The Child Labour Report, released on Wednesday by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), estimated that 138 million children are still engaged in child labour, despite the UN’s goal set in 2015 to end child labour by 2025.
While current statistics show a decrease of 100 million child labourers since 2000 and 12 million since 2020, the numbers indicate that progress is unsatisfactory and slowing.
However, the significant decrease in child labourers signals hope for the future and provides assurance that the world has the “blueprint” to end child labour, according to UN reports.
Although there is a decrease in child labour across all regions, it remains concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for two-thirds of child labour worldwide.
Child labour is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood and poses risks to their health and development.
Of the 138 million child workers, 54 million are engaged in hazardous working conditions, such as mining, which contributes to lifelong health complications, reduced life expectancy, and poverty.
Children within child labour systems are often pulled out of school—if they have attended school at all—early in their childhood due to financial constraints on their families.
This deprives them of access to education, which compromises their future opportunities and those of future generations, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle of poverty and deprivation.
The UN considers improving the living conditions of parents a necessary prerequisite for ending child labour, according to the report.
It calls for a holistic approach that tackles the problem from all directions—namely, educational, economic, and social perspectives.
“The ILO looks at [child labour] in quite a holistic way because it is just as important [for] tackling child labour to ensure that adults have good working conditions, as poverty is really at the heart of child labour,” Benjamin Smith, a child labour officer at the ILO, told UN News.
However, despite the UN’s efforts to eliminate child labour, the dismal statistics paint a different picture. The report attributes this to shortages of funding for the mission.
“Global funding cuts threaten to roll back hard-earned gains. We must recommit to ensuring that children are in classrooms and playgrounds, not at work,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said.
 and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), estimated that 138 million children are still engaged in child labour, despite the UN’s goal set in 2015 to end child labour by 2025.){kind=link}