14th Annual Meeting of the ILO Child Labour Platform
The Child Labour Platform is a cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder forum for sharing experiences and lessons learned in eliminating child labour, particularly in supply chains. The Platform draws on the ILO’s extensive experience to provide guidance and knowledge-sharing opportunities to address obstacles and challenges faced by business, to link business with global and local initiatives to eliminate child labour, and to foster practical action that can make a difference in affected communities. The CLP is co-chaired by the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The ILO acts as the Secretariat of the Platform.
With increasingly complex supply chains becoming the norm for companies, the business risks from failing to address child labour in supply chains are escalating. In these circumstances, there is a strong ethical case for businesses to join forces and help to accelerate progress. To be effective, companies’ responses to prevent and remediate child labour, forced labour and other fundamental rights violations in supply chains must be informed by robust data and analysis.
Apart from the usual “Accelerating Action” session focusing on India, Cote d’Ivoire and The Democratic Republic of Congo, many other discussions took place during the thematic panels of the two-day event, namely a discussion around Child Labour in coffee supply chains, reporting on country-level acceleration plans, rethinking business efforts to address child labour in supply chains, the impact of climate change on child labour, and finally identifying and formulating priorities for the next two years.
By attending these meetings, the ECLT Foundation has been able to:
- Understand the risk of child labour and other decent work deficits in different supply chains.
- Draw on the ILO’s unparalleled convening power among governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations, trade associations, chambers of commerce and industry to jointly address the root causes of the problem.
- Join ILO initiatives to prevent, assess risks and remediate child labour and violations of other fundamental principles and rights at work.
- Access a suite of practical tools, training programmes and practical guidance on how to improve company policies and practices in light of ILO Conventions and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.