Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF

Hazardous child labour can be abolished now

Thursday, 27 February 1997: UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy today described hazardous child labour a "betrayal of every child's right and an offence against our civilization" and called for its immediate abolition.

Speaking at a conference in Amsterdam organized by the Netherlands Government and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), she said: "Tackling such labour does not, and must not, wait until some future day when world poverty has been brought to an end -- it can be abolished now."

Citing the almost worldwide ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Ms. Bellamy said: "If governments would deliver on the commitments they have already made under the Convention, we would be looking at a world free of child labour in the next few years."

"Hazardous child labour will not disappear from our planet unless governments back their words with action."

She said that while education is key to the solution to child labour, there are no simple or single answers and that any comprehensive attack must advance on several fronts.

UNICEF has drawn up six steps for the eradication of child labour, including the immediate elimination of hazardous and exploitative child labour, and the provision of free and compulsory education.

On education, Ms. Bellamy said it would cost an estimated $6 billion a year on top of what is already spent, to put every child in school by the year 2000. While this seemed an enormous sum, she pointed out that it was less than 1 per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons. Well over 100 million children -- 60 per cent of them girls -- do not attend school at all.

She praised the ILO for its leadership in the effort to put an end to child labour, and referred to many UNICEF partners in an increasingly global campaign.

Ms. Bellamy also cited recent examples of successful action taken to combat the problem of child labour, including an agreement signed between the sporting goods industry and the ILO, Save the Children and UNICEF to eliminate child labour in Pakistan's soccer ball industry.

Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF