"Universal Social Protection to End Child Labour"

The world day theme for 2022 calls for increased investment in social protection systems and programmes to establish solid social protection floors and protect children from child labour.

While significant progress has been made in reducing child labour over the last two decades, progress has slowed and even stalled between 2016 and 2020. Today, 160 million children – some as young as five – are still engaged in child labour.

Government social protection systems are critical in combating poverty and vulnerability, as well as eradicating and preventing child labour. In times of crisis, social protection is both a human right and a powerful policy tool for preventing families from resorting to child labour. However, as of 2020, and prior to the COVID-19 crisis, only 46.9% of the global population was effectively covered by at least one social protection benefit, leaving the remaining 53.1 percent – potentially 4.1 billion people – completely unprotected. Children have even less coverage. Almost three-quarters of all children, or 1.5 billion, lacked social protection.

Significant progress towards ending child labour requires increased investment in universal social protection systems, as part of an integrated and comprehensive approach to tackle the problem.

Did you know?

At the beginning of 2020, 1 in 10 children aged 5 and over were involved in child labour worldwide – equating to an estimated 160 million children, or 63 million girls and 97 million boys.

• Globally, significant progress has been made in reducing child labour in the past two decades (ILO and UNICEF 2021). The number of children in child labour declined by 85.5 million between 2000 and 2020, from 16% to 9.6%.
• Only 26.4% of children worldwide receive social protection cash benefits.
• At the global level, national expenditure on social protection for children amounts to only 1.1% of GDP. In Africa, the region with the largest share of children in the population, the highest prevalence of child labour and the greatest need for social protection, an equivalent of 0.4% of GDP is spent on social protection for children.

Prevalence of child labour

Children around the world?are routinely engaged in paid and unpaid forms of work that are not harmful to them. However, they are classified as child labourers when they are either too young to work, or are involved in hazardous activities that may compromise their physical, mental, social or educational development. In the least developed countries, slightly more than one in four children (ages 5 to 17) are engaged in labour that is considered detrimental to their health and development.

Africa ranks highest among regions both in the percentage of children in child labour — one-fifth — and the absolute number of children in child labour — 72 million. Asia and the Pacific ranks second highest in both these measures — 7% of all children and 62 million in absolute terms are in child labour in this region.

The Africa and the Asia and the Pacific regions together account for almost nine out of every ten children in child labour worldwide. The remaining child labour population is divided among the Americas (11 million), Europe and Central Asia (6 million), and the Arab States (1 million). In terms of incidence, 5% of children are in child labour in the Americas, 4% in Europe and Central Asia, and 3% in the Arab States.

While the percentage of children in child labour is highest in low-income countries, their numbers are actually greater in middle-income countries. 9% all children in lower-middle-income countries, and 7% of all children in upper-middle-income countries, are in child labour. Statistics on the absolute number of children in child labour in each national income grouping indicate that 84 million children in child labour, accounting for 56% of all those in child labour, actually live in middle-income countries, and an additional 2 million live in high-income countries.

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