9 October 2013
Collective action needed to end child labour
Guy Ryder, the Director-General of the International Labour Organization said at the opening ceremony of the Third Global Conference on Child Labour in Brasilia that ‘we will not meet the 2016 target (of eradicating child labour) and that is a collective policy failure.’ He called on the international community to not move its attention away from the struggle to end the scourge, adding ‘the call from Brasilia must be for a renewed, collective effort.’
In spite of a drop in the number of child labourers since 2010, Mr. Ryder warned that globally, the number of child labourers is still very large. He said that progress is not happening fast enough, and noted that child labour is not only a problem of poor or developing economies, but it affects all states.