Companies need to engage positively with their suppliers to ensure that children and their parents are not being exploited. Tackling child labour sensitively requires the combined effort of business, government, NGOs, unions, international organisations, children's movements and the families of child labourers. The Sialkot initiative and others, whatever the limitations, show that industry can play an active role in cooperation with other interest groups. Community participation, particularly from women, is crucial in ensuring that children and their families are helped, not harmed. It is not possible to end child labour overnight.
Child labour is part of a continuum of exploitation which starts with adult exploitation.
Union recognition and the right to free collective bargaining are key factors in ending such exploitation and making it less pressing for children to enter the labour market. Indian manufacturers and exporters work towards the elimination of child labour in the industry, including companies manufacturing only for the domestic market subscribe to a strong code of conduct on labour practice with provision for independent monitoring work with the Indian government, NGOs, unions and international organisations to develop a programme to phase out child labour, with special attention to protecting the incomes of affected families British government play an active part in developing high ethical standards for corporate conduct in close consultation with business devote a higher proportion of the aid budget to community development and poverty alleviation. Indian government adhere to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, review and extend legislation on child labour to include all children, and give the ILO full support in developing its new convention to combat the most intolerable forms of child labour ensure full compliance by states with both labour law and the Supreme Court ruling on child labour of December 1996. Strengthen the system of labour inspections by state labour departments. Consider extending the district-level vigilance committees which already operate successfully in identifying and eliminating bonded labour.