providing more and

better alternatives to child labor by expanding the opportunities open to children and their families.

An appendix to the report provides some background information on child labor that may be

of particular interest to readers not familiar with earlier U.S. Department of Labor International

Child Labor reports, or with issues surrounding child labor.
9

A. Overview

This chapter offers a conceptual analysis of strategies to eliminate the worst forms of child

labor. Strategies are evaluated primarily in terms of their likely ability to aid in achieving the goals

of eliminating the worst forms of child labor and making the affected child better off. First,

consideration is given to strategies targeted directly at removing children from, or preventing entry

into, the worst forms of child labor. Four general approaches are considered: (1) legal strategies; (2)

education strategies; (3) market-based strategies; and (4) rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration

strategies. The effectiveness of these actions depends critically on the willingness and capacity of

society to find and help these children, and in some cases it may be necessary to take steps to foster

an enabling environment. Accordingly, the focus of the following discussion shifts towards actions

that facilitate the implementation of programs that seek to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.

The approaches considered are (1) identification of children in the worst forms, (2) awareness

raising, and (3) capacity building.

The approaches that are presented in this chapter have been prominent in academic and

policy discussions that focus on eliminating child labor, including the worst forms, and

implementing ILO Convention 182. To the extent that the worst forms of child labor exist for the

same reasons as all other types of child labor, strategies that eliminate child labor more generally

should do the same with respect to the worst forms. This chapter often draws on literatures that do

not distinguish between worst-forms and non-worst-forms of child labor. However, because the

worst forms are more severe and may occur under a different set of circumstances, they may require

different actions, demand additional impetus for action, or imply limitations on certain types of

actions. Where such feasibility issues related to the worst forms per se matter, they are identified.

This chapter considers not only the effectiveness of various strategies in eliminating child

labor, but also their ability to make the affected children better off. In evaluating the latter, the entry

route taken by the children into the worst forms is often considered since it can provide information

on how the children may fare once they are prevented or removed from the work. Children may be

in a worst form because they or their labor have been taken against their will (i.e., literally stolen),

or because their families’ economic opportunities and circumstances have left them little other

choice. Theft of a child’s labor can take three forms: (1) outright kidnapping and subsequent

compulsion to perform work; (2) trickery that leads children into work they would never accept

knowingly, and compulsion to stay once there; and (3) parents who force a child to work when it is

not in the child’s best interests to do so.13 The first two of these forms of theft can victimize both

II. STRATEGIES TO ELIMINATE THE WORST FORMS OF CHILD LABOR

13 Kenneth A. Swinnerton and Carol Ann Rogers, “A Theory of Exploitative Child Labor” (Department of Economics,

Georgetown University, Washington DC, 2002, mimeograph), 2-3. See also R. Barri Flower, “The Sex Trade Industry’s

Worldwide Exploitation of Children,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 575 (May

2001): 149-150. In the typology presented in the text, parents are assumed to be making decisions on behalf of their

children. Children without parents (e.g., abandoned, orphaned, or runaways) and without the guidance, encouragement,

and support normally offered by parents may be even more vulnerable to involuntary entry into the worst forms of child

labor.
10

children and their parents. The third is a form of child abuse in which the parents or guardians, for

their own gain, victimize the child. Whether children have entered a worst form of child labor

against their will or as a result of choice from a very limited set of available opportunities will

affect the selection of strategies to be applied in action program to eliminate the worst forms.

B. Legal Strategies

1. Bans on Child Labor

Legal strategies have often been pursued and debated as an approach to eliminate child

labor.14 A legal strategy typically combines some sort of prohibition on work below certain ages, in

certain types of work, or both, with a criminal or civil penalty levied on employers found in

violation. For example, ILO Convention 182 calls upon ratifying countries to establish that some

forms of work are not appropriate for children below the ages of 18 years under any

circumstances.15 In short, a legal strategy seeks to impose and enforce a ban on certain types of

work done by children.

A ban on the worst forms of child labor may be an effective prevention tool if it deters the

theft of a child’s work, i.e., taking it against the will of the child and the child’s guardian. This theft

is most likely to occur for the worst forms of child labor described in Articles 3(a)-(c) of ILO

Convention 182 (i.e., forced and bonded labor, prostitution and pornography, and other illicit

activities). The feasibility of using a legal strategy to prevent children from engaging in the worst

forms will depend on the capacity of a country to identify and punish those who kidnap, steal, or

trick children for the purpose of sending them into a worst form. However, the chances of being

caught and the penalty imposed if caught must be high enough to make these activities unattractive.

In addition to legislation, countries need to consider the factors that affect enforcement, e.g., the

hiring and training of labor inspectors and law enforcement officials.

A ban on the worst forms on child labor may also be an effective component of a program

to remove children from the worst forms. For children who have been taken against their will from

a satisfactory living environment, a ban on the worst forms that leads to their removal can be

beneficial since the children are provided with a better place to which to return. However, children

working in the worst forms who are the victims of kidnapping may not be close to home, or even in

their native country. At a minimum, children who have been stolen and placed in the worst forms

must be restored to their homes or some other viable alternative. Quite often, victims of the worst

forms will also require rehabilitative services. For a ban on the worst forms to benefit children who

entered the worst forms as a result of their theft, the coordination of enforcement efforts with, at the

very least, rehabilitative social programs will be necessary.

14 See, e.g., Kaushik Basu, “Child Labor: Cause, Consequence and Cure, with Remarks on International Labor

Standards,” Journal of Economic Literature 37 (September 1999): 1083-1119. See also Myron Weiner, The Child and

the State in India, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).

15 See Articles 1 and 3 of ILO Convention 182.
11

Bans on the worst forms of child labor can contribute to efforts to prevent child labor or to

remove children from such situations as well as to the prevention and removal efforts, but their

success in doing so may be limited in some situations. When children work in the worst forms

because no better alternatives are available, it is not apparent that the impact of legislation will be

necessarily positive.

When children are in or entering the worst forms because a better alternative is not known

to the family, the consequence of a legal ban on child labor in the worst forms may actually be

detrimental because it makes a limited set of choices even smaller.16 In these cases, for a legal

strategy to be effective in eliminating the worst forms and making children better off, it must be

complemented by programs and/or services that expand the opportunities available to families. For

example, since individuals may not be aware of all of the opportunities that are available to them, a

country may need to create and implement programs that expand the economic opportunities for

adults or to promote awareness of existing alternatives to improve the effectiveness of child labor

laws.

The immediate removal of a child from work is likely to present a hardship for a family that

relies on the child’s contribution to household income. In the short term, the pairing of an income

transfer to the family in conjunction with child labor legislation may help those families that

depend on the income from their children’s participation in the worst forms to comply with child

labor laws and improve the quality of their lives at the same time. This approach, however, may not

be fiscally feasible in some of the poorest countries. A recent study suggests that in countries with

very low levels of potential labor productivity and insufficient income transfer programs, imposing

a ban on child labor may actually achieve the contrary effect of increasing child labor.17 In cases

such as these, international cooperation and assistance may be appropriate or even necessary to

allow the poorest countries to effectively enforce child labor laws, as suggested by Article 8 of ILO

Convention 182. Such outside assistance could provide for programs to fill the needs in these

poorer countries.

Under some circumstances, a ban on the worst forms of child labor may improve the

conditions of the adult labor market, and thereby reduce the financial need of some families to send

16 See, e.g., Sylvain Dessy and Stéphane Pallage, “Why Ban the Worst Forms of Child Labour?” (Department of

Economics, Université Laval, Quebec City, 2002, mimeograph).

17 Basu and Van (1998) suggest that families will send their children to work if household income per person falls

below a sustenance threshold; when income falls below the threshold, at least one member of the household will starve.

Rogers and Swinnerton (2001) show that in some cases redistribution from the wealthier families to the poor can raise

the income of the poor above the sustenance threshold without causing any of the wealthy families to fall below the

threshold. When potential labor productivity is too low, the economy cannot support everyone without child labor, and

neither a ban on child labor nor direct redistribution will effectively eliminate child labor and make the affected

children better off. In fact, it may have the effect of increasing child labor. This would happen if the amount of the

income transfer from the non-poor to the poor was large enough to cause household income per person of the non-poor

to fall below the sustenance threshold but not large enough to raise the income per person of the poor above the

threshold. See K. Basu and P.H. Van, “The Economics of Child Labor,” The American Economic Review, 88 no. 3

(1998): 412-27. See also Carol Ann Rogers and Kenneth A. Swinnerton, “Inequality, Productivity and Child Labor:

Theory and Evidence” (Department of Economics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, December 2001,

mimeograph).
12

children to work.18 Many children in the worst forms are found in what is considered to be

hazardous work.19 While this work is not appropriate for children, it may pose less of a threat or

risk to adult workers. For these types of work, if children are seen as substitutes for adults, the

children’s participation increases the supply of competing workers and therefore forces down the

wages paid to adults. If all children were removed from this type of work, the adult wage might rise

high enough so that families would be sufficiently well off and they would not want to send their

children to work in the first place. In this case, if a law banning child labor in these activities were

passed and effectively enforced, it might ensure that adult wages would rise sufficiently so that

families with child workers would not want their children to work. Whether or not the adult wage

would rise sufficiently for this to happen depends on whether the economy has the productive

potential to support the population with less input of labor, i.e., on the average labor productivity of

the remaining adult laborers. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the possibility for the

successful application of a child labor law by itself to lead to higher adult wages or other superior

opportunities for children and their families may only exist in middle to upper income countries.20

2. Compulsory Education Laws

In addition to legal strategies that outlaw children’s participation in the worst forms, there

are legal strategies that require that children’s time be spent in beneficial ways that will further their

knowledge and development, such as attending school. These typically take the form of compulsory

education laws, which provide that children who are in a particular age range attend school.

Compulsory education laws raise feasibility issues similar to those raised by child labor laws. In

particular, poorer households may require financial assistance to send their children to school. A

more detailed discussion of assistance programs that promote basic education is provided in the

next section, which describes the strategies that encourage education.

Some have argued that promotion and enforcement of compulsory education laws may be a

better legal strategy to apply than one that simply bans child labor. This is because it is usually

easier to observe whether a child is attending school than it is to verify that the child is not

working.21 Nonetheless, it is important that child labor laws, especially those with regard to

minimum work age, and compulsory education laws be complementary. If they conflict or leave

gaps between the age when a child completes compulsory schooling and when a child can legally

begin work, they may have a perverse effect and encourage illegal child labor.

When child labor and compulsory schooling laws are in balance and enforced, the financial

pressure felt by families to send children to work may be eliminated over time.22 If children are

18 See Basu and Van, “The Economics of Child Labor,” 412-27. In addition, Genicot (2000) suggests that the existence

of the worst forms may close off non-worst-forms opportunities. By way of example, she describes the conditions under

which the existence of bonded labor obstructs access to credit markets. See Garance Genicot, “Bonded Labor and

Serfdom: A Paradox of Voluntary Choice,” Journal of Development Economics 67, no. 1 (February 2002): 101-127.

19 This refers to work that is described by Article 3(d) of ILO Convention 182.

20 Rogers and Swinnerton, “Inequality, Productivity and Child Labor: Theory and Evidence.”

21 Myron Weiner, The Child and the State of India.

22 Sylvain E. Dessy, “A Defense of Compulsive Measures Against Child Labor,” Journal of Development Economics 62

(2000): 261-75.
13

forbidden to work and at the same time are given the opportunity to get an education, then, as a

result of schooling, their earnings potential as adults would also be expected to rise. As educated

adults they should be in a better position (relative to adults without education) to support their

families since they are more likely to be bringing in a higher income and are more likely to have

fewer children than their parents did, and therefore have more resources to allocate to each

household member.

Legal remedies, such as legislation against the worst forms of child labor or requiring

compulsory education, can be an appropriate strategy to eliminate the worst forms. If laws are

written so that those who exploit children are held accountable and punished, then the demand for

children in the worst forms will be reduced. If properly implemented and enforced, over time they

can also reduce the supply of children into the worst forms. To guarantee that a child will be made

better off by the enforcement of such legislation, however, thought must be given to the situation of

the child and how he or she ended up working in a worst form.

