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Importance Of Abolition Of Child Labour

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The effective abolition of child labour is one of the most urgent challenges of our time. Today, we have a better grasp of the size and the shape of the problem. More than 200 million child labourers worldwide, some 180 million are now suspected to be toiling in the “worst forms” of child labour – those activities that the global community has unanimously agreed are inexcusable under any circumstances and must be eliminated without de- lay. The persistence on such a scale of this violation of children’s basic human rights casts a shadow over us all. The past decade has seen an unprecedented convergence of thought and action around this cause, in recognition of the fact that the abolition of child labour is an issue at the heart of social and economic development and not at its margins. The ILO’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) has, over its ten years of existence, become the largest single technical cooperation programme of the Organization. The ILO will mark the first World Day against Child Labour on 12 June 2002. The physiological damage from exposure to different substances and work processes is relatively well known for adult workers,11 but more needs to be learned about the short- and long-term effects of different types of work on girls and boys of various ages and health status.12 Such understanding is needed in order to decide what types of work to prohibit for children under the age of 18 and to plan for appropriate

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