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Info Service on UN Sustainable Development (Jun21/04) Geneva, 10 Jun (Kanaga Raja) – Some 160 million children were in child labour globally at the beginning of 2020, with millions more at risk due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have said. In a joint report, the ILO and UNICEF said that progress to end child labour has stalled for the first time in 20 years, reversing the previous downward trend that saw child labour fall by 94 million between 2000 and 2016. The COVID-19 crisis threatens to further erode global progress against child labour unless urgent mitigation measures are taken, they said. New analysis suggests a further 8.9 million children will be in child labour by the end of 2022 as a result of rising poverty driven by the pandemic, said the report, which was released ahead of the World Day Against Child Labour on 12 June. “The new estimates are a wake-up call. We cannot stand by while a new generation of children is put at risk,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. “Inclusive social protection allows families to keep their children in school even in the face of economic hardship. Increased investment in rural development and decent work in agriculture is essential. We are at a pivotal moment and much depends on how we respond,” he added. “This is a time for renewed commitment and energy, to turn the corner and break the cycle of poverty and child labour,” said Mr Ryder. “We are losing ground in the fight against child labour, and the last year has not made that fight any easier,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “Now, well into a second year of global lockdowns, school closures, economic disruptions, and shrinking national budgets, families are forced to make heart-breaking choices,” she added. “We urge governments and international development banks to prioritize investments in programmes that can get children out of the workforce and back into school, and in social protection programmes that can help families avoid making this choice in the first place,” said Ms Fore. CURRENT TRENDS ON CHILD LABOUR According to the ILO/UNICEF report, child labour remains unacceptably common in the world today. At the start of 2020, prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 160 million children – 63 million girls and 97 million boys – were in child labour, or 1 in 10 children worldwide. The report said that seventy-nine million children – nearly half of all those in child labour – were in hazardous work directly endangering their health, safety and moral development. Child labour prevalence stands at 24 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa, three times that of Northern Africa and Western Asia, the region with the second highest prevalence. In absolute terms, the nearly 87 million children in child labour in sub-Saharan Africa are more than in the rest of the world combined, said the report. Recent history provides cause for concern, it said, adding that in the last four years, for the first time since 2000, the world did not make progress in reducing child labour. The absolute number of children in child labour increased by over 8 million to 160 million while the proportion of children in child labour remained unchanged. Children in hazardous work mirrored these patterns: The share remained almost unchanged but the number rose by 6.5 million to 79 million. The proportion and number of children in child labour have declined consistently since 2008 in Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean. Similar progress has proved elusive in sub-Saharan Africa, where child labour has actually gone up since 2012, a trend especially pronounced over the last four years when the region accounted for much of the global increase, said the report. At present, the world is not on track to eliminate child labour by 2025, said ILO/UNICEF, adding that in order to meet this target, global progress would need to be almost 18 times faster than the rate observed over the past two decades. According to pre-COVID-19 projections based on the pace of change from 2008 to 2016, close to 140 million children will be in child labour in 2025 without accelerated action. “The COVID-19 crisis is making these scenarios even more worrisome, with many more children at risk of being pushed into child labour,” said ILO/UNICEF. Highlighting some regional trends, the report said Sub-Saharan Africa has succeeded in reducing poverty in recent years but levels remain high relative to other regions. More than 40 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa still lives in extreme poverty, it added. The region saw steady economic growth of over 2 per cent annually for all but one of the last five years, but given rapid population growth, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita actually declined and continues to be low relative to other regions of the world. Rates of inequality remain at persistently high levels in many sub-Saharan African countries, said ILO/UNICEF. Regions making faster progress in reducing child labour have had greater success in reducing informal economic activity although levels remain high, said the report. Many African countries are improving the conditions of informal workers but the region still lags behind in the transition to formality. “Eighty-six per cent of African jobs are in the informal economy, more than any other region, and some of the worst labour practices are clustered in the informal economy, which is mostly unregulated.” Despite progress in extending social protection, coverage still falls short in all regions in terms of universality and the adequacy of benefits, said the report. A number of African countries have made notable efforts, with spending on social safety nets as a share of income equal to the world average. However, the region as a whole still has much lower coverage than other regions, said ILO/UNICEF. Only 17 per cent of the population in Africa is covered by at least one social protection benefit, compared to 66 per cent in the Americas, 43 per cent in Asia and the Pacific and 83 per cent in Europe and Central Asia. Social protection in many cases determines whether or not families resort to child labour, said the report. There has been a significant net decline in children out of primary school in recent years in all regions. Yet the gap in education exclusion rates between sub-Saharan Africa and other regions remains large. “Although public spending on education in sub-Saharan Africa as a share of GDP has trended upwards in recent years, it remains well below the world average.” Population growth patterns influence child labour trends with stark differences among regions, said ILO/UNICEF. In Latin America and the Caribbean, a drop in the number of children in child labour by 6 million from 2008 to 2020 occurred as the population aged 5 to 17 fell by 4.8 million. Over the same period, Asia and the Pacific saw the number of children in child labour decline by 64.9 million as the population aged 5 to 17 increased by 12.8 million. By contrast, in sub-Saharan Africa, the child labour population grew by 21.5 million from 2008 to 2020, while the total population aged 5 to 17 rose by 104.8 million. Multiple points