ILO-South Asia partnerships on child labour

Meaningful partnerships are the bedrock for strategic and sustained action on child labour. Highly important among these are partnerships at various in-country and regional levels with the ILO constituents – governments, and employers’ and workers’ and their representatives. Networks, alliances and movements of civil society organizations, including those of and related to youth and children are contributing in significant ways to the prevention and elimination of child labour and the ILO DWT South Asia pursues engagement and support of these.

The ILO has a strategic technical and policy advocacy alliance with the South Asia Initiative to End Violence against Children (SAIEVAC), an inter-governmental Apex Body of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which works in close collaboration with representatives and networks of civil society, children and the UN/INGO inter-agency group – the South Asia Coordinating Group on Action against Violence against Children (SACG). As Chair of SACG and Governing Board Member of SAIEVAC for 2013-14, the ILO plays an active role in the partnership.

The ILO and SAIEVAC further collaborate under a bilateral partnership agreement on child rights/child labour . Among collaborative activities has been the 2013 course UN CRC and ILO Child Labour Conventions: towards greater coherence in reporting and action, organized at the ILO’s International Training Centre in Turin in collaboration with the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence Against Children (SRSG-VAC)

Supporting regional and inter-regional collaboration on the issue of child labour and sharing of experiences and knowledge are an important element of the ILO DWT South Asia Strategy on Child Labour. The ILO supported the SAARC Child Labour Workshops in 2009 and 2013, organized by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, India in collaboration with Ministry of External Affairs and the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute. The South Asia Labour Conference organized by the Government of Punjab, Pakistan in 2014, resulted in a set of recommendations, including at the South Asia level.

Partnerships with the collaborative research projects of Young Lives in India  (part of the international study of childhood poverty based at the University of Oxford) and Understanding Children’s Work – UCW  (an international initiative of the ILO, UNICEF and the World Bank) help to inform the DWT’s work on child labour in South Asia through a strengthened evidence and knowledge base for policy advisory services and programme design.

Check the UCW Projects: Andhra Pradesh,  Bangladesh