Thematic panel 10 - Vulnerabilities and Child Labour

Child labour is partly driven by household vulnerabilities associated with poverty, risk and shocks. Poor households, without access to finance, health services, social protection, are less likely to be able to postpone children’s involvement in work and invest in their education. Hence, they are more likely resort to child labour in order to meet basic needs and deal with uncertainty. Exposure to shocks can have a similar impact on household decisions. Continued progress against child labour and more particularly its worst forms will require national policies that help to make households less vulnerable to the effects of poverty and economic shocks.

The panel presentations will examine what contextual, socio-political, and economic factors are at play in making communities or populations vulnerable to child labour and, in particular, WFCL. The panel discussions will aim to understand and shed light on the complex root causes of child labour and its consequences in terms of perpetuating the cycle of poverty and situations of child labour. The panel will seek to open a discussion around solutions that will look at both, more immediate mitigation and longer-term, multidimensional interventions that address the root causes of child labour and its vulnerability factors and contribute to reducing the occurrence of WFCL and other major rights violations.

A host of economic and social vulnerabilities exacerbate the risks and exposure to child labour and other human and labour rights violations, in particular extreme poverty, forced labour, trafficking in persons.