First sparks

A sense of urgency to act together against child labour emerges during various encounters between Dutch development organisations, trade unions and their Southern partners. In this era, MV Foundation in India, a partner of Hivos and FNV Mondiaal, represents a new type of development work: rights-based, hands-on and lobby-savvy. In 1994 MV Foundation hosts a conference in Hyderabad to spread the message about the area-based approach to end child labour.

Dutch lobby takes off

Alliance2015

First EU grant

Spirit of Hyderabad

“The Hyderabad conference in 2004 was a turning point in our journey. It was the first time so many people in India got together to speak about child labour. We really changed the way people thought and talked about child labour. MVF used to be a local organisation, and this conference took us to a global level. We didn’t know how many people we should invite and Hivos said 200 would be enough. In the end registration went up to 5000! All the volunteers we had been working with also wanted to join. We asked the Indian Railway Company to give us discount to let all these volunteers travel to Hyderabad. And they did. They gave us 50% discount upon showing a voucher of registration for the conference. And the great thing was: the Railway Company had to give this order throughout all the railway stations in India, so the message reached all across the country.”
The Hyderabad conference is followed by exchange visits to Africa and Central America with child rights activists from Asia (led by MV Foundation) and teachers’ union leaders from Albania and Morocco. Stop Child Labour organizes regional conferences in Honduras and Kenya. These events are eye-opening for both hosts and visitors. They see that the Indian example could also work in other contexts. Initial scepticism is replaced by excitement.

Venkat Reddy
Director MV Foundation

Regional hotspots

EU campaign to the next level

Coalition grows

“At first our partners in Ethiopia and West-Africa did not think much of the feasibility of the child labour free zone approach in Africa. They believed child labour was such
a deep-rooted and ‘normal’ practice, that it would be too difficult to abolish it completely. The exchange visits really lit a spark. Once they had travelled to India to see how committed people managed to abandon child labour in their communities, they started to think: we can do this too. But in the African way, of course.“

Henk van Zuidam
Kinderpostzegels

Need to scale up

Stop Child Labour attends the ILO Global Child Labour Conference in The Hague with a large representation, including Southern partners, and manages to get the area-based approach and child labour free zones in the Outcome Document.

“Just prior to the 2010 ILO Global Child Labour Conference, we presented our findings about the correlation between child labour and decent work for adults based on input from trade unions and teachers’ unions from 10 countries. I remember we were sitting in this small conference room, writing and re-writing our lines for the Outcome Document. We had prepared this very well in advance, also in harmony with the Global March against Child Labour and other NGOs. We were so proud that our message was included in the Outcome Document. For me this was a real lobby milestone for Stop Child Labour.”

Mario van Luijtengaarden
FNV Mondiaal

Omar’s Dream

“As a trade union in agriculture we have employed different strategies over the past 17 years and have come to the realization that the integrated area based approach towards CLFZ is one of the most sustainable strategies that addresses root causes, empowers communities and ensures that systems are in place to address all forms of child labour whilst promoting decent work for all adults“.

Andres Addoquaye Tagoe
General Agricultural Workers Union

International visibility

Three international meetings:
1) The Stop Child Labour international conference in Kampala
2)The Stop Child Labour regional conference in Managua
3) The ILO Global Child Labour Conference in Brazil where Minister Ploumen mentioned the concept of child labour free zones in her key note speech as an effective approach to stop child labour.

“I remember the Kampala conference very well. Our Teachers Union partner from Morocco had managed to convince one of the representatives of the Moroccan Ministry of Education to attend this conference. Although he was skeptical at first, he really got his mind changed and returned with a great deal of enthusiasm.”

Trudy Kerperien
Algemene Onderwijsbond

Linking Child Labour Free Zones to private sector

Getting down to business

Stop Child Labour becomes a key party to the Dutch Agreements in the textile, gold and natural stone sectors. The coalition takes part in and leads multi-stakeholder projects with Dutch private sectors, supported by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).

Presence in Buenos Aires

This pledge is underwritten by the Dutch government representation that advocates for more support to projects such as child labour free zones. The joint lobby is successful: the importance of upscaling area-based, community-led interventions for eradicating child labour is recognized in the Final Declaration of the Global Child Labour Conference.

15th Anniversary

We have seen change happen, not only in numbers of children going to school instead of work, but also in many other aspects of social-economic development.

“It has been very inspiring and rewarding to see how we have been able to develop from a European campaign with one partner organisation in India into a worldwide programme with partner organisations implementing the area-based approach towards creating child labour free zones in varied and diverse contexts. We see that it is indeed possible to get all children out of work and into school as long as we work together around the norm that ‘no child should work – every child must be in school’. It is because of the strong commitment and tireless efforts of our partners and within communities that we have come so far. Together we can end child labour and bring about change in the communities and beyond, for the good of all, now and for the next generations.”