[ad_1]
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), up to 300,000 children in Latin America and the Caribbean could fall into child labor due to the coronavirus pandemic. The economic impact of the health crisis could set the region back a decade in this regard, after 25 years of progress, the regional head of the UN agency, Vinícius Pinheiro, warned on Thursday in an online conference. The occasion was the beginning of the International Year for the Abolition of Child Labor.
Around 10.5 million children and young people between the ages of 5 and 17 work in the region, according to a joint report by the ILO and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) last June. According to 2016 figures, the proportion of workers among all children had fallen from 10.8 to 7.3 percent in the previous eight years. Now, the economic damage caused by the pandemic, combined with school closings and other factors, could mean devastating consequences for an entire generation, Unicef Regional Deputy Director Youssouf Abdel-Jelil said at the conference.
According to figures from the ILO report, around 152 million children and young people work around the world, for example, in agriculture, as domestic workers, in mining, in small industries or on the streets, most of them in Africa and Asia. The International Year for the Abolition of Child Labor aims to provide momentum to achieve the United Nations development goal of completely abolishing child labor worldwide by 2025.
