A report says climate change is increasing the risk of child labour. The German delegation to the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the UN said that families are often forced into desperate activities such as child labor to survive due to the effects of weather-related disasters such as displacement and loss of livelihood. UNICEF sponsored Tuesday to mark World Day Against Child Labour.
It is clear that the global community’s goal of ending child labor by 2025 is no longer achievable. “If the global community does not take countermeasures, climate change will drive child labor into poverty,” explained ILO Director Germany, Annette Niederfranke. Children are already “being hit with full force by climate change,” said Christian Schneider, executive director of UNICEF Germany.
Effects of covid pandemic
According to the latest estimates by the ILO and UNICEF from 2021, approximately 160 million children under the age of 18 are affected by child labor worldwide. Half of them work in hazardous conditions. It said developments such as the effects of the Covid pandemic, ongoing conflicts and climate-related disasters are yet to be taken into account.
ILO and UNICEF explain that extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, cyclones and floods have hit people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia particularly hard in recent years and have increased child labor in particular. It is said that “political action at national and global levels to shape climate change and urgent change processes in a social and equitable manner” is necessary. “This includes, above all, decent work for adults and social security for parents and children.”
