United Nations Sponsors Project to Eliminate Child Labor in Mexico Noticias ONU
go to original June 16, 2023

A child shines shoes in Tabasco (Grieta)

An estimated 3.3 million minors are in these circumstances in the country. A UN agency has launched a project involving national, state and municipal officials, as well as employers and workers. June 12 was the World Day Against Child Labor.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), child labor is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, potential and dignity; that is harmful to their physical and psychological development; and that interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the possibility of attending classes, forcing them to leave school prematurely, or requiring them to combine study with heavy and time-consuming work.

The ILO estimates that one in ten children in the world today is engaged in child labor.

Since 2000, for almost two decades, the world has seen steady progress in reducing this scourge. But in recent years, conflicts, crises and the COVID-19 pandemic have plunged more families into poverty, forcing millions of children to resort to work in order to survive.

Elimination of Child Labor in Mexico

In Mexico, it is estimated that 3.3 million minors are in these circumstances, according to the National Survey of Child Labor (ENTI 2019).

In order to prevent and eliminate it in Mexico, the UN agency through its Office for Mexico and Cuba has launched, through technical cooperation with different institutions and countries, the project AccioNNAr, to combat child labor and forced labor, with the contribution of the U.S. Department of Labor.

It is federal in scope and is carried out in three states (Chiapas, Quintana Roo and Yucatan), working with federal, state and municipal authorities, as well as employers' and workers' organizations.

This project has three main objectives for the prevention and combat of child labor, forced labor and trafficking in Mexico:

• Generate greater use of data for the development of laws, policies and programs
• Increase the development and enforcement of laws, policies and programs
• Improve regional cooperation in the migration context of Mexico's southern border

In order to comply with the regional component, we will collaborate with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize for the protection of migrant children at risk of falling into some of the aforementioned scenarios and promote greater data exchange on this issue.

Read the full report at Noticias ONU

This material was translated from Spanish using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.

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