The MV Foundation in Andhra Pradesh

An inspiring partner in the campaign is the
M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation (MV Foundation) in India. Its approach is based on a firm conviction that child labour needs to be abolished completely and that all children in the 5-14 years age group must be in school.

The MV Foundation is based in Andhra Pradesh in Southern India and has been working with community groups, parents, employers and governments officials in an effort to remove children from work and enrol them in school. Over the past 10 years, the Foundation has worked in over 6,000 villages. As of January 2012, 1 million children have been enrolled and retained in schools and over 1,000 villages are now child labour free.

The MV Foundation began to work in the area of child labour in 1991 and has grown into a large organization employing a wide range of strategies to achieve its objectives of eradicating all forms of child labour and universalizing education. Its strategy exists in broad mobilisation – creation of a social norm against child labour – cooperation with a range of stakeholders, including parents, teachers, trade unions and employers.

Facts about Child Labour

According to the definition of the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are about 218 million child labourers in the world today.

126 million children work under dangerous circumstances
191 million child labourers are between the ages of 5 and 14, and 74 million of these work under dangerous circumstances
About 69% work in agriculture
About 20% work in services
About 10% work in industry
For every Euro we invest in education, we will earn back seven Euro in terms of economic growth (ILO)

For more information about the campaign, please visit:
www.stopchildlabour.eu

Stop Child Labour - School is the Best Place to Work

The Stop Child Labour campaign is a joint lobby, education and awareness raising campaign that seeks to eliminate child labour through the provision of full time formal education. Hivos has been leading the campaign during the first two EU co-financed phases and continues to do so with IBIS, Cesvi and People in Need.

The campaign has four guiding principles:

Principle 1:
Child labour is the denial of a child’s right to education
The elimination of child labour and the provision of full time formal education are inextricably linked. The focus of attention must be to actively integrate and retain all ‘out of school’ children into formal education systems. Children have the right to education at least until the age they are allowed to work which is 15 (while developing countries can choose 14). In addition efforts must be made to remove all barriers to local schools as well as ensuring the necessary financial and infrastructural support for the provision of quality education.

: credit: Welthungerhilfe

Principle 2:
All child labour is unacceptable
The Convention on the Rights of the Child along with a host of other international agreements unequivocally affirm the right of all children to live in freedom from exploitation. Approaches to the issue have tended to prioritize and segregate solutions to different types of child labour depending on certain categories. These range from children working in hazardous industries to children doing so-called non-hazardous work -including domestic work- but missing out on school.
The Stop Child Labour campaign believes that such distinctions, while helping to cast a spotlight on the worst abuses, tend to be too narrow in their focus and offer only partial solutions. Efforts to eliminate child labour should focus on all its forms, preferably aiming at all children in a certain community.

Principle 3:
It is the duty of all Governments, International Organisations and Corporate Bodies to ensure that they do not perpetuate child labour
All governments have a duty to ensure that they do not permit, or allow child labour to exist within their state. Furthermore they have a duty to ensure that state agencies, corporate bodies as well as their suppliers and trading partners worldwide, are fully compliant with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international agreements protecting the rights of the child.
As part of their corporate social responsibility, all transnational and other business enterprises using child labour should create and implement a plan to remove children from their workforce, including their supply-chain, and enrol them in full time education.

Principle 4:
Core Labour standards must be respected and enforced to effectively eliminate child labour
The eradication of child labour is closely linked to the promotion of other labour standards in the workplace: the right to organise and collective bargaining, freedom from forced labour, child labour and discrimination. A living wage, health and safety at work, and the absence of forced excessive overtime are also crucial. Child labour undermines the opportunities for adult employment and decent wages. Experience has shown that child labour is highly unlikely to exist when a free trade union is present and where core labour standards are respected.