ILO-IPEC and UNICEF, among other international NGOs, have focused on ending child recruitment into armed forces during conflicts and on reintegration in post-conflict countries (IPEC 2007). Unfortunately, there is very little evidence concerning the impact of these advocacy activities on child labor outcomes. Moreover, our understanding of the different types of communication and channels that are most effective in influencing behavior is limited. This is an important avenue of research given the documented negative effects that child soldiering had on ex-combatants labor and education outcomes (Blattman and Annan 2010).

Other programs have focused on providing an integrated set of interventions to children working or at risk of working, usually conditioned on school attendance. In the Arab Republic of Egypt, for example, a program called “Combating Worst Forms of Child Labor by Reinforcing Policy Response and Promoting Sustainable Livelihoods and Educational Opportunities” (CWCLP) consisted of integrated interventions targeted at out-of-school children aged 6 to 11 engaged in or “at risk of” exploitative child work in agriculture (ICF 2013)<sup>19</sup> . Eligible children in treatment villages were eligible to enroll in a new community school (providing non-formal education) and to receive a take-home ration, conditional on school attendance. In addition, the program comprised community awareness activities targeted at parents. The estimates show positive effects of the CWCLP program on schooling outcomes, however, there was no effect on children’s engagement in economic activities, exposure to workplace hazards, nor on the occurrence of work-related injuries. These findings should be taken with caution since it is not possible to disentangle the program effects from factors affecting the CWCLP program delivery and implementation.<sup>2021</sup>

# **4. Implications for Program Design and Research**

Child labor is the outcome of a complex household decision-making process. Programs can alter the household productive structure and incentives faced by different households in multiple ways, often making it hard to predict their overall effect on child labor. The past decade has seen an increase in the number of empirical studies reporting impacts of various policies on child labor outcomes. Notwithstanding several limitations that we will discuss below, the literature review allows us to shed light on the effect of social protection and labor programs on child labor and to draw some general conclusions.

Overall, programs that aim to address child labor by reducing the vulnerability of the household produce the desired effect (albeit with a variability that deserves further scrutiny). As we have

> 19 Available at http://www.dol.gov/ilab/iclre/evaluations.htm (accessed on March 27, 2016).

> 20 There are some issues of partial compliance since program staff move two villages from the control group to the treatment group, and another two from the treatment group to the control group after randomization was done. In addition, baseline information included children up to 13 years of age even though they were not eligible to participate in the program, affecting sample size. Also, the baseline and follow-up surveys were administered in different months where the needs for child labor differ which may explain the differences in child labor.

> 21 Other programs aimed at making schooling and work more compatible, thus not considering schooling and work as substitutes but complements.  ( _Bolivia study, have not received the final report yet_ )

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