Today is the tenth time the world celebrates World Day Against Child Labor.

The International Labor Organization, (ILO), launched the day in 2002 as a way to bring attention to the hundreds of millions of working children deprived of a childhood.

Children who are forced to work are denied of the opportunity to go to school, and instead they are often forced to work in dangerous, hazardous conditions.

In 2010, the international community adopted a roadmap for achieving elimination for the worst forms of child labor by 2016. The document stresses children’s right to personal freedom and highlights that child labor is a hindrance for development. The document distinguishes the four following conditions as the worst forms of child labor: all forms of slavery, prostitution or use of children for pornographic material, use of children for production or trafficking drugs, and work which is likely to harm a child’s health.

This year, World Day Against Child Labor is specifically focused on bringing reality closer to the ideas listed in the roadmap. The year of 2012 has the following three goals:

• Make conventions of the International Labour Organization on child labour both universally and officially valid
• Install more national policies and programmes to ensure effective progress in the elimination of child labour
• Take grass-root action to build the worldwide movement against child labour

Although government action and policy are important, the International Labour Organization stresses the importance of grass-root movements and international attitudes.

Tags: Child Labour, International Labour Organization, Roadmap, United Nations, World Day Against Child Labour

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 at 9:00 am and is filed under cross-cultural differences, days of significance, General, other interesting stuff, social practices . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.