Multi-stakeholder partnerships are essential to bringing about policy change and finding innovative and synergistic ways to reach a common goal and, as needed, accept compromises. Multi-stakeholder partnerships pursue a shared vision, believe in joint problem-solving, and add value beyond what can be achieved through individual parties alone.

This is a why a multi-stakeholder approach is one of the key principles of the ECLT Foundation, and why we continue to advance it at every opportunity.

For the ECLT Foundation, the multi-stakeholder approach begins at the local level. Through our projects, community members and local leaders work in coordination with workers’ organizations, growers’ associations, and tobacco companies, with the help of education leaders, labour inspectors, and civil society. These joint efforts ensure that there is an enabling environment that leads to the elimination of child labour.

Beyond our project areas, the ECLT Foundation engages in a similar multi-stakeholder approach at the higher levels of national and international public policy. We come together in partnership to address human rights, child rights, and labour rights throughout the agriculture supply chain.

Multi-stakeholder Approach in Malawi

The effectiveness of our multi-stakeholder approach depends on social dialogue as an essential platform. In September 2012, the ECLT Foundation supported the International Labour Organization and the Government of Malawi in holding such a dialogue on the worst forms of child labour across all sectors of agriculture, including livestock, fisheries, and other activities impacting the country. After months of preparation and under the leadership of the Ministry of Labour and a local multi-stakeholder taskforce, the Government of Malawi convened a National Conference on Child Labour in Agriculture. More than 350 influential stakeholders, including 40 children, met over three days in Lilongwe to examine the issues that must be addressed to end child labour in Malawi.

The result was a national commitment and way forward. Conference attendees and the Government of Malawi approved recommendations and commitments to action, all based on the country’s public policies, practices, interagency coordination, economic and labour context, and social and cultural heritage, as well as its outlook for the future as described by the President of the Republic of Malawi, Her Excellency Joyce Banda. The collective goal of Malawi’s National Action Plan for the Elimination of Child Labour now has new opportunities for action, which will be achieved through collaboration among key stakeholders and government and international agencies.

Worldwide Social Dialogue

As I write, I am heading to another event that supports social dialogue at one of the ECLT Foundation’s project sites in Tanzania. At the PROSPER Project, multiple stakeholders of the tobacco supply chain will join an ECLT Foundation board visit and interact with participants of ECLT Foundation projects, local government, civil society, and communities, as well as families and former child labourers, to seek commitments and a common vision. The ECLT Foundation Board will be represented by the ILO, the IUF, and most of the companies that support the foundation. This dialogue will be informed by the activities currently being implemented by stakeholders to tackle the root causes of child labour in tobacco-growing communities.

In another example of our multi-stakeholder approach and social dialogue, last summer, the Global March Against Child Labour held an international conference in Washington, DC, seeking commitments by multiple stakeholders in commercial agriculture. The result: 159 participants from 39 countries, including the ECLT Foundation as one of the co-sponsors, joined voices to create a framework of recommendations to end child labour in agriculture.

In addition, last month the Stop Child Labour Campaign organized an international conference in Uganda sponsored by the Hivos Foundation of the Netherlands. The ECLT Foundation and representatives from three of our active projects joined the 125 participants from roughly 25 countries. Together, we examined the gains toward creating Child Labour Free Zones by stakeholders in diverse countries, trade and teachers’ unions, and international and civil society organizations engaged in leadership, projects, and advocacy. There, the multiple stakeholders signed the Kampala Declaration showing their commitment to creating and strengthening Child Labour Free Zones in their own areas.

Looking Ahead

As we prepare for World Day Against Child Labour, June 12, 2013, all stakeholders need to pause and question not only what we can do from our vantage points, but also how we can all join in the fight against child labour. We need to continue to work together in our multi-stakeholder approach to raise the voices of children everywhere to ensure they get the opportunities they deserve, in a future away from extreme poverty.

This multi-stakeholder momentum will carry us to the fall, when the III Global Congress on Child Labour will be held in Brazil. ECLT advocates for concrete actions and a global commitment to eradicate child labour in supply chains, and to ensure the best interest of children and their education, safe youth employment, and rights.

Through the ECLT Foundation’s new capacity for advocacy and influencing public policy, multi-stakeholder engagement and social dialogue will continue to bring multiplying benefits. This is an energizing aspect of our work, enhanced with each new effort by stakeholders and by the many extraordinary leaders in the field.

Join us in advancing this unique and effective approach to making a better life for children in tobacco-growing areas.

The ECLT Foundation is committed to protecting these children. We work to remove them from child labour conditions—and keep them from entering the practice. We work to ensure their rights and to help provide for their health, education, and livelihood.

But this commitment takes not only addressing the many symptoms of child labour—children missing school, children not having time to play and socialize, families struggling to put a roof over their heads and a meal on the table. It also involves addressing the root causes of child labour—the problems that arise at the beginning of the tobacco supply chain.

Child labour in tobacco growing—and in many other agricultural activities—is closely tied to the poverty impacting areas and generations, the lack of protective systems, the lack of schools and vocational training programs, and shortage of alternative ways to ensure family sustenance and livelihood.

When difficulties hit and communities and families are not prepared or educated, children have no choice but to help in their families’ farming efforts and thus are deprived of their most basic rights to learn, be healthy, and enjoy childhood.

Fixing these problems takes supporting families so that when their children are withdrawn from child labour or prevented from entering it, they can develop options for earning money, accessing loans, and reducing their need for additional labour by using new technologies and improved agricultural practices.

It takes promoting the strengths of families, and the health, safety, social wellbeing, and education of children in tobacco-growing areas and advocating on behalf of children to ensure that their voices are heard and their rights are respected.

Finally, it takes a partnership of parents, multiple stakeholders, technical advisors, governments, and supporters to lift children out of child labour. It takes helping families succeed and strengthening communities and public systems so that they can protect vulnerable children until they reach a legal working age.

This is why the ECLT Foundation ‘s partnership of growers, unions, and tobacco companies have worked together since 2001 with this vision and with a strong commitment to find and eliminate the root causes of child labour in tobacco growing.

Through this approach, families can be better off, and children can attain the future they deserve and become valuable contributors across many developing societies.

Tobacco growing is an integral part of the history, culture, and livelihood of many societies, and agricultural chores are a natural part of life for children growing up in rural environments. The ECLT Foundation works to ensure that tobacco growing can continue to be a positive force for communities—but one that never involves child labour for any reason.

We’re doing whatever it takes. Join us.