The bottom line is that when considering the use of a legal strategy to eliminate the worst

forms particular attention needs to be paid to making sure that more beneficial options than child

labor are made available to children. To expand the set of options open to children and their parents,

other programs and activities such as improvements to the quality and provision of schooling,

poverty reduction programs, and rehabilitative services may also be required.

C. Strategies that Encourage Education

In general, a positive relationship has been observed between education and income or

wealth and between wealth and the elimination of child labor, and a negative association between

participation in school and participation in child labor.23 Given these results, it follows that

strategies that encourage children to pursue education are a way to address child labor and improve

the lives of the affected children, their families, and society.

While very little research has been conducted on the relationship between the worst forms

of child labor and education, some anecdotal evidence supports the conclusion that many children

in the worst forms of child labor do not regularly attend school.24 Thus, any strategy that puts and

keeps a child in school contributes to the elimination of the worst forms of child labor by

preventing children from entering those forms and providing them with a better option. The

discussion of education strategies to eliminate the worst forms of child labor that follows is framed

in terms of what factors are needed to lead children to school and keep them there.

23 See U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor,

4-6, for a discussion of the relationship between child labor and schooling.

24 For example, children who are sold and abducted as young children are rarely given the opportunity to attend school,

and street children and child soldiers may require rehabilitation and informal schooling to get them up to grade with

their cohort group.
14

1. The Role of Credit Constraints and Poverty

Some families send children to work because education in many countries is not free and

poor families cannot turn to a bank or some other financial institution to finance their children’s

education. In some cases, parents may not be able to pay off a loan in the future unless their

children reimburse them later in their lives from the potentially higher earnings their education has

brought them. But, there is no guarantee that grown children will keep this commitment to their

parents. As a result, these types of loans for the education of children are more risky to lenders.

This situation of “credit constraints” or “capital market failures” in limiting access to education and

encouraging child labor has been examined more extensively in the recent economic literature.25

Even if children in these cases took loans directly — a remote possibility given the

treatment of children under the law and the fact that uneducated children are unlikely to understand

their commitments — there is a risk that some children will not be able to repay the loan. That is,

while the expectation is that the future income of educated children will be higher than that of

uneducated children, in some cases the differential may not be high enough to cover the cost of

their schooling. Thus, the “missing credit market” or “credit constraint” can be viewed as: (1)

lending for educational purposes, particularly of young children from poor families, is too risky;

and (2) it is too difficult to enforce financial commitments made by children or their parents.26

Recent economic literature shows that the credit constraint for the education of children

does indeed matter, but only for poor families. Wealthier families are less likely to need to borrow

to finance education for their children. Thus, there may be an explicit link between poverty and

child labor, but this link may be mediated by providing poor families’ access to credit markets and

free schooling for their children.

In situations where education for children is free, the lack of credit markets may seem like a

secondary concern. Another point that recent studies make is that borrowing may not be limited to

just paying the direct out-of-pocket expenses of schooling (e.g., expenses for books, uniforms,

transportation, and other school fees), but may also be used to replace the income that a child going

to school would have generated by working. In poor households in developing countries, the

income generated by child labor can represent a significant portion of the household’s total

budget.27 To poor families, “free” education may still be too expensive (i.e., in terms of income lost

from a child not working). Without viable credit markets or some other mechanism to replace that

lost income, a considerable cost may be imposed on the household’s current living standards. Thus,

25 Jean-Marie Baland and James A. Robinson, “Is Child Labor Inefficient?” Journal of Political Economy 108, no. 4

(August 2000): 663-679. See also Priya Ranjan, “Credit Constraints and the Phenomenon of Child Labor,” Journal of

Development Economics 64, no. 1 (2000): 81–102.

26 In particular, any law to alleviate such a problem would have to be crafted carefully so that it does not lead to a

situation of bonded labor. In an economy where legitimate capital markets exist, borrowers typically provide some form

of non-human asset as collateral for a loan. In the context of educational loans for elementary schooling for children

from poorer families, the collateral would essentially be the value of the child’s future labor — the only asset that very

poor children possess.

27 See, e.g., U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child

Labor, 19-20.
15

strategies that seek to replace the income lost by poor families as a result of sending their children

to school rather than work in some cases may be integral elements of broader strategies that

encourage education.

2. Overcoming Credit Constraints and Poverty

A way to provide some alternative income-generating opportunities to poor families is to

provide adult members training, access to credit, or capital equipment and machinery. If properly

designed, these programs could be self-sustaining and have positive effects on future generations by

overcoming credit constraints.28 For example, these programs might set up revolving funds of

credit. Seed money from donors could allow participating families to purchase an incomegenerating asset such as a piece of machinery that could provide enough income to raise the

standard of living of each family, and allow each to provide a contribution back to the fund, thereby

financing program continuation. Subsequent generations of families would thus be able to

participate in the program because the repayment by generations before them provides the program

with continued funding.29

Another way to provide basic income-support to poor families might be to provide a direct

subsidy to poor families that send their children to school. However, the success of this type of

program will depend on the conditions under which families with children are eligible to

participate. Targeting a subsidy to families with working children may have the unintended effect of

actually encouraging child labor because families that might not otherwise send their children to

work would do so in order to get the subsidy.30

To avoid providing unintended incentives, subsidy programs may have to be targeted more

broadly on attributes over which families have little control or have little incentive to alter just to

become eligible for the subsidy. Many subsidy programs tend to target families living below the

poverty line, i.e., some financial measure of low income, with the condition for continued eligibility

often being the continued participation of the children in schooling.31

Education subsidy programs can require large budgets because of the need: to offer support

to families over a long period of time, (e.g., for the entire course of a child’s schooling);32 to

provide a substantial level of support to actually induce continued school enrollment;33 and to offer

28 Chapter 3 provides examples of programs that do this.

29 Drusilla K. Brown, Alan V. Deardorff, and Robert M. Stern, Child Labor: Theory, Evidence and Policy (Department

of Economics, Tufts University, Medford, MA, June 2001, mimeograph), 40-41.

30 U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor, 46-

47.

31 See, e.g., T. Paul Schultz, School Subsidies for the Poor: Evaluating the Mexican Progresa Poverty Program,Yale

University Economic Growth Center Discussion Paper, no. 834 (New Haven, CT, 2001), 5-6. See also World Bank,

Brazil: An Assessment of the Bolsa Escola Programs, World Bank Human Development Sector Management Unit,

Report No. 20208-BR (Washington, DC, 2001), 7-8.

32 U.S. Department of Labor, By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child

Labor, 47.

33 Brown, Deardorff, and Stern, Child Labor: Theory Evidence and Policy, 36-38.
16

subsidies to substantial numbers of families that would have sent their children to school even

without the subsidy in order to avoid perverse incentives related to targeting.34

In the end, successful strategies to encourage education and prevent child labor need to

consider whether families have to replace the income lost from their children’s work. Combining

“free” education with some sort of income-based support for poor families may be a promising

strategy, but there may be certain conditions in particular contexts that limit the feasibility of such a

compound strategy.

3. Other Factors Affecting the Success of Education Strategies

Most recent economic analyses that examine the relationship between child education and

the sustained elimination of child labor assume that the payoff from education will be the future

generations of educated adult workers who should be able to support their children without sending

them to work.35 Sometimes, however, this assumption may not be fulfilled because of the poor

quality of education provided.36 Existing evidence suggests that poor school quality may lower the

payoff from education.37 Since a sufficiently high payoff from education is necessary for schooling

to be chosen over work, poor school quality is likely to contribute to the incidence of child labor

and limit the ability of education incentives to lower it.

The education of children may also not pay off because the labor market fails to provide

opportunities for educated workers to apply the skills obtained through their education to their jobs,

or does not compensate them adequately for doing so.38 Sometimes the problem is a general one,

resulting from the inability of the country’s macroeconomy to create jobs that require educated

skilled workers. In other instances, it may be a matter of opportunities being restricted for certain

classes of workers. Overcoming discrimination with regard to gender, ethnicity, or caste in

schooling is unlikely to be successful in encouraging education if such discrimination still persists

and restricts access to jobs requiring education, or affects the wages associated with these jobs.39

When these types of conditions prevail, viewing child labor policy in isolation from broader

economic and social policy goals may be myopic. Child labor, in this case, may be a symptom of

larger problems.

34 Schultz, School Subsidies for the Poor, 32.

35 Ranjan, “Credit Constraints and the Phenomenon of Child Labor,” 87. See also Dessy, “A Defense of Compulsive

Measures Against Child Labor,” 266. See also Baland and Robinson, “Is Child Labor Inefficient?” 668. See also Clive

Bell and Hans Gersbach, Child Labor and the Education of a Society, IZA Discussion Paper, no. 338, Bonn, August

2001 [cited October 16, 2002], 6; available from: http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=280803.

36 Brown, Deardorff, and Stern, Child Labor: Theory Evidence and Policy, 23-24. See also U.S. Department of Labor,

Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor, 23-24.

37 David Card and Alan B. Krueger, “Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristic of

Public Schools in the United States,” Journal of Political Economy 100, no. 1 (1992): 1-40. See also Anne Case and

Motohiro Yogo, Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristic of Public Schools in South

Africa, NBER Working Paper, no. 7399, 1999, [cited October 16, 2002]; available from http://www.nber.org/papers/

w7399.

38 Rossana Galli, The Economic Impact of Child Labour, Discussion Paper, no. 128 (Geneva: International Institute for

Labour Studies, 2001), 18-20.

39 U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor, 24-

28.
17

Another limitation on the feasibility of strategies that encourage education is a financial one

at the macroeconomic level, rather than just the family level. Until children who receive an

education grow up and become more productive adult workers, an economy’s resources will be

limited, in large part, by the productivity of its current adult workers. As mentioned earlier, many

struggle in poorer countries just to survive but it may not be possible for these countries to generate

sufficient resources to provide for quality education and income support for those in need in their

population. In this case, financial assistance from outside sources may be necessary (e.g., from the

World Bank or other international financial institutions or donor countries).40 However, if the

educational efforts supported are successful (i.e., pay off in terms of sufficiently enhanced

productivity among future generations of adult workers), then the support should be needed only

temporarily.

D. Market-Based Strategies

Another strategy to eliminate child labor is to eliminate the demand for products made or

services provided by children through the market.41 Product labeling42 and corporate codes of

conduct43 are two specific market-based strategies that have been proposed. Their success depends

on whether consumers prefer to purchase “child-labor-free” goods and services rather than ones

that might be produced using child labor — even if this means paying a higher price.

Child-labor-free product labels are meant to convey information to consumers that children

have not been employed in the manufacture of a particular product. If consumers prefer products

not made with child labor, they will benefit from a credible label that informs them that a given

product is child-labor-free. If a child-labor-free product is preferred to an identical product without

such a label, consumers should be willing to pay more for it, thus revealing their preferences for the

credible certification of such conditions. Hence, there is scope for both consumers and producers to

gain from a credible labeling program, and a market should exist for these labeled products.44

In a similar manner, consumer preferences can create a market for corporate codes of

conduct, which assure child-labor-free production of goods and services. If consumers can be

assured that producers have credibly enforced a corporate policy that bans the use of children in the

manufacture of goods or the provision of services, consumers who value child-labor-free products

40 Rogers and Swinnerton, Inequality, Productivity and Child Labor: Theory and Evidence, 28.

41 An obvious limitation on these market-based strategies arises if consumers actually prefer products made with child

labor. With some of the worst forms of child labor, for example, child pornography or child prostitution, the product

many consumers desire is the child. In the case of drug trafficking and other illicit activities, the consumer may not

have a particular preference for a child to be involved in the delivery or provision of the goods, but they are unlikely to

respond to a market-based information strategy.

42 U.S. Department of Labor, By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume IV): Consumer Labels and Child Labor

(Washington, DC: USDOL/ILAB, 1997).

43 U.S. Department of Labor, The Apparel Industry and Codes of Conduct: A Solution to the International Child Labor

Problem? (Washington, DC: USDOL/ILAB, 1996).

