Governments

How IPEC works with governments


The IPEC country programme approach:

Following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with a Government, IPEC support is based on a phased, multi-sectoral strategy with the following elements:

  • Encourage ILO constituents and other partners to begin dialogue and create alliances
  • Determine the nature and extent of the child labour problem
  • Assist in devising national policies to counter it
  • Set up mechanisms to provide in-country ownership and operation of a national programme of action
  • Create awareness in the community and the workplace
  • Promote development and application of protective legislation
  • Support direct action aimed at preventing child labour or withdrawing children from work
  • Replicate successful projects.
  • Integrate child labour issues systematically into social and economic development policies, programmes and budgets


Where country programmes are in place with a firm political commitment, IPEC action focusses on targeted projects in specific hazardous sectors or selected industries. These generally include workplace monitoring and social protection components and cover specific industrial sectors or geographical areas. They establish systems that withdraw children from specified workplaces, seek to keep the workplaces child labour-free, and ensure that children withdrawn from work and their families are provided with feasible developmental opportunities.

A yardstick of IPEC's impact is the extent to which it has initiated a process of change in the behaviour and work of governments, local communities and the international community-at-large.


Time-bound programmes:

Time-bound programme initiatives have provided further opportunities to strengthen the capacity of principal government agencies to play a critical role in creating an enabling environment for the prevention and elimination of child labour, particularly through collaborative partnerships.