“As the world grapples with a pandemic, forced labor and unacceptable child labor is likely to become more frequent, not less. Ending these practices demands persistence and requires that all of us around the world, whether businesses, governments, or worker advocates, do our part by sharing our expertise, our lessons learned, and our best practices.”
The US Department of Labor recently published a 2020 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor. This document assesses progress by country and highlights the success of collaboration and context specific programmes to provide effective and sustainable solutions in the fight against child labour. We’re sharing some of the highlights and key facts from this year’s report:
1. Agriculture, manufacturing and quarrying The three sectors with the greatest number of goods produced by child labour are agriculture, manufacturing and mining/quarrying.
2. 68 agricultural goods Child labour is involved in the production of 68 agricultural goods.
3. The agricultural sector accounts for the most child labour Agriculture remains the sector with the most child labour accounting for 8 out of the 12 goods with the most child labour listings by number of countries.
4. Top 6 contributors to child labour Gold, bricks, sugarcane, coffee, tobacco and cotton are the top 6 contributors to child labour by number of countries.
5. Partnerships are critical for progress Partnerships are essential to address the problem of child labour. To bring long lasting change for children and their families we all need to come together including governments, international organizations, businesses, workers’ and employers’ organisations, and civil society if we hope to truly accelerate progress.