{"id":21906,"date":"2022-05-31T13:33:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T13:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/?p=21906"},"modified":"2022-05-31T13:33:00","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T13:33:00","slug":"dispatches-from-durban-may-15-20-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/dispatches-from-durban\/","title":{"rendered":"Dispatches from Durban: May 15-20, 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Reflections on the 5th Global Conference on the elimination of child labour in Durban, South Africa: May 15-20, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reid Maki is the director of child labor advocacy at the National Consumers League and he coordinates the Child Labor Coalition.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The recently-concluded week-long \u201c5th<\/sup> Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour\u201d<\/a> in Durban, South Africa was convened against the backdrop of the announcement last July of an alarming rise in child labor numbers after two decades of steady and significant declines in global child labor totals.<\/p>\n

The global conference, which typically comes about every four years, brought together an estimated 1,000 delegates from foreign governments and small number of representatives of NGOs. It also brought together for the first time at one of the quadrennial child labor conferences dozens of participant youth advocates as well as a number of child labor victims and survivors.<\/p>\n

The conference had the difficult mission of righting the ship and trying to reverse the rising child labor numbers, which seem destined to rise further as the COVID pandemic\u2019s impact will continue to be felt for years. Sadly, the pandemic threw 1.6 million children out of school, often for prolonged periods and some of those children entered work and may never return to school.<\/p>\n

We would first like to thank the South Africa government for the herculean task of organizing a global conference during a still raging pandemic, all against a backdrop of devastating floods in April that savaged the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Easter Cape and killed nearly 500 people, destroyed 4,000 homes and displaced 40,000 people.<\/p>\n

As the conference opened, Guy Ryder, the Director General of the International Labour Organization, which helped advise the government of South Africa on the organization of the conference, suggested that the rise in 8 million child laborers from 152 million to 160 million likely represented complacency and a loss of focus by global governments on the child labor problem and must be rectified. He noted increases in child labor impacting children under age 11 and urged delegates to redouble their efforts. \u201cWe need to increase our efforts, and pay particular attention to child labor in agriculture,\u201d said Ryder, who added that child labor advocacy is threatened by a \u201cperfect storm\u201d created by COVID\u2019s enduring impact, rising food insecurity, and debt crises that are expected to impact 60 nations in the coming years.<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s president Cyril Ramamphosa delivered a stirring welcome<\/a>. He noted that his country\u2019s embrace of child rights is not just a matter of principle. \u201cThe assertion of the rights of children was a direct response to the deprivation, discrimination and deliberate neglect that had been visited on the black children of this county by successive colonial apartheid administrations,\u201d said Ramamphosa. \u201cChild labor perpetuate the cycle of poverty, denying young people the education they need to improve their circumstances. It condemns communities to forms of economic activity and labor that limit any prospect of advancement or progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi noted the particular challenge that the sub-Saharan African region is facing with the highest rates of child labor and one in five children are in child labor.<\/p>\n

Satyarthi urged listeners to embrace the idea that every single child can be protected from child labor. \u201cLet us march from exploitation to education,\u201d he urged, calling for children to have a \u201cfair share\u201d of resources. The amount needed to ensure all children have access to needed resources is only $53 billion \u2013 not much considering the wealth of many nations, said Satyarthi who also noted that the G7<\/a>, which is about to meet on June 26th, has never focused attention collectively on child labor. \u201cThis needs to change,\u201d he urged.<\/p>\n

The conference opened with a pledge by European Union (EU) Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen that the EU will create a new $10 million euro initiative to reduce child labor in agriculture. Child labor must return to the political agenda, she urged.<\/p>\n

The six-day conference, attended by 1,0000 delegates in person and an estimated 7,000 online, according to organizers, featured workshops and side events, and included three meetings every other day by separate groups of employers, workers, and governments. Readers can find a conference agenda here<\/a> with video links to many sessions.<\/p>\n

Twenty-four side events focused on many related topics including child labor in supply chains, a decent work agenda, youth-led activism, small-scale mining, livelihoods skills development, African priorities, partnership in Latin America to end child labor, due diligence legislation, data and research needs, labor inspections, artisanal fisheries and aquaculture, and a child-labor-free zone in Ghana. For a complete list and to view specific side events, please go to agenda, scroll each day\u2019s offerings and click links to the videos.<\/a><\/p>\n

Attendees learned a lot about specific intervention efforts, and the struggles many nations are engaged in, including Malawi, which has recently been hit by two cyclones and where there is a shortage of 50,000 schools \u2013 less than half of the children have access to education, said the nation\u2019s Education Minister Agnes Nyalongje. She pleaded for international help, noting that 12 years of sustained aid could create generational change in Malawi and fix its troubled education system.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to summarize the hundreds of hours of content but readers may get a sense from the CLC\u2019s twitter stream which included four to five dozen original tweets at @ChildLaborCLC.<\/p>\n

The conference\u2019s concluding \u201cCall to Action\u201d<\/a> document emphasizes the need for urgent action, because \u201cthe consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts, and food, humanitarian and environmental crises threaten to reverse years of progress against child labour\u201d. The document includes commitments in six different areas:<\/p>\n