Both the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the ILO Declaration call, without equivocation, not only for an end to hazardous child labour, but also for the protection of the child from work that is likely to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. State Parties are to provide for a minimum age and appropriate hours and conditions of employment, and penalties to ensure the effective enforcement of this article. Discussion can then follow about the strategies required to ensure that children are helped rather than harmed by programs and projects. The indivisibility of core labour rights A rights-based approach to child labour cannot stop with a definition of the forms of employment from which children must be protected. A rights-based approach must recognize the importance of other core labour rights, in particular freedom of association and the right to organize.
Child labour is worst where adults are unemployed and denied the right to form unions.
Increasingly, the international community is acknowledging that the issue of child labour cannot be effectively addressed apart from these other core labour rights. Freedom of association and the right to organize are needed so that workers', children's, human rights and other organizations can advocate and monitor commitments to protect children. In the area of employment, it is through the ILO and its core labour conventions, summarized in the ILO Declaration , that core labour rights have been elaborated and mechanisms established for their implementation. The Draft Action Plan should include a commitment by CIDA to consider how it will support core labour rights in its policies and programmes. Just as it is not sufficient to address environmental concerns by financing projects that promote environmental responsibility without at the same time preventing negative environmental impact through other projects, it is not sufficient to address labour rights and child labour issues simply by financing promotional projects.