• Strategies to tackle child labour

Strategies to tackle child labour

Child trafficking is widespread in much of Asia. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that children make up 40 to 50 per cent of the 2.45 million persons trafficked for exploitative labour. The ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour calls for countries to take immediate action to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour including child trafficking. In this context ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) implemented the regional project on combating child trafficking in Asia (TICSA-II) covering Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia.

Interventions included prevention measures; protection and rehabilitation of the victims of child trafficking; research and improvement of the relevant knowledge base; awareness raising; social mobilization; policy development and capacity building of the partners. During this process, the project developed a number of innovative strategies and models. Some were very effective and have potentials to succeed if replicated in other contexts.

This document contains 18 selected good practices and lessons. These are expected to help social partners in designing more strategic and effective programmes in combating child trafficking in the future. These include:

Bangladesh

• micro-enterprise development model for vulnerable families (prevention)
• street theatre (prevention/awareness)
• community vigilance teams (prevention/social mobilisation)
• multi-purpose children’s centres (prevention/awareness)

Indonesia

• teachers training module (prevention/capacity building)
• social protection home for children (rehabilitation)
• community-based child run radio programmes (prevention/awareness)
• private sector combating trafficking through vocational skills training (prevention/social mobilisation)

Nepal

• training and psychological counselling (rehabilitation/capacity building)
• consortium of partners for combined withdrawal efforts (rehabilitation)
• case management system (rehabilitation/capacity building)
• female restaurant workers (prevention/social mobilisation)
• empowering single women, widows and mothers (prevention)

Pakistan

• GO-NGO joint effort to improve rehabilitation services for returned child camel jockeys (rehabilitation/capacity building)

Sri Lanka

• anti-trafficking surveillance and cyber watch unit (prevention/capacity building) 
• Don Basco child and youth centre (prevention)
• Community hearts, catch-up education and social mobilisers (prevention/social mobilisation)

Thailand

• case information management system (rehabilitation/capacity building)
• multidisciplinary approach (rehabilitation/capacity building)
  

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