44 For example see Richard B. Freeman, “A Hard Headed Look at Labor Standards,” in International Labor Standards

and Global Economic Integration: Proceedings of a Symposium (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor, 1994),

26-33.
18

and services might provide a sizable market for these companies’ goods and services. To the extent

that consumers are willing to pay extra for these goods and services, sales may more than offset the

cost of implementing and enforcing the codes.

Even when consumers prefer that child labor not be used in the manufacture of a good or

the provision of services and are willing to pay for this, there are other possible limitations to this

approach. For example, if producers can sell goods that are labeled as child-labor-free at a higher

price than those that are not so labeled, there is incentive for firms that use child labor to falsely

label their goods as child-labor-free. In other cases where the price differential between accurately

labeled goods and otherwise identical goods produced by child labor is not sufficiently large to

offset the cost of monitoring, firms will have an incentive to claim child-labor-free production

processes when in fact they do not ensure the use of such processes.45 The credibility of market

based programs is central to their success; if the procedures for guaranteeing the absence of child

labor are imperfect and some goods are inaccurately portrayed as child-labor-free, then the label or

corporate code of conduct may be perceived as a sham and become a meaningless instrument.46

One way to address this is through a tripartite (government, labor, and business) cooperative

program with community and NGO representation, perhaps also with outside technical assistance

from the ILO, to assist firms in the monitoring of production.

A criticism that has been leveled at labeling and codes of conduct programs is that they only

aim at the removal of children from labor without guaranteeing that the affected children will be

better off.47 In order to be effective at both reducing child labor and making children better off,

labeling and codes of conduct programs need to be coupled with strategies that improve and widen

the set of opportunities available to children. It is important to note that some labeling efforts do

45 See Arnab K. Basu, Nancy H. Chau and Ulrike Grote, Guaranteed Manufactured without Child Labor (Economics

Department, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, 1999, mimeograph). This paper argues that the risk of

this happening may be larger as the supply of “child-labor-free” goods increases because the larger supply, assuming

demand is held constant, drives down the price of the child-labor free good. If a larger supply does not commensurately

affect the costs of monitoring, the incentive for firms to cheat grows. If enough firms cheat and it may become

impossible to distinguish truly child-labor-free goods from fraudulent ones, and consumers will not trust the label or the

monitoring programs. As a result, these programs will become ineffective.

46 The importance of credibility to these programs was stressed in U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of

Children (Volume IV): Consumer Labels and Child Labor, xiii and U.S. Department of Labor, The Apparel Industry and

Codes of Conduct, xi.

47 In 1994, thousands of children working in the apparel industry in Bangladesh were dismissed in response to a

proposed ban on U.S. imports made with child labor. However, more attractive alternatives to working and social safety

nets were not in place to assist the fired children, and some found work in worse jobs, including prostitution. With the

support of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, UNICEF,

and the ILO worked together to place children in schools and to offer legitimate work opportunities to the oldest

members of the children’s families. See U.S. Department of Labor, The Apparel Industry and Codes of Conduct. See

also Sarah L. Bachman, “The Political Economy of Child Labor and Its Impacts on International Business,” Business

Economics, July 2000, 30-41. See also, e.g., Drusilla K. Brown, “A Transactions Cost Politics Analysis of International

Child Labor Standards” (paper presented at University of Michigan and Congressional Research Service Conferences

on Social Dimensions of U.S. Trade Policies, April 16-17, 1998), 5-10; and Basu, Chau and Grote, Guaranteed

Manufactured without Child Labor, 19.

48 See, e.g., Rugmark, a labeling program in the carpets industry, in U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of

Children (Volume IV): Consumer Labels and Child Labor, 24-32.

couple the labels with programs to promote education or other opportunities for the affected children.48
19

E. Rescue, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration Strategies

Up to this point, only strategies that lead to direct action to eliminate or prevent child labor

have been discussed. However, for many of the children engaged in several of the worst forms of

child labor, such as those defined by Article 3(a)-(c) of ILO Convention 182 (e.g., those engaged in

forced labor, prostitution and pornography, and drug trafficking and other illicit activities), remedial

activities may be needed before the direct action strategies discussed above can have their full effect

of making the affected children better off. One obvious concern is whether some targeted

intervention, termed rescue, is needed to remove children from these worst form situations, or some

other action taken to prevent street children and others dangerously at risk from entering these

worst forms in the first place. For those children rescued, it is likely that they will not be ready to

immediately resume the normal activities of childhood, e.g., to go directly into a regular classroom

with cohorts of the same age and benefit from a formal education strategy. They are likely to need

some sort of help to become ready to live, learn, play and perhaps even work, like other children as

well as be provided with a new set of opportunities to prevent re-entry back into the worst forms.

That is, they may benefit from rehabilitation and reintegration strategies.

1. Rescue

In policy and program documents discussing the worst forms of child labor, rescue is a term

used to emphasize the urgency of the removal of children from work that causes them harm. Rescue

can range from persuading parents to take their children out of a worst forms situation (or

persuading the children to leave themselves), to direct intervention of law enforcement or other

officials.49 Rescue also often includes ensuring that children’s immediate basic needs for food,

shelter, and medical attention are met.

For some children (e.g., children who have been trafficked away from their homes or child

soldiers), home may be far away and locating a parent or guardian may take time. If a child’s family

is in the vicinity, the participation of the child in the worst forms may imply that the family is either

unable or unsuited to care for the child’s basic needs. Often the need for medical care is acute.

Children may have injuries and diseases that need treatment. The emotional trauma that they have

experienced causes some children to experience severe depression, and in some cases rescued

children have been observed to be suicidal.50

Rescued children often require additional assistance to meet basic needs; in addition,

children who are currently working in the worst forms may also benefit from similar services. The

delivery of basic needs can take place in an institution setting such as a care center, or may be given

49 International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour: Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO

Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Right at Work (Geneva: 2002), 104.

50 See, e.g., “Briefing Notes on the Final Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children by Ms. Graca Machel,

Expert of the UN Secretary General of the United Nations” in Children in Armed Conflict, UNICEF Staff Working

Papers, Evaluation, Policy and Planning Series, no. EPP-99-001, (New York: 1999), 234-261. See also International

Labour Office—International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, The Elimination of Child Labor and Risk

of Sexual Exploitation of Girls and Teenagers in the Bus Station of León, Progress Report No. 5 (Geneva: September

2000).
20

out on the streets in a designated area; the mode of distribution will depend on the situation of the

children. Typically, care centers operate successfully if they are located in a single place, or set of

places, to which a large population of children can be brought.51

In situations where basic needs services are not delivered directly to child workers, the

visibility of the services is very important. Care centers should be located in places that children

can see and can enter safely. In providing these, donors must be mindful of the fact that many of

these children do not trust adults and have developed a heightened sense of self-reliance. Because

they cannot count on children to admit to the need for help, some organizations send outreach

workers to approach children on the streets. The lack of trust may also make this group reluctant to

accept assistance, particularly if its receipt requires the child to submit to the authority of the donor

and automatically adapt to a new lifestyle. Recidivists (repeated re-entrants into the worst forms)

may come back again and again, becoming more likely to accept additional help with each

exposure to the rescue activities.52

2. Rehabilitation and Reintegration

Remedial action may be needed to make children exiting the worst forms of child labor

ready to pursue other activities. These activities may be the normal ones of childhood, e.g., play and

school. Or, depending on the needs and age of the child, they may be other forms of work.

Rehabilitation and reintegration are terms used in the program literature to refer to a host of direct

services provided to children with the aim of helping them make the full transition from the worst

forms of child labor to a better set of activities.

Rehabilitation and reintegration strategies typically rely on the provision of some sort of

“non-formal education,” i.e., some mechanism for developing skills not taught in regular schools

but needed to succeed in everyday life. Sometimes this involves teaching simple life skills like

cooking and other activities involved in maintaining a household. Other times it involves remedial

academic training, as children leaving the worst forms are often far behind their peers who have

attended school regularly. Additionally, children leaving the worst forms are often provided skills

they may need for coping with the stigma of their past when they attempt to re-integrate into

“legitimate” society at large. In still other cases, older children are provided with vocational

training so that they may go directly into new forms of work.53 For some children from poor

51 See, e.g., “Programs and Activities: Transit Homes,” Maiti Nepal [cited October 16, 2002]; available from: http://

www.maitinepal.org/programs/transit.htm. Maiti Nepal was formed in 1993 by a group of professionals with the

objective of protecting Nepali girls and women from various forms of exploitation. Their chief concentration is in

preventing trafficking females for forced prostitution, rescuing victims, and providing them with rehabilitation. For

additional examples, see “UNICEF Assistance to Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone,” Global Information Network in

Education [cited March 20, 2002]; available from: http://www.ginie.org/ginie-crises-links/childsoldiers/

sierraleone2.html and “A Survey of Programs on the Reintegration of Former Child Soldiers, A profile of El Salvador,”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan [cited October 16, 2002]; available from: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/

human/child/survey/introduction.html.

52 “The Bolivian Street Children Project,” [cited October 16, 2002]; available from: http://

www.bolivianstreetchildren.org

53 International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour, 100.
21

regions, providing them with the skills to be productive and sufficiently well paid in non-worst

forms of work may be the only viable strategy for keeping these children from going back.54

F. Facilitating Actions

Thus far, the discussion has focused on strategies targeted directly at removing children

from, or preventing entry into, the worst forms of child labor, and making improvements to the

quality of their lives. Attention is now given to steps that, if taken, may create an environment in

which directly targeted action programs can be successful; these are to identify the target

population, raise public awareness, and build institutional capacity.

1. Identification

In order to effectively implement any strategy to help children in, or at risk of entering, the

worst forms of child labor, it is necessary to first identify who they are and learn more about their

characteristics. Statistics on child labor in general are hard to come by, and the hidden and illegal

nature of many of the worst forms makes reliable information about these activities even more

difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, the last decade has seen new efforts to generate profile information

on child labor and the worst forms of child labor. This sub-section identifies several different

identification approaches and the implementation issues they face.

a. Household-Based Random Sampling

In principle, the best way to learn details about the size and characteristics of a population is

to study a random sample of that population. In such a sample, either each member of the

population has the same chance of being selected for the sample, or—as in a stratified random

sample—each has a known probability of selection based on information known before selection.

Obviously enough information is needed to identify the members of the population before the

sample is drawn, and, in the case of stratified random sampling, additional information is required

as well, e.g., geographic location, gender, ethnicity. Typically this information or “sampling frame”

comes from a population census carried out to collect data on all members of a population.

Sampling systematically identifies a fraction of a census population from whom more detailed

information is collected. Proper use of statistical theory ensures that appropriately identified

random samples are representative of the population from which they are drawn, and that estimates

and inferences about characteristics of the population can be made from the sample.55

54 See, e.g., ibid, 109-110.

55 There are any number of good references on sampling theory and techniques. See, e.g., John Neter, William

Wasserman and G.A. Whitmore, Applied Statistics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), Chapter 23.
22

Much of what is known about the general characteristics of child labor today is based upon

information generated from random samples of households in selected countries.56 According to the

ILO:

[T]he household-based approach has been found to be the best

medium for investigating child labour in all its forms. This is because

a household is the most appropriate unit of measurement for

identifying its members and quantifying their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as particulars of the dwelling.

Moreover, the conditions that force children to work, to a larger

extent, are related to circumstances of the households where they

live.57

Taking the household as the unit of analysis in a country is consistent with many current

approaches to the issue of child labor. These place decisions about whether or not children work in

the context of family-based decisions about how it supports itself. Thus, the household seems to be

a logical place to look for the factors affecting the decision-making process that leads a child into

work. In addition, household-based censuses are more common than other ways of counting entire

populations. That is, the population of households from which to draw a random sample is much

more likely to be known than, for example, the population of firms.

