World Day Against Child Labour - 12 June

Every year on June 12 the World Day Against Child Labor is observed to raise awareness of the plight of child laborers world-wide. Hundreds of millions of girls and boys around the world are affected.

Around the world, large numbers of children are engaged in paid or unpaid domestic work in the home of a third party or employer. These children can be particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Their work is often hidden from the public eye, they may be isolated, and they may be working far away from their family home. Stories of the abuse of children in domestic work are all too common. On the 2013 World Day Against Child Labour the ILO calls for:

1) Legislative and policy reforms to ensure the elimination of child labour in domestic work and the provision of decent work conditions and appropriate protection to young workers in domestic work who have reached the legal working age.

2) Ratify ILO Convention No. 189 concerning decent work for domestic workers and its implementation along with the ILO’s child labour Convention. 1

3) Action to build the Worldwide movement against child labour and to build the capacity of domestic workers organizations to address child labour.

What do people do ?
Every year, numerous events are held around the world on June 12 to mark the World Day Against Child Labor and call attention to the problem.

Public Life
The World Day Against Child Labor is a global observance and not a public holiday.

Background 
Child labor is especially rampant in many developing countries - but even in industrialized nations many children are forced to work. According to UNICEF, children in the United States “are employed in agriculture, a high proportion of them from immigrant or ethnic-minority families.” There have also been a number of incidents of westerns companies exploiting child laborers in developing countries to save production costs.


In 2011, there were an estimated 215 million child laborers in the world - 115 million of which were involved in hazardous work. To combat child labor around the world the International Labour Organization (ILO) initiated the World Day Against Child Labor in 2002.