Child labour

“A child helping at home is not automatically in child labour. A family setting does not automatically make the work safe. ”

Child labour is one of the most emotionally charged terms in responsible sourcing, and imprecision can weaken the response. Not every task performed by a child is child labour. Age-appropriate, light work that does not harm health, development or schooling may contribute to skills and family life.

The boundary depends on age, hours, hazardousness, educational interference and national law, interpreted against international standards. ILO Convention No. 138 establishes minimum ages for admission to employment and allows limited light work under defined conditions. Convention No.

182 requires urgent action against the worst forms, including slavery-like practices, commercial sexual exploitation, illicit activities and hazardous work likely to harm health, safety or morals.

Hazardous work should not be performed by anyone under eighteen, subject to the limited conditions allowed by national law and the Convention. The distinction is practical, not semantic. A fourteen-year-old doing a short, safe task after school may be in a different situation from a child carrying heavy loads, applying pesticides, using a machete, working at night or missing classes during harvest.

Recording only whether a child 'works on the farm' can overstate benign activity and understate serious harm. Assessment must examine the actual task and context. The latest global estimates, referring to 2024, indicate that nearly 138 million children were in child labour and around 54 million were in hazardous work. Agriculture accounted for about 61 per cent of the total.

The figures show progress from earlier estimates, but they also reveal how deeply child labour remains embedded in rural poverty, informal family production, weak education systems and labour-intensive supply chains. Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana makes the challenge concrete. NORC's assessment of the 2018/19 harvest estimated that about 1.

56 million children were in child labour in cocoa production across the two countries and roughly 1. 48 million were exposed to hazardous work. The numbers do not mean every cocoa farm uses child labour, nor that every task has equal severity. They show the scale at which household economics, production practices and hazardous tasks intersect. Audits alone struggle to see this reality.

Children may work seasonally, outside formal workplaces or on family farms that are not present during an announced visit.

Parents and children may fear losing market access or income if they disclose work. A zero-tolerance policy followed by immediate exclusion can therefore push the problem further from view. Effective systems need confidential identification, referral, remediation, school access and monitoring over time. Prevention also requires examining root causes without using them as excuses.

Poverty, inadequate adult labour, distant schools, migration, discrimination and low farm income can all increase risk. Companies do not control every cause, but purchasing practices, production expectations and programme design may influence household choices. A remediation plan that removes a child from hazardous work without replacing lost income or supporting education may not last.

The discipline is to protect the child rather than protect the claim. Organisations should distinguish permitted light work from child labour, prioritise hazardous and worst forms, and design responses around the child's best interests. Success is not a clean audit or a farmer removed from a list.

It is a child who is safe, learning and no longer compelled into harmful work, with conditions in place to prevent recurrence.

Practical application

Translate international standards into age- and task-specific rules for each sourcing country. Train field teams to assess hours, equipment, chemical exposure, load, timing and school attendance rather than asking only whether children work. Use confidential, child-sensitive channels and protect families from retaliation or automatic exclusion. Establish remediation pathways before cases are found.

Coordinate with schools, social services, worker and farmer organisations and specialist child-protection partners. Track the child's safety and education over time, address household income and adult-labour constraints, and evaluate whether purchasing or production requirements increase risk.

Why it matters

Child labour can damage health, development and education at the stage when those losses may shape an entire life. Accurate definitions allow organisations to focus protection on harmful work without criminalising safe, age-appropriate participation or driving abuse underground.

Common misconception

Any work by a person under eighteen is often labelled child labour, while work on a family farm is sometimes assumed to be harmless. Both positions are wrong. The assessment depends on age, task, hours, hazard, schooling and applicable law; family relationships do not remove risk.

Connections

Decent work concerns the conditions of adult employment and household security that can reduce child-labour pressure. Living income and living wage affect whether families can meet needs without harmful child work. Human rights due diligence requires prevention, identification and remedy, while forced labour applies where coercion or slavery-like conditions are present.

A question worth asking

Does your child-labour system make harmful work easier to disclose and remedy, or does fear of exclusion teach families to hide it more effectively?

Selected references

International Labour Organization. 1973. Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138). International Labour Organization. 1999. Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182). International Labour Organization and UNICEF. 2025. Child Labour: Global Estimates 2024, Trends and the Road Forward. NORC at the University of Chicago. 2020.

Assessing Progress in Reducing Child Labor in Cocoa Production in Cocoa Growing Areas of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. International Labour Organization. Child Labour in Agriculture: Guidance and Resources.