of crisis contribute to high levels of child labour in sub-Saharan Africa, said ILO/UNICEF. The region has the majority of fragile and conflict-affected countries – at least one quarter of all countries were fragile or in conflict in every year from 2015 to 2020. Further, the region is home to 39 per cent of the world’s refugees, asylum seekers, returnees, stateless persons and internally displaced persons, a higher share than any other region. The global HIV/AIDS pandemic also continues to exact a disproportionate toll on sub-Saharan Africa, which has the largest number of people living with HIV and accounts for 59 per cent of new infections. In addition, the region’s limited resilience to climate change puts livelihoods at risk and undercuts prospects for moving out of poverty, said the report. CHILD LABOUR ACROSS AGES AND SETTINGS According to the ILO/UNICEF report, the results of the global estimates make clear that child labour remains an important concern across the spectrum of children aged 5 to 17. Of the 160 million children in child labour, 89.3 million are young children aged 5 to 11, 35.6 million are children aged 12 to 14, and 35 million are children aged 15 to 17. Child labour among children aged 12 to 14 and 15 to 17 continued to fall in both absolute and percentage terms over the last four years, said the report. By contrast, the 2016-2020 period saw a worrying rise in child labour among young children aged 5 to 11. In 2016, there were signs of slowing progress among young children. Today, the trend line is moving in the wrong direction, said the report. Hazardous work accounted for about two-fifths of the total number of additional children aged 5 to 11 in child labour during the four-year period. “While children of all ages must be protected from hazardous work, its persistence and now growth among younger children is a particular concern,” said ILO/UNICEF. Involvement in child labour is more common for boys than girls at all ages. For children aged 5 to 17, child labour prevalence is nearly one third higher for boys. The gender gap grows with age, and boys are roughly twice as likely as girls to be in child labour in the 15 to 17 age range. Estimates of child labour by rural or urban residence, available for the first time in the 2020 global estimates, indicate that child labour is much more common in rural areas, said the report. There are 122.7 million rural children in child labour compared to 37.3 million urban children. The prevalence of child labour in rural areas (13.9 per cent) is close to three times higher than in urban areas (4.7 per cent). Most child labour – for boys and girls alike – continues to occur in agriculture. Seventy per cent of all children in child labour, 112 million children in total, are in agriculture, said the report. Many are younger children, underscoring agriculture as an entry point to child labour. Over three quarters of all children aged 5 to 11 in child labour work in agriculture. The report also found that seventy-two per cent of all child labour and 83 per cent of child labour among children aged 5 to 11 occurs within families, primarily on family farms or in family micro-enterprises. More than one in four children aged 5 to 11 and nearly half of children aged 12 to 14 in family-based child labour are in work likely to harm their health, safety or morals, it said. A large share of younger children in child labour are excluded from school despite falling within the age range for compulsory education. More than a quarter of children aged 5 to 11 and over a third of children aged 12 to 14 who are in child labour are out of school, said the report. IMPACT OF COVID-19 According to the ILO/UNICEF report, the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic with child labour globally offers substantial cause for concern. In 2020, the pandemic increased the number of children in income-poor households by an estimated 142 million, adding to the 582 million children already in poverty in 2019. Their families have suffered job and income losses, seen cuts in remittances and experienced a host of other shocks, said the report. In such circumstances, it added, a large body of evidence affirms that families may turn to child labour as a coping mechanism. “School closures during lockdowns add to the risks, especially for children in vulnerable situations, as they are even more likely to work when going to school is not a viable option.” When children leave school and enter paid employment, it can be very difficult for them to resume their education, said the report. According to ILO/UNICEF, growing anecdotal evidence sheds light on how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting children. For example, Human Rights Watch collected testimonies from 81 children in Ghana, Nepal and Uganda who have been newly pushed into child labour or endure more difficult work circumstances. Some indicated that their families no longer had sufficient food and they were working to get enough to eat. Children said that their work was frequently long and arduous – one third in each country had to work for at least 10 hours a day, and some described working for as many as 16 hours. Those already working before the crisis struck said that they were working more since the closure of schools. An International Cocoa Initiative assessment of 263 communities in Cote d’Ivoire found a significant increase in child labour in cocoa businesses from July to September 2020 compared to the same period 12 months earlier. Data from Ecuador indicated a more than one-third rise in child labour prevalence since the pandemic began, and in Egypt, children are reportedly being sent to work in cotton cultivation and other agricultural work. Meanwhile, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, child labour increased by 26 per cent between May and July 2020 in households assisted by UNICEF. ILO/UNICEF said that several reports have emphasized school closures as driving child labour. In a survey of eight West African countries, children consistently reported working because there was no school. They said that their presence at home raised the expectation that they should work to help their families, which made distance learning difficult even when it was available. Meanwhile, a modelling exercise providing further insights into the likely near-term impact of COVID-19 on child labour predicts 8.9 million more children in child labour by the end of 2022. Young children aged 5 to 11 account for over half (4.9 million) of the total predicted additional children in child labour. The pandemic has clearly heightened the risk of child labour, above all through a sharp rise in poverty that may increase families’ reliance on child labour, and through school closures that deny families the logical alternative to sending children to work, said the report. To reduce these risks, expanded income support measures for families in situations of vulnerability, through child benefits and other means, will be critical, it added. So too will back-to-school campaigns and stepped-up remedial learning to get children back in the classroom and help them make up for lost learning once there, when conditions permit, said the report.
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