Side Event 6 - Addressing Child Labour in South Asia: Emerging insights from a cross-institutional collaboration

Deep institutional and sectoral collaboration is needed in order to engage effectively with the complex, systemic problem of child labour. Despite this, and even whilst the SDGs are premised on coordinated and integrated approaches, real collaboration and integration are challenging to achieve in practice. Yet it remains critical to bring together international / UN agencies that focus on addressing policy, legislation and large-scale data gathering, with research that delivers comprehensive analysis (which might not be read easily or used by policymakers) and with civil society, which engages with local communities and children engaged in child labour (often through small-scale programmes that are rarely studied for connection to broader policies). Actions to deepen collaboration and foster synergies across these actors can help accelerate commitments and solutions.  

This session will share insights into developing strong, collaborative approaches as well as lessons on promising approaches to building evidence on the root causes of child labour and innovative measures to addressing these, based on the experience of the multi-stakeholder FCDO-funded Asia Regional Child Labour Programme. Since 2018, this multi-level programme has been generating learning and shared understanding across institutions and sectors on tackling child labour in South Asia. It supports initiatives to build evidence on the drivers and root causes of child labour and pilots a range of innovative interventions to reduce the vulnerability of children and protect them from exploitation.