Brazil participates in the 5th World Conference on the Elimination of Child Labor held in South Africa

The Government of Brazil participates, throughout this week, in three events during the 5 ^th World Conference on the Elimination of Child Labor, which takes place from May 15 ^th to 20 ^th , 2022, in Durban, South Africa, and brings together about 4,000 delegates to discuss good practices, identify gaps and the necessary measures to fight child labor in the world. This is the first time the Conference is held in Africa – a region where, based on absolute numbers, the figures related to child labor are the highest, and progress has been the slowest. The Conference takes place in a hybrid format, with face-to-face participation in the Durban International Convention Center, as well as online participation . Side events are broadcast live on ILO’s Youtube channel.

On May 17 ^th , the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security jointly chaired the parallel session "South-South Cooperation: Good labor inspection practices on the prevention and eradication of child labor" . The panel “Innovation and partnership: the formula for a region moving closer to ending child labor”, was sponsored by the Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labor, in which Brazil participates, and had the participation of ABC, represented by its Deputy Director, who was one of the panelists in the event. On May 19 ^th , technology will be the focus of the session: "The use of technology as a tool for eradicating child labor: Ipê Child Labor Reporting System" . The events are supported by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Brazil.

South-South Cooperation

The thematic session “Innovation and partnership: the formula for a region moving closer to ending child labor” had the participation Minister Mariana Madeira, Deputy Director of ABC. The diplomat recalled that Brazil has been actively participating in the Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labor since 2013, and was the first country to approve a South-South cooperation project for its creation and implementation.

“We know that the driving force behind the Regional Initiative is international technical cooperation. And ABC remains convinced that South-South cooperation has a preponderant role in the progress achieved by the Network to date", said the Minister.

Madeira also pointed out that the model for fighting child labor developed and implemented by the Regional Initiative is certainly effective, considering the advances already achieved by the Initiative in the sharing of good practices among cooperating countries, which can be adapted to the context of each nation. In addition, this model of organization, an intergovernmental and tripartite platform for action in which governments, workers' organizations and employers' organizations work in a participatory way to achieve Target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8, can be replicated by other regions across the globe (especially Africa) that face challenges that are similar to the ones Latin American faces while fighting child labor.

Regional Initiative

Over the past 10 years, Latin America and the Caribbean have shown sustained progress in reducing child labor. The challenge proposed was a region free of child labor, and, over the past 8 years, the Regional Initiative has been developing innovative strategies and new ways of gathering and sharing information, as well as building knowledge, with a view to fighting child labor. To this end, the Initiative has designed an effective formula to enable countries to achieve this goal.

Despite the global increase in child labor according to the ILO-UNICEF 2021 Report, Latin America and the Caribbean were able to sustain the reduction of child labor by boosting its innovative formula through three crucial components: political agreement between countries, territorialization of the approach to child labor, and strategic alliances.

Technology

On May 19 ^th , the Ministry of Civil Rights, Women, Family and Human Rights, and the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, together with ABC, chaired a parallel session entitled "The use of technology as a tool to eradicate child labor: Ipê Child Labor Reporting System". The goal is to highlight the importance of using available technology, including IT and machine learning, to coordinate efforts and accelerate the achievement of Target 8.7 of the SDGs to eliminate all forms of child labor by 2025.

ABC’s project analyst, Mônica Salmito, moderator of the event, recalls that Brazil has made huge progress in the last 30 years in the prevention and elimination of child labor, rescuing more than 6 million children and adolescents from this situation. However, the pace has been decreasing, and the great challenge of rescuing 1.8 million children from this form of exploitation in Brazil by 2025, as set out in Target 8.7 of the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda, is still to be achieved.

Salmito also pointed out that the Secretariat of Labor Inspection, under the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, in partnership with ILO Brazil, and with support of ABC, had been developing a series of tools to make fighting against child labor more efficient. One of these technologies will be presented: the IPÊ System, a tool for reporting child labor in which it is possible to enter, process, and classify reports of child labor, as well as monitoring the processing of this information, using algorithms and artificial intelligence to produce quality information that will guide labor inspection actions, hence increasing the effectiveness of inspections undertaken.

5 ^th Conference

The 5 ^th World Conference on the Elimination of Child Labor is expected to end with a Call to Action from Durban, which will outline concrete commitments to scale up actions to eliminate child labor.

With only three years to go before the deadline set in the 2030 Agenda to end child labor is met, the 5 ^th Conference is a historic opportunity to share, among countries, regions and sectors, lessons learned and good practices with successful results in fighting child labor, as well as reaffirming the global commitment to achieve target 8.7, as part of post-COVID-19 socioeconomic recovery strategies.