§ Mr. BrowneTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development what measures her Department is taking to assist developing countries to comply with ILO agreements aimed at preventing child labour. [111435]
§ Clare ShortThe United Nations provides a framework for promoting the rights of working children through its Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and through the conventions established by International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Last year, we provided $1 million funding to the ILO' s in-focus programme on child labour: the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC). This money is just part of DFID's collaboration with IPEC, which extends from particular operational alliances in India, Tanzania, South East Asia (for example), to engagement in IPEC policy making in Geneva.
In 1999, the Department for International Development, in collaboration with the Department for Education and Employment, worked strenuously to help reach agreement on the new ILO convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. The convention provides an accessible target for poor countries in relation to ending the worst abuses of children's rights in the most exploitative forms of child labour (including child pornography and prostitution, drugs trafficking and slave labour).