“Together to end child labor in agrifood value chains” FAO and ILO commemorate the International Day against Child Labour in Brussels

12 June is the World Day against Child Labor, and this year’s official FAO commemoration took place in Brussels.

With the support of ILO, FAO organized an FAO Brussels Briefing on the occasion with a number of partners and actors from governments, civil society and academia. The event took stock of the progress achieved so far in terms of eliminating child labour in the agricultural sector and presented the results of the CLEAR Cotton project in one of the three countries the project was implemented, in Mali. 

FAO Brussels Director Raschad Al-Khafaji welcomed the virtual participants stressing the need to strengthen the capacities of a wide range of agricultural actors to include child labor prevention in their work.  

In his opening video message, Máximo Torero, FAO Chief Economist, gave a powerful message saying: “Child labour violates the rights of children, endanger the health and education of the young, and it also forms an obstacle to sustainable agrifood systems development and food security”. 

Lauren Phillips, Deputy Director of Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality at FAO, set the scene giving context and also closed the event by stressing that child labour is often invisible and overlooked, when children simply help their families in a small-scale production setting. 
The event included concrete examples from the field as well experts who focused more on the global perspective. 

You can view the recording of the event here.   
You can learn more about of FAO's work on child labour here.