Even if a household-based approach is a good way generally to study child labor, it may not

always be the best way and it may miss important aspects of the problem. For example, it is not

particularly well suited to understanding the demand-side of child labor, i.e., why do firms hire

child laborers? Nor is it apt to generate much information on the community or culturally based

factors that might encourage child labor. Supplemental approaches may be needed that involve the

contact with firms and community leaders, even if these contacts cannot be accommodated within a

random sampling framework.58 However, firms or community leaders may be particularly sensitive

to criticisms if they admit to child labor in their realms, and they often have strong incentives to

withhold information.59

56 Some form of household-based random sample is the primary technique used by the International Labor Organization

in its Statistical Information and Monitoring Program on Child Labor (SIMPOC); by the World Bank in its Living

Standard Measurement Survey program; and by UNICEF with its Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys; all of which

provide some information on working children. Additionally labor force surveys sponsored by national governments

sometimes provide information on child labor, and these are also typically household-based data collection instruments.

For a broad overview of current data and data collection techniques related to child labor, and links for more

information, see “Understanding Children’s Work,” Inter-Agency Research Cooperation Project at Innocenti Research

Center [cited October 16, 2002]; available from: http://www.ucw-project.org.

57 ILO-IPEC, SIMPOC Programme: Objectives and Implementation Strategy [cited October 21, 2002]; available from:

http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/simpoc/simpoc00/page3.htm#3.

58 Very often information on the population of firms or community leaders is not available and therefore there is no

identified population from which to draw a random sample.

59 International Labor Office, Child Labour Surveys: Results of Methodological Experiments in Four Countries, 1992-

93 (Geneva: 1996), 84.
23

Similarly, households are not immune from concerns that they may suffer if they admit to

child labor. In particular, if their children are involved in the worst forms of child labor and the

family understands and accepts the illegality or immorality of their children’s participation, there

are strong incentives to hide any worst forms of child labor that occur in their household. From a

data collections standpoint, there is an even more fundamental problem: a household-based survey

provides information on the population that lives in identified households. There is plenty of

anecdotal evidence to suggest that an unknown, but possibly substantial portion of the population of

children involved in the worst forms of child labor do not live in formal households. In this case, a

household based survey covering the population of children actually living in households would

clearly not provide results representative of this population.

b. Rapid Assessment

An alternative approach to gathering more complete information on the worst forms of child

labor in a country seeks to understand the worst forms in much more specific circumstances, and

without the delay often associated with broader and more comprehensive random sampling

methods or surveys. Called “rapid assessment,” it is a methodology that:

... is well adapted for gathering information in a rapid and simplified

way within small, clearly defined geographical areas, for example

small individual communities, towns, villages, urban core, etc. Its

scope is therefore limited and local, and it focuses on areas which are

known to have substantial concentrations of children involved in

activities difficult to identify and quantify. Its output is primarily

qualitative and descriptive. Some numerical data may be obtained as

background information or through interviews, but these usually can

not [sic] be generalized to larger populations.60

Rapid assessments are short-term studies, usually conducted in about three months. They

may use information in existing literature, discussions with knowledgeable individuals and

organizations, more in-depth interviews with those that prove to be key informants, geographic

mapping of the area under consideration and the activities that take place there, and direct

observation of children at work.61 The precise sources and combination of sources are often

dictated by the situation at hand and may only become obvious in the course of the short, but

intense study of a particular location.

Rapid assessments are usually carried out when there is already strong indication that a

problem exists. Thus, it is not well suited to identifying new problem areas. Also, because it is more

short-term, a rapid assessment often cannot gather the richness of detail that might be obtained

through longer-term and more thorough surveys. This is an outgrowth both of the time constraint

60 International Labor Organization and UNICEF, Investigation Child Labour: Guidelines for Rapid Assessment, A

Field Manual (Geneva: January 2000), 8 [cited October 16, 2002]; available from: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/

standards/ipec/simpoc/guides/rapass.htm.

61 Ibid, 15-16.
24

and the inability to establish relationships based on trust. These relationships are often necessary to

gain access to information that reveals the true nature and extent of an illegal or hidden activity.

The main limitation to the rapid assessment strategy is that it is not capable of producing

results that can be generalized beyond the specific area or group under study. The “sample” for

rapid assessment is usually not chosen according to statistical sampling principles and therefore the

tools of statistical inference cannot be applied. Moreover, since much of the information is

qualitative in nature, little can be said about the incidence of child labor.62 In short, the rapid

assessment methodology seems best suited to areas where there is already a relatively good amount

of information known about child labor problems, some commitment to conduct programs to

address it, and some additional short-term study can provide specific details that can be used in the

design of the program to ensure success.

c. Integrated Data Collection

Given the limited time frame of data collection imposed by rapid assessment and the

limitations inherent in random samples of households, it might be useful to consider an approach

that combines longer-term rapid-assessment-type information gathering methods with random

sampling. Such an approach has been used with increasing acceptance and success in the study of

many criminal and hidden activities.63 This approach systematically collects and assesses data from

administrative and professional organizations in combination with rapid-assessment-type and

random sampling methods.64

Data from administrative and professional sources have their own limitations. Even when

quantitative information is available, it generally relates to reported incidents of practices, such as

the worst forms of child labor. This reported information tends to undercount actual incidents, but

to an unknown extent. There are a number of possible reasons for this, including a lack of

sensitivity and understanding of the issue among law enforcement and other officials; a lack of

policy coordination, e.g., among law enforcement and social service agencies, that also affects the

62 Ibid, 12-20.

63 A recent example of this approach that is particularly relevant to the worst forms of child labor studies both noncommercial and commercial sexual exploitation of children in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. See Richard J.

Estes and Neil Alan Weiner, “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico: Full

Report (of the U.S. National Study),” (School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2001). See also

Elena Azaola, Stolen Childhood: Girl and Boy Victims of Sexual Exploitation in Mexico (Mexico City: DIF/UNICEF/

CIESAS, 2000).

64 In a study of commercial sexual exploitation of children in the United States, systematic collection of data from

administrative and professional sources included a random sample of relevant organizations. The researchers sent

questionnaires concerning the sexual exploitation of children to a random sample of 1,130 government and nongovernmental organizations that work with these children. Only 288 (or 25 percent) of the questionnaires were returned

with usable information. Many of the organizations that returned incomplete or otherwise not usable questionnaires

cited a lack of information in their own databases and files that would allow them to provide answers. When they

contacted other organizations that did not return questionnaires, the researchers’ inquiries were met with similar

answers. This example succinctly illustrates many of the limitations of this method of data collection. See Richard J.

Estes and Neil Alan Weiner, “The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico:

Executive Summary,” (School of Social Work, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2001), 5.
25

65 Estes and Weiner, Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico: Full Report, 135-36.

66 See, e.g., U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume V): Efforts to Eliminate Child Labor,

Chapter 3.

67 UNICEF, Profiting from Abuse: An Investigation into the Sexual Exploitation of our Children (New York, 2001).

68 ILO-IPEC, Combating the Trafficking in Children for Labour Exploitation in West and Central Africa Synthesis

Report, Geneva, ILO, 2001 [cited October 16, 2002]; available from: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/

publ/field/africa/central.pdf

consistency and completeness of the information collected by the two sectors; a tendency among

local agencies not to apprehend and prosecute (and therefore not to create records on certain forms,

e.g., sexually exploited children); a tendency to devote intervention resources more heavily to one

aspect of the problem (e.g., child pornography) than another (e.g., child prostitution); and other

legal, political, and budget constraints and realities.65

The creation of administrative data is contingent not only on the capability and effectiveness

of responsible authorities, but also on the existence of legal, social service, and other governmental

and non-governmental organizations responsible for addressing sexual exploitation and other worst

forms of child labor practices. In some parts of the world the existence or sophistication of these

agencies is significantly limited. This not only constrains their effectiveness in their secondary role

of data collection, but also the effectiveness of the legal and other strategies that rely on their

existence for primary effect.66

Because the worst forms of child labor include activities that are illegal, socially

stigmatized, or hidden for other reasons, no single type of information is likely to describe them

sufficiently. It may be possible to gain a more complete understanding of the worst forms of child

labor only by examining many different information sources. Unfortunately, there is no set of hard

and fast rules to guide in the processing of the various pieces of information that come from

disparate sources. Deciding how much weight to give to each piece, and interpreting the

information contained in them, is art at least as much as it is science.

2. Awareness Raising

As emphasized earlier in the discussion of legal, education and poverty alleviation

strategies, addressing the worst forms of child labor requires the assignment of substantial

resources. Society must be willing and able to make choices that provide the resources necessary to

undertake efforts against the worst forms, potentially diverting them from other uses. The degree of

political consensus achieved to allocate resources to eliminate the worst forms will depend on the

public’s perception of the children in the worst forms. This is not always initially positive or

tremendously sympathetic.

Among the attitudes that often need to be changed are perceptions of children in the worst

forms of child labor. They are often viewed as more like “criminals” rather than “victims.” For

example, in the Dominican Republic, the public has a tendency to place the blame on children and

their parents for the prevalence of sex tourism.67 In Togo, girl trafficking victims who return to their

villages are sometimes perceived to be “adventurers” and thought to be infected with HIV, and

therefore they face strong social rejection.68 An ILO-conducted rapid assessment revealed that child
26

prostitutes in Tanzania were perceived as loiterers by police, and were physically and sexually

abused by police and prison officials.69

According to the ILO, awareness raising and sensitization have been effective in changing

attitudes and paving the way for action against the worst forms of child labor. They cite in

particular the usefulness of “all forms of media from radio and TV to street theatre and exhibitions,

with the participation of children and youth as well as that of prominent personalities.”70 Elsewhere

they state that “an eclectic mix of campaigns, children’s marches, front-page articles, town

meetings, and official conferences have created a foundation of public awareness . . ., which can

now be built upon.”71

One feasibility issue with awareness raising strategies is that it is very difficult to measure

their impact. Evaluations of their effectiveness appear to be largely based on anecdotes, for example

of where very specific reactions to media presentations were noted, or where groups taking actions

cited such presentation among their motivations.72 Polling or opinion surveys taken before and after

awareness raising campaigns may reveal more general indications of changes in attitude, although it

will never be possible to attribute these changes to the campaigns with absolute certainty. To date,

such broad-based polling does not appear to have been employed in relationship to awareness

raising related to child labor.73

Another set of feasibility issues has to do with how precisely the messages are interpreted.

In some instances, it has proven difficult to assess public perception of the distinctions about child

labor made in international conventions.74 The general public may not make a distinction between

“child labor” and the “worst forms of child labor.” Moreover, the general public may not understand

some rather arcane distinctions made in international policy discussions between “child labor” and

“child work.” The first may be perceived as having a more pejorative meaning, suggesting work

that is harmful in some way to children, while the second suggests a more benign or even beneficial

work type activity.75 The main problem with the message being perceived as all “child work is bad”

is that it may be disregarded as too far out of sync with reality as many see it. This limits the scale

of change in attitudes among members of the public.76

69 ILO-IPEC, Supporting the Time-bound Programme on the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Tanzania, Project

Document (Geneva: ILO, 2002).

70 International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour, 98.

71 ILO-IPEC, Good Practices in Action Against Child Labour: A Synthesis Report of Seven Country Studies, 1997-98

by Independent Researchers (Geneva: ILO, 2001), 73.

72 ILO-IPEC, Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children: An Evaluation of ILO-IPEC Programmes in Thailand,

Philippines, Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua (Geneva: ILO, 2001), 22 and 51.

73 Ibid, 50.

74 ILO-IPEC, Good Practices in Action Against Child Labour, 73.

75 International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour, 9-13.

76 ILO-IPEC, Good Practices in Action Against Child Labour, 73.
27

3. Capacity Building

Whereas awareness raising addresses the realization of the problem and the willingness to

take actions, capacity building is more involved with enabling and empowering groups and

institutions that must make the interventions to do so.

