Opening remarks by Ms Cynthia Samuel-Olonjuwon, ILO Assistant Director-General, Regional Director for Africa at the event to mark the World Day Against Child Labour in Africa

“The scars of child labour never go away”

These are not my words. These are the words of Molly, a brilliant young activist from Uganda who worked in tea plantations as a child. “It breaks my heart to know that more than 160 million people go through the same thing” she says with strong emotions.

Beyond my professional responsibility, my first words today are those of an African woman, a mother and a grandmother, disheartened by the fact that 92 million African children are in child labour and that these numbers are likely to go up due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. By the fact that almost half of these children are in hazardous work that puts their safety, health, and sometimes even their lives at risk. By the fact that almost a third of them don’t go to school.

This is not the Africa we want! This is not acceptable. This is not justifiable. It means that we, as parents, as citizens, as policy makers are failing in our responsibility of protecting our children.

Of course the challenge is considerable, not only because of the magnitude of the problem but also because of its complexity. Child labour is driven by poverty, education exclusion, informality, inequalities as well as conflict.

Yet, there is much that can be done.

First of all, we must prevent further regression amid the COVID-19 crisis through income support measures for families in situation of vulnerability and measures to bring children back to school.

We should not lose track of broader policy measures to end child labour. Evidence has shown that increased social protection, access to free quality education, health care, access to decent job, and access to basic services create an enabling environment that reduces household vulnerability to child labour.

Africa is on the right path.

The Continent has shown strong political will to put in place policies aimed at extending social protection, at generating employment, in particular for young people and women, and at promoting transition from informality. Trade Unions and Employers’ Organizations support these efforts.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the Global Changemaker Award won by the Federation of Kenya Employers two days ago for their “Adopt a School” Initiative, which contributes to ending child labour.

The ILO, as required by the 2019 Abidjan Declaration - Advancing Social Justice: shaping the future of work in Africa, supports these efforts. Extending social protection for instance is a key priority for ILO in the region and our objective is to reach 40% coverage by 2025.

I commit the Office to work as one ILO to mainstream child labour issues into all relevant areas of work of the Abidjan Declaration implementation plan, in order to maximize our contribution to ending child labour in Africa. We will work closely with our tripartite Constituents to do so.
For measures to be really effective, we must coordinate all our efforts with sister UN agencies, development banks, bilateral and multilateral donors, the private sector and others. We need to strengthen partnerships and scale up our work. Alliance 8.7 provides a framework to do so, in particular in the eleven African pathfinder countries.

Together we will also need to address the issue of financing to address child labour in Africa, including through domestic public financing, ODA, debt relief, public private partnerships and innovative finance.

The global increase in child labour since 2016 has been driven in large part by Africa. There is more child labour in Africa than all other regions of the world combined. Global child labour goals will not be achieved without a major breakthrough in Africa. I therefore call upon the international community to focus urgently on Africa. In words and in deeds.

The process leading to the Fifth Global Conference on Child Labour, to be held in South Africa in 2022, will give African stakeholders the opportunity to align and redouble efforts to reach target 8.7. In support to the implementation of the ten-year Continental Action Plan to eliminate child labour, ILO is committed to working closely with the African Union in the next few months, to analyse further the 2020 Global estimates on child labour.

This will help to deepen our common understanding of the drivers of child labour in Africa and fine-tune continental strategies to accelerate progress.

This week, we also commemorate the Day of the African Child. Through the adoption of the AU Agenda 2040 for an Africa fit for children, we have promised the children of Africa a future without child labour. We must keep our promise.

Thank you