Addressing and eliminating child labour
© UNICEF/NYHQ2009-1001/Shehzad Noorani
A boy works in an automobile repair shop in the north-western city of Herat, capital of Herat Province.
Child labour has been the most visible children’s rights issue on the CSR agenda. Much work has already been done by companies, trade union organisations, multi-stakeholder initiatives, international organisations and civil society to develop functional approaches to address the issue of child labour in company operations and particularly in supply chains. However, child labour incidents are still pervasive and it is necessary to scale up the efforts to address and eliminate the root causes of the problem.
What your company can do:
- Understand the specific country situation in which you are operating and define appropriate working conditions accordingly.
- Establish a child-friendly age verification mechanism.
- Where you discover cases of children employed in violation of minimum-age provisions, take responsible action to rectify them.
- A child discovered to be engaged in any of the worst forms of child labour, including hazardous work as defined by national law, must be withdrawn immediately.
- Examine your internal business behaviour to avoid making demands of suppliers or sub-contractors that may lead them to use child labour.
- Exert your influence on supply chains and sub-contractors to eliminate child labour throughout their business operations.
- Ensure that salaries paid offer adequate living wages to workers i.e. the national minimum wage plus additional payments such as sick pay, overtime pay and social contributions.
- Create and communicate a company policy prohibiting your employees from hiring children as domestic workers, who are not of working age.
- Take an active role to eliminate poverty in the communities where your company is operating, as part of the fight against child labour.