Capacity building can take many forms. In the legal sphere, it can focus on the ability of

authorities to monitor and enforce existing laws and regulations.77 There may also be some attempt

to harmonize laws governing child labor and those that deal with statutory provisions on

compulsory education for children. Capacity building in education may mean building schools,

finding some less traditional method for educating children (e.g., mobile units bringing teachers to

remote villages or worksites), and training teachers to raise the general quality of instruction.78 In

relation to identification, capacity building may focus on the ability of statistical agencies to collect,

process, and disseminate data as well as the ability of researchers to analyze it.79 Capacity building

initiatives to make awareness-raising efforts more effective include outreach and training of

journalists in the accuracy of their coverage and their interaction with child laborers to ensure

respect for the children.80 Finally, capacity building efforts may bring together the many actors who

have different roles to play in addressing the worst forms of child labor — for example, through

seminars and other meetings — to pursue more unified action.81 Among others, these actors can

include government agencies, NGOs, trade unions, employer organizations, and religious

organizations.

Capacity building efforts may help facilitate the ability to implement a wide range of

strategies. As such, the effectiveness of capacity building lies in its contribution to overcoming the

feasibility concerns raised in the context of various alternative or complementary strategies.

G. Implications for Implementing Strategies

This chapter discussed some strategies that have been used to eliminate the worst forms of

child labor. In practice, no single strategy has been identified as the best method of eliminating the

worst forms. In fact, the ILO and other practitioners have found that a multifaceted national plan of

action, normally comprised of a mix of strategies and related efforts, is required to remove children

from the worst forms, and to prevent others from entering; examples of these are discussed in

Chapter 3. Nonetheless, the identification of individual strategies is important to the design of child

labor programs.

77 International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour, 110.

78 U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor, 49-

51.

79 International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour, 61-66.

80 See, e.g., the discussion of Costa Rica in the next section.

81 International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour, 98. See also ILO-IPEC, Good Practices in Action Against

Child Labour, 74-75.
28

While the academic literature on child labor may seem overly abstract, it does offer some

lessons that are relevant to the development of policy. A general lesson from the discussions of

strategies is that some strategies cannot be implemented in isolation of others. In implementing any

strategy, careful consideration must be given to the circumstances under which children work,

including the type of work they perform, what were their routes of entry, what are the consequences

of the work, and what alternatives are available to them and their families. These factors must be

borne in mind when selecting the appropriate mix of strategies to apply so that, when implemented,

children will not only be removed from the worst forms but also enjoy a higher quality of life. The

application of legal strategies illustrates this point. To the extent that legal strategies affect the

demand for children in the worst forms, laws and regulations that punish or fine those who exploit

children are inherently valuable. However, some children may use the income from the worst forms

of child labor to cover basic needs and, therefore, must be provided with a better set of alternatives

so that once they leave the worst forms their basic needs can be met. In addition, some children in

the worst forms may be separated from their families and support network. This group of children

will require assistance and protection, including food, shelter, and health care, while they are in the

process of being reunited with their families, while foster families are located, or while existent

families in need are made less vulnerable to exploitation.

The participation of children in the worst forms may also be endemic of larger issues.

Strategies to eliminate the worst forms may need to be decided in concert with broader social and

economic policies. Many children who are found in the worst forms come from poor families;

therefore, policies that address poverty and productivity should not only improve the quality of life

but also reduce child labor in the long term. Policies that address discrimination with regard to

gender, ethnicity, or caste in schooling and in adult access to employment may also be needed in

some countries.

Some children may enter the worst forms, and child labor generally, because of the limited

and bleak alternatives available to them; in this case there is a need to develop policies that expand

the choice set open to families and their children. When paired with an income maintenance

program, improvements in the accessibility and quality of schooling will give parents the incentive

to and option of sending their children to school. The effects of a better educated population are

likely to have positive spillover effects for the next generation of children. That is, investing in the

education of children today will produce a population of better educated adults in the future, who

are likely to earn higher incomes and therefore feel less pressure to send their own children into

work. It should be noted that an income maintenance program need not take solely the form of an

income subsidy. Investing in a program to enhance the skills and productivity of adult workers may

help to reduce families’ dependence on child labor income and reduce the need for income

subsidies in the long term.

Countries with serious child labor problems often exhibit low per capita income levels and

have a substantial proportion of the population living below the poverty line. Faced with limited

resources and the fact that implementing strategies to eliminate the worst forms of child labor can

be costly, these countries will need to assess which strategies are the most cost-effective. But this

type of assessment is difficult to make for several reasons. In most cases, it is not difficult for a

single organization to catalog the costs of running a particular program. However, such cost

assessments are much more difficult when a national program implementing a mix of strategies to
29

eliminate the worst forms of child labor is conducted as a collective effort between several different

organizations, including government agencies (e.g., labor ministries, education ministries, social

services, and law enforcement), international organizations (e.g., the International Labor

Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank), and international, national, and local nongovernmental organizations. Some of these organizations implement projects that directly target the

worst forms, or a particular worst form, in a given region, country, city, or neighborhood. Others

run programs that may reach a broader target group (for example, improvement of the educational

system by a country’s educational ministry will benefit non-working children as well as those

children who may working). Therefore it may be difficult for the organizations that contribute to the

elimination of the worst forms to accurately describe the effectiveness of their operations, since the

amount of funds that are dedicated solely to eliminating the worst forms cannot be determined with

precision. Furthermore, it may not even be possible for organizations that concentrate exclusively

on the worst forms of child labor to assess the cost-effectiveness of their projects, since some

aspects of their initiatives may be very difficult to quantify. Finally, there is the element of timing to

consider. The costs of running a particular project may be known at any one point in time, but the

complete elimination of the worst forms of child labor usually is a gradual process. It may take

years to observe the full effects of a project, or even to collect enough data to project the expected

effect.

Children are found working in the worst forms in all parts of the world, but the prevalence

and types of worst forms are not distributed uniformly. These variations not only exist between

countries, but also within a given country, e.g., between rural and urban areas. How children come

to work in the worst forms will be affected by the resources available to families, the demand for

child workers, and cultural and social practices. These factors will in turn affect the relative success

of approaches taken to combat child labor. Program cost structures are also likely to be affected, for

example, by the political situation, the organization of the labor ministry, and social and cultural

customs in a country.

While a comprehensive and accurate study of the cost effectiveness of programs that

address the worst forms may be difficult, certain aspects of this exercise may be more accessible to

enumeration or quantification. At the time that this report was drafted, the ILO was in the process

of conducting an analysis of some of the costs and benefits associated with the elimination of child

labor in general and the cost effectiveness of the child labor programs carried out by its

International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC). To assess some of the benefits and

costs associated with the elimination of child labor, the ILO study is attempting to measure the

economic costs of universal education in lieu of child labor, the cost of intervention programs to

eliminate child labor, the income brought to families by children’s labor, and the social benefits of

universal education in terms of increased earning power and a healthier population.

This chapter has presented an analysis of various strategies aimed at eliminating the worst

forms of child labor. While this discussion has provided some policy guidance from an analytical

perspective, it will also be useful to see how these strategies have been applied in real-world

situations. Chapter 3 presents, as examples, three projects that helped children working in, or at risk

of entering, the commercial sex sector (i.e., prostitution and pornography).
31

A. Overview

To illustrate how various strategies to eliminate the worst forms of child labor have actually

been implemented, action programs are considered that were implemented in Nicaragua, Costa

Rica, and Nepal and use different mixes of the various strategies discussed in the previous chapter.

In particular, this chapter looks at projects aimed at the elimination of one of the worst forms of

child labor, work in the commercial sex sector (i.e., prostitution and pornography).82 The aim is to

provide examples of actual projects and to illustrate the complexity within and across projects. This

analysis reveals that the complexity within a project takes the form of determining which or how

many individual strategies may need to be pursued, and across projects, the fact that no two projects

employ precisely the same set of strategies or employ the strategies in the same way.

The projects that are discussed in this chapter were executed by the ILO with financial

contributions from the U.S. Department of Labor. They were carried out by the ILO in

collaboration with the countries’ national and local governments as well as non-government

organizations — a method of operation common to most ILO funded projects. Forming such an

alliance helps to promote ownership of the project by the country and sustainability of the initiative.

Figures for the number of children directly affected by the projects and the cost for each

project are provided in the descriptions below. From these, it is possible to calculate a per-capita

cost for each project. Similarly, per-capita costs could be calculated for other projects; however, it is

not likely that these calculations could be used with confidence to derive estimates of the per-capita

cost of eliminating the worst forms of child labor either entirely or within different contexts.

For a variety of reasons, existing projects are not likely to be representative of the scope of

activities needed to eliminate completely the worst forms of child labor. For example, there is no

way of knowing whether the children helped in one project are representative of all children in the

worst forms. A recent assessment of selected IPEC projects aimed at child labor over the last 10

years established that project costs vary systematically by geographic region, type of child labor

addressed, and whether the targeted children are male or female.83 This means that reliable

estimates of the incidence of children in the worst forms, broken down by region, type of worst

form, or gender, would be needed to make accurate overall cost estimates. However, such estimates

are currently unavailable.

In addition, activities carried out in existing projects may not be representative of the type of

activities that will need to be carried out to help children still in or at risk of entry into the worst

forms. For example, each of the projects described below contains awareness raising or capacity

III. STRATEGIES IN ACTION: EXAMPLES OF PROJECTS FROM THE

COMMERCIAL SEX SECTOR

82 A discussion of projects spanning each of the worst forms can be found in International Labor Office, A Future

Without Child Labour, Part II.

83 ILO-IPEC, The Costs and Effectiveness of Programmes to Prevent or End Child Labour—Review of the ILO-IPEC

Programme Interventions (Geneva, ILO, forthcoming).
32

building components. The success of these components should not be limited to the affect they have

on the children helped directly by the project, but should also be seen in terms of making future

efforts to remove more children from sexual exploitation in each of the three countries easier and

thus less expensive. Accordingly, these project elements generated start up costs that tend to inflate

the cost of helping the children affected directly by the project, and therefore make these costs an

inaccurate basis for making estimates of the costs of helping other children in similar situations.

Further, the children directly affected by these projects were found in areas where there was

some fairly extensive pre-existing information to identify the children to be targeted. As previously

mentioned in Chapter 2, a large part of the task in helping children in the worst forms is finding

them. In other words, the fact that the populations in these projects were relatively easy to identify

is the exception not the rule. Thus, the costs of identifying children in the worst forms would tend

to be much more than they were in these projects. Accordingly, this suggests that the costs of these

projects may be too low to serve as a basis for accurately estimating overall costs.

The factors related to implementation costs discussed here suggest that adjustments would

need to be made to the cost figures associated with these projects if they were to be used to estimate

the overall costs of eliminating the worst forms of child labor. However, this discussion also

suggests that it is not possible at present to know how large these adjustments should be, or whether

the factors suggesting upward adjustment would dominate those suggesting downward adjustment.

Accordingly, the cost figures presented below may be considered to be illustrative of costs of

projects carried out under very similar conditions, but should not be construed to be representative

of costs necessary to address the worst forms of child labor more generally.

B. The Bus Station in León, Nicaragua84

In the fall of 1998, the ILO executed a project in Nicaragua titled “The Elimination of Child

Labor and Risk of Sexual Exploitation of Girls and Teenagers in the Bus Station of León”. The lead

implementing organization was Asociación Mary Barreda (AMB), a non-governmental

organization that provides counseling and occupational training to girls at risk for sexual

exploitation, and attempts to reintegrate them into a family setting. This project was coordinated

with the Nicaraguan Commission for Children’s Welfare.

The Municipality of León was in dire social and economic circumstances at the time of this

project. People living in the area surrounding the León bus station were living in poverty, and

informal commerce (e.g., unlicensed vending, day work) had become the sole source of income for

many families. The bus terminal in León was selected as a focal point because it was the preferred

center of informal trade and a significant presence of child vendors and child beggars had been

observed there. Children in the bus terminal were found selling merchandise with their mothers;

selling goods for middlemen for a commission; and, also begging for money. Many of the girls in

84 Information in regard to this project was found in ILO-IPEC, Elimination of Child Labor and Risk of Sexual

Exploitation in Girls and Teenagers at the Bus Terminal of the Municipality of León, Technical Progress Report,

(Geneva: June 15, 2001).
33

the target group had been victims of harassment, aggression, and sexual abuse while involved in

economic activities at the bus terminal. Several of the girls were dependent on income from

commercial sex work for survival.

