ILO - International Labour Organization

Published purpose

This project aims to end violence, exploitation and abuse of children, with a focus on the progressive elimination of child labour. The Understanding Children’s Work Programme (a joint ILO-UNICEF-World Bank initiative) provides a global platform for child labour policy dialogue, partnership building and research cooperation. The goal of the project is to support partner agencies and national governments in improving the statistical information on child labour in its various dimensions, its nature, extent, causes and consequences, as well as on what policy approaches are most effective in addressing it. A wide range of stakeholders, including the International Labour Organization, UNICEF and World Bank conduct country-level research on child labour and youth employment challenges to gain a better understanding of these issues and advance policy dialogue. Overall, the project promotes research addressing key knowledge gaps and the effective use of this research in the design of comprehensive policies and programs aimed at addressing child labour and youth employment. Project research outputs constitutes an input to the World Child Labour Conference in Argentina in 2017, while the indicators and statistics produced as part of the project helps in monitoring the post-2015 goals relating to child labour and youth employment. Project activities include: (1) extending and strengthening the global knowledge base on child labour and the links between child labour and youth employment; (2) building and disseminating critical knowledge concerning the impact of interventions to eliminate child labour in a variety of policy areas; (3) strengthening the technical tools and indicators used to measure, monitor and analyze child labour and youth employment issues; and (4) providing broad access to UCW research outputs in order to promote their uptake and use.