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Global Task Force on Child Labour and Education

The Global Task Force on Child Labour and EFA was announced and endorsed by its founding partners on 28 November 2005 in Beijing, People’s Republic of China

Since its first programmes in 1992, ILO-IPEC has been focusing on the critical roles of education and skills training in terms of elaborating alternative strategies to child labour and in reaching out to help vulnerable children, their families and their communities. In this respect, the past decade has witnessed the emergence of a wide range of good practices from ILO-IPEC projects worldwide in terms of enhancing access and quality of education and skills training for former child labourers and children at risk.

In order to consolidate this rapidly growing level of practical experience and expertise and translate this into effective support and guidance for member States in terms of education policy development and reform, ILO-IPEC has been focusing increasingly on reinforcing partnerships and networks at all levels, particularly internationally. There is no refuting the evidence that the continued existence of child labour remains a serious obstacle to any attempts to ensure universal primary education becomes a reality worldwide as stipulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education For All (EFA) initiative. Therefore, it is widely acknowledged that in order to achieve the MDGs and EFA, the international community has to step up its efforts to eliminate and prevent child labour and to ensure more effective coherence between global development programmes and strategies.

A key component of ILO-IPEC’s strategy has been to reinforce dialogue with key international partners sharing the related objectives of eliminating child labour and providing education for those who are marginalized. This was pursued within a global education project, funded by the government of the Netherlands, and launched at the end of 2002. One of the strategic objectives of this project was to enhance inter-agency cooperation through the establishment of a task force which would ensure greater coherence of programmes and resources.

To this end, ILO-IPEC, in collaboration with UNESCO, the World Bank and the Global March Against Child Labour, organized a series of Round Tables on the Elimination of Child Labour and the Achievement of Education For All, the first of which was held in New Delhi, India, in November 2003. The Round Tables were organized as a side event in the context of UNESCO’s annual High-Level Group on EFA, which monitors global progress towards this objective by 2015. The Second Round Table was held in Brasilia, Brazil, in November 2004 and the Third in Beijing, the People’s Republic of China, in November 2005. At was during this most recent event in Beijing that the co-organizers announced and endorsed the creation of the Global Task Force on Child Labour and EFA.

ILO-IPEC welcomes this breakthrough initiative which establishes a solid platform upon which upstream efforts to bring about education policy reform in many countries worldwide will specifically target child labourers, their families and communities. In future, as the Task Force expands its membership and activities, this alliance of agencies, partners and organizations sharing similar interests and responsibilities, combined with the active involvement of the countries concerned, will enable a more effective approach to resource management, project implementation, follow-up and monitoring of the related programmes of child labour elimination and the achievement of EFA.

The Task Force will facilitate collaboration in the areas of: coordination of the comparative advantage of different partners; resource mobilization; upstream assistance in policy development and reform and capacity building among various partners, including relevant line ministries; awareness raising and other areas of advocacy; promotion of dialogue between governments, social partners and civil society; coordination of knowledge management; and identification of new areas of research.