The action program implemented by AMB included awareness raising and social mobilization

of key actors in and around the León bus station, poverty reduction at the family level, and

rehabilitation and education for the girls and their families.

• Identification: AMB and ILO-IPEC staff identified the León bus station as a center for

informal economic activity and observed that a significant concentration of children were

working there. In addition to studying the activities at the bus station, project workers

visited the homes of families participating in the project to observe the children’s living

conditions.

• Awareness Raising and Social Mobilization: Project staff met with authorities and

potential partners including the mayor’s office, the national police, transportation

cooperatives, NGOs, health center and telecommunications offices, and the local

cooperative of shoe shiners. The purpose was to coordinate action and educate the

institutions on project activities and issues related to the commercial sexual exploitation of

minors. In addition, seminars were conducted for teachers to help them understand the

physical and mental consequences of child commercial sexual exploitation, and their role in

helping the children.85

• Poverty alleviation at the family level: To improve their economic situation, families

participating in the project were given micro-credit loans to make improvements to an

existing business or start a new business. Beneficiary families received training on

alternative income generating activities, the basics of marketing, and credit management.

• Rehabilitation of the girls involved: A great deal of attention was given to the physical and

emotional health of the girls. AMB worked with the Health Ministry to provide the girls

with free medical attention, and case workers routinely followed up on their physical and

psychological health. Girls received individual emotional counseling, and self-help groups

were formed with a focus on increasing girls’ self-esteem, self-awareness, and roles in the

family.86 Workshops were offered on the development of social skills, and it was observed

that the girls became more sociable and less aggressive over the course of the program. The

girls were encouraged to participate in recreational activities; girls took part in kickball,

dance, painting, and theater.87 In addition to these activities, a multi-purpose room was

created to provide girls with a constructive and healthy place for them to spend free time.

• Rehabilitation of the affected families: A common family structure in León is a single

mother with children living in extreme poverty. Substance abuse and violence at home are

85 ILO-IPEC, Elimination of Child Labor at the Bus Terminal of the Municipality of León, Technical Progress Report.

86 Project staff found that the girls needed care for suicide, depression, and self-destructive behavior.

87 ILO-IPEC, Elimination of Child Labor at the Bus Terminal of the Municipality of León, Technical Progress Report.
34

prevalent. Parents of the children working in the León bus station often do not have a

healthy model to follow in raising their children. To improve the dynamics within the

family, care workers made regular home visits, to gain understanding of the girls’ home life

and to develop an individualized assistance plan for each household. A majority of the

parents gradually become involved in the project and in their daughters’ education.

• Education: At the conception of the project, it was intended that the girls would receive

vocational training. However, the low level of basic education among participants precluded

this and efforts were focused on literacy training. The project placed the majority of the girls

into formal schooling. The few who were illiterate at the beginning of the program were

given literacy training and subsequently placed in formal education. All girls received after

school tutoring and instruction in personal care. The project workers negotiated with school

directors to have school fees waived, and acted to sensitize schools to the problem of

commercial sexual exploitation. All girls received school supplies packages twice a year to

motivate them to attend and do well at school.

The U.S. Department of Labor contribution to this project was $148,940. One hundred and

sixty girls were identified as potential participants in the project, of which 127 were included in the

project.88 Forty-nine girls were removed completely from commercial sexual exploitation work,

and 59 girls working in other, and more appropriate, activities have decreased their workloads and

are attending school. All of the girls were integrated into the education system and received school

supplies twice a year. Eighty girls received psychological counseling, and a medical record was

created for each girl identified as a potential participant. Sixteen workshops on health and personal

hygiene and 460 workshops on social interaction were organized for the girls. Twenty-four

workshops that focused on psychosocial themes were conducted for the families of the girls in the

project. Seventy-three families with a child in the project were given loans to fund incomegenerating activities. In addition, several events to involve and educate the local community were

organized.

In carrying out this project, the ILO found that more time was needed than expected to

convince the participants’ parents of the merits of the program.89 For example, many parents did not

understand the importance of extracurricular activities or preventative health care. There was also

some difficulty getting the parents to participate in the micro-credit loans because the adults were

afraid that the projects would fail. In addition, the adults were more accustomed to making informal

borrowing arrangements with local lenders and were not comfortable with the more formal

requirements of the program’s credit fund. Training sessions on alternative economic opportunities,

marketing, and credit management were designed and offered in response to these fears.

88 Nineteen girls out of the 127 dropped out of the project before it was completed.

89 ILO-IPEC, Elimination of Child Labor at the Bus Terminal of the Municipality of León, Technical Progress Report.

90 Ibid.

The ILO concluded that in order for such a project to achieve national coverage, intervention

and prevention strategies would have to be adopted and implemented by public institutions. At the

local level, it was found that the training of schoolteachers and modifying cultural values that

perpetuated sexual exploitation and discouraged schooling could improve sustainability.90
35

91 Information for this case study was taken from ILO-IPEC, Combating Child Prostitution in Costa Rica, Project

Document Summary Outline (Draft) (Geneva: 1998) and ILO-IPEC, Contributing to the elimination of Commercial

Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents in San José, Final Technical Progress Report (Geneva: June 15, 2001).

92 ILO-IPEC, Contributing to the elimination of Commercial Sexual Exploitation in San José, Final Technical Progress

Report.

93 FUNDESIDA is a non-governmental organization in Costa Rica that works in HIV/AIDS prevention and provides

social, psychological and medical services to women and girls engaged in commercial sex work.

94 Examples of the medical care services are pregnancy control, gynecological exams, pregnancy tests, identification of

sexual transmitted infections, laboratory test including HIV tests, and vaccinations against Hepatitis B. See ILO-IPEC,

Contribution to the Elimination of Commercial Sexual Exploitation in San José, Final Technical Progress Report.

C. Combating Child Prostitution in San José, Costa Rica91

The ILO supported a project to eliminate prostitution by girls in Costa Rica from October

1998 to July 2001. The broad objective of the project was to contribute to the elimination of the

commercial sexual exploitation of girls and adolescents in four districts of San José, with the

majority of resources applied to the prevention, withdrawal, and rehabilitation of child prostitutes.92

The Fundación para el Desarrollo de la Lucha contra el Sida [Foundation for the Development of

the Fight Against AIDS] (FUNDESIDA) was the lead agency in this project with support from

Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (National Institute for Children) and other organizations.93

At the time of program design, it was estimated that more than 2,000 children were engaged

in prostitution in San José. The prevalence of prostitution was linked to poverty, rural-urban

migration, discrimination against girls, and a large population of street children. In addition, a rise

in sex tourism in Costa Rica had increased the demand for young persons in commercial sexual

work. A tolerance among Costa Rican families of children’s participation in prostitution contributed

to the problem.

This particular project focused on offering outreach and services to street children in San

José. Specifically, the goals were to prevent at-risk children from entering prostitution and to

remove and rehabilitate children already engaged in prostitution. The program adopted to achieve

these goals included the identification of children and an assessment of their circumstances; the

provision of education; physical, social, and emotional rehabilitation; raising public awareness; and

capacity building among key groups needed for making the project successful. To address the

increase of sex tourism in San José, project workers found it was necessary to educate the local

police force about the problem of commercial sexual exploitation of children.

• Identification: FUNDESIDA and ILO-IPEC staff identified sexually exploited children and

at-risk children. Project workers interviewed children in the area to gain an understanding of

the conditions, the entry routes into child prostitution, and the conditions under which it was

practiced.

• Rehabilitation: Rescued children were given medical attention and information on how to

prevent sexually transmitted disease.94 Rescued children were also engaged in recreational

activities to promote their normal development. Workshops on sexuality, HIV/AIDS,

interpersonal relationship, and human rights were conducted for identified girls and their

families. The workshops were intended to educate the girls and to help them to develop
36

appropriate social skills. Project workers noticed that the workshops were not enough and

the children needed more concentrated treatment to alleviate the emotional trauma of sexual

abuse. As a result, the children were given individual and group therapy.

• Education and Poverty Alleviation: FUNDESIDA collaborated with the Ministry of

Education to reintegrate the children into schools. The Institute for Social Help provided

economic support for children who attended school, and university students volunteered to

help the girls with their schoolwork. In addition, literacy instruction and vocational training

were offered to the girls so that they could develop work skills and thereby expand the set of

economic opportunities available to them.

• Awareness Raising: FUNDESIDA worked with the National Commission Against the

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, which is composed of more

than 40 public and private institutions that span the entire country.95 Public conferences,

workshops, and activities were organized, and informational materials were created in

consultation with relevant organizations. The project developed an award-winning public

service announcement that was aired on Costa Rican television.

• Capacity Building Among Journalists: To dispatch the message to a broader audience,

FUNDESIDA invested in training workshops for journalists, and found that training

journalists could have positive spillover effects. As a result of the training, the journalists

published more featured articles in their newspapers on child prostitution that highlighted

the effects on children in a sympathetic and factual manner.

• Capacity Building in the Legal System: To promote the legal and human rights of at-risk

and prostituted girls, FUNDESIDA trained police officers on victims’ rights and how to

treat sexually exploited children. They also collaborated with the police and the Judicial

Investigation Agency to specify the most effective procedures for presenting evidence of

exploitation in court proceedings.96

The U.S. Department of Labor contribution to this project was $160,700. Two hundred and

twelve girls were included in the project. One hundred and twenty seven girls took part in education

programs, and all girls received medical services. Eighteen information workshops were held for

the girls and their families, and meals were offered to the girls during the workshops. Eight

recreational trips (4 each year) were organized. A public conference and workshop were organized,

and informational materials on commercial sexual exploitation were produced (including a variety

of documents, pamphlets, posters, training modules, and a video). A manual for training police

officers was also developed.

Upon evaluation of the project, the ILO found that the sustainability of the project would

depend on the ability of the Costa Rican government to establish a national policy and to define and

95 ILO-IPEC, Contribution to the Elimination of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents in San

José, Technical Progress Reports #2T/ICLP Response, July-December 2000.

96 ILO-IPEC, Contribution to the Elimination of Commercial Sexual Exploitation in San José, Final Technical Progress

Report.
37

supply the necessary protection and services to at-risk and affected children. They identified a need

to balance the treatment of victims’ immediate needs with government capacity building to address

the problem, particularly in preventing the entry of children into prostitution. A need was identified

to collaborate with national public institutions that have the authority to intervene, for example, in

cases of domestic violence against children and child abandonment.

D. Addressing the Trafficking and Prostitution of Girls in Nepal

The ILO implemented a project to address the trafficking and prostitution of girls in Nepal,

in collaboration with the Nepalese Ministry of Women and Social Affairs and Maiti Nepal, a nongovernmental organization, in 1997.97 The objective of this project was to strengthen the capacity

of the Nepalese government and relevant non-governmental organizations to develop policies and

programs to fight child trafficking at the local and national levels. A two-part action plan was

developed. The first part developed the country’s institutional framework, with a concentration on

the role of the government. In the second part, direct support was provided to at-risk and affected

girls on the local level by Maiti Nepal.98

While the estimates vary, most observers felt that a significant number of girls were being

trafficked from Nepal to brothels in India. A network of local NGOs, including ABC Nepal, Child

Workers in Nepal (CWIN), 99 and Maiti Nepal, and other organizations had established a

knowledge base on trafficking and prostitution. Their work permitted the identification of areas

prone to trafficking, patterns of recruitment, and the characteristics of trafficked children, and

ultimately resulted in the recognition of the trafficking and prostitution of girls as a persistent and

significant problem.

Because the recruitment and trafficking of girls is widespread in Nepal, the scope for the

project was the entire country, with special attention given to particular localities and territories. A

widespread public interest, an established network of concerned organizations, and a commitment

from the government to address child trafficking and prostitution provided an environment

conducive to a successful national program. Collaborating institutions included six other

government ministries, the Nepal Police Academy, UNICEF, international aid agencies, and

international and local NGOs.

