The joint report between the ILO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), “Children’s Labour: 2020 Global Assessments, Trends and the Road Forward” – which was released on the eve of the World Day Against Child Labor on 12 June 2021- reported an increase in child labor around the world to 160 million children, an increase of 8.4 million children during the past four years. The report warned that “globally 9 million additional children are at risk of being pushed into child labour by the end of 2022 as a result of the pandemic” and that “progress towards ending child labor has stalled for the first time in 20 years…” This contradicts the plans and decisions that have been put in place aimed at putting an end to this problem… Whereas on the 25th of July 2019, during its 101st plenary session, the General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution declaring 2021 the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour, and requested the ILO to take the lead in implementing it. It stressed that this International Year “presents a unique opportunity to bring about efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goals 8.7 to end all forms of child labor by 2025.”
Between the goals that are set and what world leaders are working on to fulfill the promises of 2030 and what is being achieved, there is a huge gap that is translated by their statements, “We are losing ground in the fight against child labour, and the last year has not made that fight any easier,” (Henrietta Fore: Executive Director of UNICEF). These statements come, announcing their failure to solve the problems facing humanity and the inability of their laws and constitutions to make it happen, so their masks fall to reveal the true face of their corrupt capitalist system. What child rights are they talking about? What do they preach? What have they accomplished for the children of the world over these decades? Have their conditions improved and guaranteed their rights to health, education, a clean environment and a decent life?
Where are these organisations with regards to the starvation that the children of Yemen are suffering from? Where are they with regards to what the children of Iraq complain about as a result of the conflicts and disputes? What did they offer to the children of Syria who were pushed by the barrel bombs of the butcher of Ash-Sham and his bombs to flee and seek refuge in countries where they thought they would find security and sanctuary, but instead found hell in which they would burn from the fire of poverty, hunger and fear? Where are they with regards to these conditions that drive these children to work in order to provide for the needs of their families? Have they found out the real reasons that prompted this segment to work? Will it solve the problem of poverty? Will it end wars and ensure a safe life for children? In their regular meetings, these organisations stand to evaluate their planned actions, yet the results are shameful, and their reality is in vain – even if they achieved some insignificant achievements – so they search for excuses to justify their failure; and in every evaluation of what they have accomplished, they look for hangers to attribute their failures and defeat to in their path towards achieving sustainable development. The Coronavirus pandemic is not the first hanger on which their failures in achieving the goals they set has been hung. This reveals the weakness of a system that is unable to solve humanity’s problems, and it is time for it to step down from leadership and hand it over to the System of the Lord of the Worlds, which alone can make people happy.
Women’s Section in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
Press Release
9 Dhu al-Qi’dah 1442 – Sunday, 20th June 2021
No: AH / 041 1442
(Translated)