It is an honour and a pleasure for me to address this Assembly on a subject which is of fundamental concern and interest to the International Labour Organization and one on which both our organizations share a common commitment and a common determination. The economic exploitation of children violates all the basic principles entrusted to us.
Child labour is a global problem which is causing worldwide concern.
We have all agreed to put an end to this curse. At the ILO, we are convinced that we can now make a decisive breakthrough in the struggle against child labour. In the first place, because there has been a radical change in attitudes towards the problem which, until very recently, attracted little attention at the national and international levels. The donor countries did not see child labour as a subject of interest or economic investment, while many developing countries fatalistically considered that child labour was part of the natural order of things or that it was an inevitable consequence of underdevelopment or poverty. Some countries even went so far as to deny that it existed and many were reluctant to call for international assistance to resolve the problem.