The ILO was aware that the long-term sustainability of a national project to combat child

trafficking in Nepal was dependent upon the abilities of the national and local governments to plan

and implement a policy. One of the features that made Nepal an attractive choice is that the

Nepalese government had already included the protection of children as a responsibility of several

government agencies. As a preventative and rehabilitative measure, the Ministry of Labor had

97 Information on this project comes from ILO-IPEC, Setting national strategies for the elimination of girls’ trafficking

and commercial sexual exploitation of children in Nepal, Technical Progress Report (Geneva: May 2000). See also

ILO-IPEC, Setting national strategies for the elimination of girls’ trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of

children in Nepal, Project Document (Geneva: 1997).

98 See footnote 51 for information on Maiti Nepal or see the Maiti Nepal website at http://www.maitinepal.org.

99 For further information see the CWIN website at http://www.cwin-nepal.org.
38

developed a program to improve the work skills, and therefore future vocational opportunities, for

girls. The police throughout Nepal had worked with NGOs to raise awareness on trafficking,

prostitution, and HIV/AIDS. The charge of assisting trafficked and prostituted children was

assigned to the Ministry of Women and Social Welfare (MWSW),100 and they were delegated the

primary responsible agency for the project. Along with the independent efforts of concerned

groups, the pre-existing commitment of the Nepalese government made a national program

achievable.

The strategies implemented in the first part of the program included capacity building at the

local and national levels; identification and situation assessment; and legal work.

• Capacity Building: In response to the need for a national plan of cooperation, the MWSW

set up a National Task Force, made up of representatives from relevant government

agencies, NGOs, and international organizations, to create guidelines and coordinate

activities on the country level. District Task Forces (DTF) were set up to guide efforts

against child trafficking on the district level. Action plans were created at four district

planning workshops to be used in the definition of district level programs of action. The

MWSW also established a fund to finance the rescue and rehabilitation of the victims of

child trafficking.

• Identification and Assessment: Within the MWSW, a documentation center was

established to collect and disseminate information on child trafficking. The MWSW staff

and members of the DTFs were trained and sensitized on child trafficking issues. Research

on the trafficking in children for commercial sexual exploitation in the country was

conducted, and reports were developed and issued on rescue, rehabilitation, and

reintegration activities; the effect of awareness raising and advocacy programs; and a

situational analysis on Deuki’s and their children.101

• Legal: A discussion paper on the law and enforcement system against trafficking and sexual

exploitation was prepared and, in conjunction with Ministry of Law and Justice, legislation

against trafficking in women and children in Nepal was developed for submission to the

National Parliament. A national plan of action (NPA) was prepared and approved by the

Government of Nepal. The intervention activities identified under the NPA included policy,

research, institutional development, legislation and enforcement, advocacy and

sensitization, networking and social mobilization, health, education, income, employment,

rescue, reintegration of victims of trafficking, but the implementation of this plan was not

within the scope of the ILO-sponsored project.

100 The Ministry of Women and Social Welfare (MWSW) was renamed the Ministry of Women, Children and Social

Welfare (MWCSW) in 1998.

101 Under the traditional Deuki system in Nepal, girls are dedicated to a god or goddess. These girls are not permitted to

marry, and many have been observed to engage in prostitution as a source of income. See UN High Commission on

Human Rights, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (Ms.

Ofelia Calcetas-Santos), 53 sess. (Geneva: March-April 1997), para 34; available from: http://www.hri.ca/

fortherecord1997/documentation/commission/e-cn4-1997-95.htm.
39

The focus of the program’s second component was on direct action at the community level.

The implementing NGO, Maiti Nepal, already provided protection and rehabilitation to trafficked

women and girls and was also running three temporary shelter homes for girls in border towns that

are used as transit routes by traffickers for entering India.102 Girls who are intercepted along the

trafficking routes by law enforcement officials are delivered to the Maiti Nepal houses. During their

stay, the girls are given shelter, health care, counseling and assistance in finding guardians or

parents. These efforts were continued in this component and extended to include awareness raising

activities.

• Awareness Raising: Maiti Nepal carried out awareness raising activities in areas where a

high risk of trafficking and recruitment had been identified. Awareness raising efforts

targeted 30 villages in three districts (Kathmandu, Sindhupalchok, and Nuwakot) in the

vicinity of the Maiti Prevention Camp at Chisapani. These villages were sensitized on

trafficking of girls for commercial sexual exploitation and the public was mobilized against

trafficking. Carpet factory owners and the girls working in their factories in the Nepalese

Kathmandu and Lalitpur Districts were informed that the factories had been used in

trafficking girls away for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.

• Rehabilitation: Rescued girls were given basic health care and shelter at the Maiti Nepal’s

prevention camp in Chispani, Nuwakot, where each girl remained for a period of six

months.

• Education: At the rehabilitation center, girls were provided with non-formal education,

vocational training, and assistance in establishing small businesses to supply them with an

alternative to seeking employment from traffickers.

The U.S. Department of Labor contribution to this project was $170,101, of which $89,000 was

dedicated to strengthening the Nepalese government’s capacity to address child trafficking and

$24,777 to the direct action implemented by Maiti Nepal. The action program implemented by

MWSW resulted in the preparation of a NPA; the development of an institutional mechanism to

address child trafficking at the local and national levels, i.e., the national and district task forces; the

establishment of an emergency rescue fund; and the preparation of legislation against child

trafficking. In addition, the MWSW set up a document center on child trafficking and the MWSW

staff received sensitivity training. As a result of the Maiti Nepal’s activities, 30 communities and 23

carpet factory owners were involved in awareness raising activities. One hundred and twenty girls

who were identified as being at-risk of being trafficked received rehabilitative services and

vocational training. Eighteen girls were given sewing machines; 5 joined the police force; and 5

were employed by Maiti Nepal.

The lessons to be drawn from the case of Nepal are that advocacy, awareness raising

activities, and collaboration between non-governmental organizations and government agencies can

be effective in making child trafficking a prominent policy issue. This project built upon the

knowledge and activities of many NGOs and the Nepalese government and provided a coordinative

102 See footnote 51 for more information on Maiti Nepal projects.
40

structure to the efforts. The creation of task forces and a NPA were among the outputs of this

project. While pleased with these outputs, the ILO recognizes that the district task forces are still

weak, and the NPA will not be effective unless it is successfully implemented.103 Capacity building

activities may facilitate the elimination of child trafficking and prostitution, but they must be joined

with available resources to implement activities for the goal of elimination of this worst form of

child labor to be achieved.

E. Concluding Remarks

From the analysis contained in this report, two broad inferences can be made. First, ILO

member countries have demonstrated their belief that the social benefits of eliminating the worst

forms of child labor outweigh the costs by their unanimous adoption of ILO Convention 182. The

rapid ratification of ILO Convention 182 by individual ILO member countries also signals that an

international consensus is emerging for national governments to take actions to eliminate the worst

forms of child labor. The second conclusion relates to the actions that governments should take to

eliminate the worst forms. These actions will not necessarily be the same for every country. While it

is possible to identify general strategy areas, e.g., legal, education, and so forth, within a each

strategy area, the actual form of the strategy (or set of strategies) used in one instance can differ

greatly from another in different contexts. Also, not all strategies may necessarily contribute to

every project designed to address a worst forms situation. Examples of projects from three

countries to eliminate one worst form of child labor illustrated that the mix of strategies

implemented will depend on the situation of the affected children and the scope of the project.

103 ILO-IPEC, Setting national strategies for the elimination of girls’ trafficking in Nepal, Technical Progress Report.
41

A. Overview

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) has been

reporting on international child labor issues since 1993. Previous volumes in the series have

examined a variety of topics, including the use of child labor in items imported into the United

States, forced and bonded labor, codes of conduct in the apparel industry, consumer labels, efforts

to eliminate child labor, and economic considerations. This appendix provides some general

background information and context on international child labor issues.

B. What is Child Labor?

Child labor is recognized today as a problem that affects countries around the world. The

ILO estimated that there were at least 211 million economically active children between the ages of

5 and 14 years in the world in the year 2000.104

Not all work performed by children is considered harmful, hazardous, or exploitative. In this

and previous ILAB reports, the term “child labor” generally refers to work performed by persons

under the age of 15, in agreement with the standard set forth in Article 2 of ILO Convention 138 on

Minimum Age for Employment.105 Child labor does not usually refer to performing light work after

school, participation in legitimate apprenticeship programs, or work on family or small-holdings

producing for local consumption and not regularly employing hired workers. Rather, the child labor

of concern is work that prevents children from attending and participating effectively in school or

that is performed by children under hazardous conditions that place their healthy physical,

intellectual and moral development at risk.

The term “worst forms of child labor,” as used in this report, is intended to coincide with the

definition given in ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor and related ILO

Recommendation 190.106 In the case of children engaged in activities considered among the “worst

forms of child labor,” the term “child labor” applies to persons up to the age of 18, in agreement

with the standard set forth in the Convention.

IV. APPENDIX: BACKGROUND ON CHILD LABOR

104 See International Labor Office, A Future Without Child Labour (Geneva: 2002),15-20; and International Labor

Office, Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour (Geneva: 2002).

105 Article 2 of ILO Convention 138 permits countries “whose economy and educational facilities are insufficiently

developed” to initially specify a minimum working age of 14 (rather than 15), and reduce from 13 to 12 years the

minimum age for light work. Article 7 of the Convention defines “light work” as work that is not likely to harm a

child’s health or development, or prejudice his or her attendance at school. Article 3 of the Convention prohibits all

children under the age of 18 from undertaking hazardous work—that is, work that is likely to jeopardize their health,

safety, or morals. For the full text of ILO Convention 138, see ILOLEX Database on International Labor Standards

[cited October 17, 2002]; available from: http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C138.

106 For the full text of ILO Convention 182, see http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/scripts/convde.pl?C182; for the full text of ILO

Recommendation 190, see http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/scripts/convde.pl?R190.
42

C. Why do Children Work?

Child labor is generally the result of a combination of factors. The most frequently cited

cause, however, is poverty. Children often work to provide for themselves or to help their families

meet basic needs such as food and shelter. Families may suffer financial hardship because of adult

unemployment, underemployment, low prevailing adult wages, or the death, illness, or injury of a

parent or guardian. Child labor perpetuates poverty since children who work in lieu of going to

school are generally more likely to earn a lower income in the future.107

An increase in the incidence of child labor may also be associated with the impact of a

domestic or regional pandemic or economic shock. For example, in Africa, the rapid spread of HIV/

AIDS has undermined the ability of many extended families to provide for children, leading to a

rise in the number of child-headed households and of children engaged in various forms of child

labor.108 The East Asian financial crisis, which began as a currency crisis in 1997, created economic

hardship and led to a rise in adult unemployment, leaving many households less able to provide for

their children.109 Natural disasters, such as Hurricane Mitch, which struck Central America in 1998,

can also have a severe impact on households, exacerbating the child labor situation in a country or

region.

Many children also work because they lack viable alternatives. Globally, an estimated 113

million children do not have access to primary education.110 Some lack access because schools are

not available or are located too far from their homes. Costs of schooling that have to paid by the

family—such as school fees or the cost of textbooks or required uniforms—can also place

education beyond the reach of children from poor families.

Cultural factors may also restrict some children’s access to schooling.111 For example, in

areas where girls are traditionally considered essential to the running of a household, parents may

be reluctant to send their daughters to school. Parents may also see little value in investing in a

daughter’s education since they expect her to leave the family once she marries. Other family

circumstances may make access to school particularly difficult for children. For example, children

107 See U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor,

41-44.

108 For a general discussion, see Child Workers in the Shadow of AIDS: Listening to the Children (Nairobi, Kenya:

UNICEF Eastern and Southern Regional Office, June 2001).

109The East Asian Crisis began in mid-1997 as a currency crisis in Thailand, but its impact was also felt in countries

such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and the Republic of Korea. While debate continues about what kind of

impact the crisis had on child labor in the region, some reports suggest that the child labor rose as a result of the crisis.

See Human Development Report of Thailand 1999 (Bangkok: United Nations Development Program, 1999), 142-43.

