Every year 12 June is celebrated as World Child Labor Prohibition Day across the world. The International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it.
Governments, employers and labor organizations, civil society as well as millions of people around the world are made aware and many campaigns are also run to help them.
For this year’s World Day Against Child Labour, a “Week of Action” will be launched around 12 June, starting with the launch of the new global estimates on child labour.
The theme of this year’s World Day Against Child Labour is “Act now: End child labour!”
The term “child labour” is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.
- Is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children.
- Interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.
Not all work done by children should be classified as child labour that is to be targeted for elimination. Children’s or adolescents’ participation in work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling, is generally regarded as being something positive.
This includes activities such as helping their parents around the home, assisting in a family business or earning pocket money outside school hours and during school holidays. These kinds of activities contribute to children’s development.
World Day Against Child Labour 2021: Significance
Children around the world are routinely engaged in paid and unpaid forms of work that are not harmful to them. However, they are classified as child labourers when they are either too young to work, or are involved in hazardous activities that may compromise their physical, mental, social or educational development.
This year’s World Day Against Child Labour focuses on action taken for the 2021 International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.
The worst forms of child labour involve children being enslaved, separated from their families, exposed to serious hazards and illnesses and/or left to fend for themselves on the streets of large cities often at a very early age.According to ILO the latest Global Estimates indicate that 152 million children 64 million girls and 88 million boys are in child labour globally, accounting for almost one in 10 of all children worldwide.