110 See figures from the EFA 2000 Assessments as cited in UNESCO, Education for All, Dakar Framework for Action,

Education for All: Meeting our Collective Commitments, text adopted by delegates to the World Education Forum

(Dakar, Senegal, April 2000) [cited October 17, 2002]; available from http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed_for_all/

dakfram_eng.shtml.

111 See, for example, U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of

Child Labor, and U.S. Department of Labor, Advancing the Campaign Against Child Labor, Efforts at the Country

Level (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor, 2002).
43

of migrant workers face unique obstacles to schooling because their families move frequently in

search of seasonal work.112

Another factor contributing to child labor is the demand for children’s work. Some

employers may favor children for certain kinds of work—such as maneuvering through small mine

spaces or harvesting plants that are low to the ground—because of their small size.113 In some cases

of the worst forms of child labor, children may be sought out because they are children, for

example, in the case of child pornography, prostitution, or sex tourism.

D. What Kinds of Work do Children Do?

Children engage in many types of work and are employed in many sectors.114 While child

labor occurs in both urban and rural areas, evidence suggests that labor force participation rates for

children are much higher in rural areas, where most children work in agriculture.115

In agriculture, children often work alongside their parents on commercial farms and

plantations or in subsistence agriculture. In many cases, systems of pay, such as piece work in

harvesting crops, encourage parents to rely on the labor of their children to help increase family

income. Children working in agriculture face many hazards. They are exposed to the elements, risk

bites from snakes and insects, and in many instances, work without protective gear while wielding

dangerous tools such as machetes and working in close proximity to harmful pesticides.116

Children are also employed in manufacturing, mining, quarrying, and services (e.g. in

restaurants and hotels, and in wholesale and retail trades). In manufacturing, children are employed

in making a variety of goods, including shoes, sporting goods, carpets, surgical instruments,

bidis,

117 matchsticks, glass bangles, and fireworks. They often work long hours for little pay and

under hazardous conditions. Many children work without any sort of protective clothing or gear, in

workplaces that are poorly lit, inadequately ventilated, and generally unsafe.118 Most children work

112 For a discussion of the link between child labor and education, see ILO-IPEC, Good Practices in Action Against

Child Labour, 69-70.

113Christiaan Grootaert and Ravi Kanbur, “Child Labour: An Economic Perspective,” International Labour Review 134

(2): 195-96 (1995).

114 See, for example, the following reports by the U.S. Department of Labor: By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume

I): The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Manufactured and Mined Imports (Washington, DC: USDOL/ILAB, 1994); By the

Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume II): The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Agricultural Imports and Forced and Bonded

Child Labor (Washington, DC: USDOL/ILAB, 1995); Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume V): Efforts to Eliminate

Child Labor; and Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor.

115 Survey evidence suggests that, on average, children in rural areas are twice as likely to participate in economic

activities than children in urban areas. See Kebebew Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Hazardous Child

Labour in Brief (Geneva: ILO, April 1998) at Section II [cited October 17, 2002]; available from: http://www.ilo.org/

public/english/standards/ipec/simpoc/stats/child/stats.htm.

116 See Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Valentina Forastieri, Children at Work: Health and Safety Risks

(Geneva: International Labor Organization, 1997), 10.

117The term bidi refers to small, hand-rolled cigarettes made primarily in South Asia.

118 See Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children.
44

in the unregulated “informal sector,” which is generally beyond the reach of the protection afforded

by national laws on child labor.

Children work in mine shafts deep beneath the earth. They also break stones in quarries, fish

off deep-sea platforms, and scavenge in garbage dumps. In the service sector, children are exploited

as street vendors, porters, prostitutes, and domestic servants. Still, other children are exploited and

abused at the hands of criminals who use them to smuggle illicit goods, or they are trafficked for

use in various forms of exploitative labor.119

Child labor does not affect all children uniformly. While boys are more likely to be

employed in wage-earning jobs, girls work more often in the family home or as domestic servants

in the homes of others, often without pay. The nature of such work often results in girls being

undercounted in child labor statistics.120 Certain children may also face greater risks than others.

Working children under the age of 12 years and working girls have been identified as being among

the most vulnerable.121

E. How has the International Community Taken Action to Address Child

Labor?

In 1992, the International Labor Organization launched the International Program on the

Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) with the aim of working towards the progressive elimination of

child labor through strengthening countries’ capacity to address the problem and supporting a

movement to address child labor worldwide.122 Since its inception, membership in IPEC has grown

from 6 to 52 countries,123 and donor participation has grown from 1 country in 1991 to 22 countries

in 2002.124 The United States has contributed funds to support the International Labor

Organization’s International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO-IPEC) since 1995. As

of fiscal year 2002, the United States had contributed more than US $157 million to IPEC, making

it the program’s largest donor.

In addition to USDOL-funded child labor programs conducted by ILO-IPEC, the United

States has also funded child labor programs through the United States Agency for International

Development (USAID). These programs include activities intended to remove children from

119 See Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children. See also U.S. Department of Labor, Sweat and Toil of Children

(Volume V): Efforts to Eliminate Child Labor, 22-35, for a detailed discussion of the types of work children do and the

hazards they face in various sectors.

120 See Ashagrie, Statistics on Working Children. See also “Statistics: Revealing a Hidden Tragedy” ILO-IPEC/

SIMPOC [cited October 17, 2002]; available from: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/simpoc/stats/

4stt.htm.

121 “What is IPEC? IPEC at a Glance” ILO-IPEC [cited October 17, 2002]; available from: http://www.ilo.org/public/

english/standards/ipec/about/implementation/ipec.htm.

122 Ibid.

123 For a complete list of IPEC member countries, see ILO-IPEC, IPEC Action Against Child Labor: Highlights 2002,

(Geneva: 2002), 15.

124 For a full list of IPEC donor countries, see ILO-IPEC, IPEC Action Against Child Labor: Highlights 2002, (Geneva:

2002), 15.
45

abusive child labor and to develop educational alternatives for these children and others at risk of

abusive child labor.

The global campaign to address child labor has also involved the adoption of new

international instruments that seek to address the most serious forms of child exploitation. In June

1998 at the 86th International Labor Conference, delegates adopted the ILO Declaration on

Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.125 Among other things, the declaration calls for the

elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor and the effective abolition of child labor.126

One year later, in June 1999, delegates to the ILO’s 87th International Labor Conference

unanimously adopted ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. ILO Convention

182 built upon an earlier ILO convention, ILO Convention 138 on Minimum Age for Employment,

and addressed further the most exploitative and horrendous forms of child labor. ILO Convention

182 calls on ratifying countries to take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition

and elimination of the worst forms of child labor as a matter of urgency and to take time-bound

steps to ensure that children removed from the worst forms of child labor have access to basic

education, and where appropriate, vocational training.

On May 25, 2000, the United Nations General Assembly adopted two new optional

protocols to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).127 The Optional

Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict calls for countries party to the protocol

to “take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained

the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities” and “ensure that persons who have not

attained the age of 18 years are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces.”128 The CRC

Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography calls on

countries that are party to the protocol to prohibit the sale of children and their commercial sexual

exploitation through prostitution or pornography.129

In 2000, the United Nations General Assembly also adopted the Convention against

Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in

Persons, Especially Women and Children. The protocol aims to prevent and combat trafficking in

persons, especially women and children, and calls for protection and assistance for trafficking

125 For the full text of the declaration, see ILO In Focus Programme on Promoting the Declaration [cited October 17,

2002]; available from: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/decl/declaration/text/index.htm.

126 Declaration, Section 2.

127 Article 32 of this convention establishes the right of a child to be protected from economic exploitation and from

performing any work that is likely to be hazardous, interfere with his or her education, or is harmful to his or her health

or physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development.

128 For the full text, see http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/6/protocolchild.htm.

129Where sale is defined as “any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by any person or group for

remuneration or any other consideration,” child prostitution as “the use of a child in sexual activities for remuneration

or any other consideration,” and child pornography as “any representation, by whatever means, of a child in real or

simulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a children for primarily sexual purposes.”

For the full text, see http://www.unhchr.ch/html/ menu2/dopchild.htm.
46

130 According to the protocol, the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of a child for the purpose of

exploitation” shall be considered trafficking even if the circumstances did not involve “threat or use of force or other

forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception.” See Section I, Article 3, points c and d of the protocol. For the

full text of the protocol, see United Nations Crime and Justice Network [cited October 17, 2002]; available from: http://

www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/convention_%20traff_eng.pdf.

131 Ibid, Section II, Article 6, point 4.

132 Ibid, Section III, Article 9, point 4.

133 See U.S. Congress, Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, 106th Cong., 2d sess H.R. 3244 [cited October

17, 2002], available from: http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d106/d106laws.html.

134 For the full text, see http://www.unesco.org/education/efa/ed_for_all/dakfram_eng.shtml.

135 Ibid.

victims, and cooperation among ratifying states.130 The protocol calls for countries party to the

protocol, in applying its provisions, to take into account the “the age, gender and special needs of

victims of trafficking in persons, in particular the special needs of children, including appropriate

housing, education and care.”131 In addition, it calls for countries party to the protocol to “take or

strengthen measures, including through bilateral or multilateral cooperation, to alleviate the factors

that make persons, especially women and children, vulnerable to trafficking, such as poverty,

underdevelopment and lack of equal opportunity.”132

In October 2000, the United States enacted national legislation, the Victims of Trafficking

and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (H.R. 3244) to address the trafficking of persons for

exploitative labor. This new legislation aims to provide assistance and protection to trafficking

victims, with a special emphasis on women and children, both in the United States and abroad. The

act also calls for actions aimed at prevention, including programs intended to keep children,

especially girls, in elementary and secondary schools, and the development of educational curricula

regarding the dangers of trafficking.133

Initiatives that promote universal access to primary education for children complement the

campaign to eliminate child labor. In April 2000, participants at the World Education Forum in

Dakar reaffirmed the 1990 World Declaration Education for All initiative. Article 7 of the Dakar

Framework for Action calls for “ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in

difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free

and compulsory primary education of good quality.”134 The vision expressed in the Dakar

framework focused on education as a fundamental human right of all children. The framework calls

education “the key to sustainable development and peace and stability within and among

countries.”135

In addition to its support for efforts to combat child labor through ILO-IPEC, the U.S.

Department of Labor provided grants in fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2002 to promote and

enhance children’s access to quality education. This effort aimed to raise awareness about the

importance of education for all children and mobilize a wide array of actors to improve and expand

existing educational infrastructures. It also sought to strengthen formal and transitional education

systems that encourage working children and those at risk of working to attend school, while

working to enhance national capacity to ensure the long-term sustainability of these efforts.
47

F. Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) Publications on Child

Labor

1. By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume I): The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Manufactured

and Mined Imports (1994).

2. By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume II): The Use of Child Labor in U.S. Agricultural

Imports & Forced and Bonded Child Labor (1995).

3. The Apparel Industry and Codes of Conduct: A Solution to the International Child Labor

Problem? (1996) [also referred to as By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume III)].

4. By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume IV): Consumer Labels and Child Labor (1997).

5. Forced Labor: The Prostitution of Children (1996) [Symposium Proceedings].

6. By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume V): Efforts to Eliminate Child Labor (1998).

7. By the Sweat and Toil of Children (Volume VI): An Economic Consideration of Child Labor

(2000).

8. Advancing the Campaign Against Child Labor: Progress Made & Future Actions (2002)

[Conference Proceedings].

9. Advancing the Campaign Against Child Labor: Efforts at the Country Level (2002).

10. The Department of Labor’s 2001 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor (2002).

Also available are proceedings from public hearings on child labor held to gather

information for several of the reports.

Copies of these reports may be obtained by contacting the International Child Labor Program,

Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor, Room S-5307, 200 Constitution

Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20210. Telephone: (202) 693-4843; Fax: (202) 693-4830; Email:

GlobalKids@dol.gov. The reports are available on the Internet at: http://www.dol.gov/ILAB.
U.S. Department of Labor

Bureau of International Labor Affairs

International Child Labor Program

Room S5307

Washington, DC 20210

www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/iclp

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