This 3rd Global Conference on Child Labour addresses the requirements of today through a protective system that is able to fight and extinguish, definitively, child labor in the world.
Under this perspective, the shared building of a new paradigm that goes beyond the recognition of children’s and teenager’s rights, under the inspiration of a new culture and a new aesthetic, good practices and new lessons, of a protagonistic and civilizatory nature, is the task required from us, public managers and agents, system operators, laborers and employers, governments and public and private institutions, the organized civil society and international organizations.
An agenda that includes labor, social welfare and social security public policies, focused on transversality, in social security, in the universality and commitment, which addresses budget and financial coverage, able to overcome the sometimes perverse logic of instability, especially in the labor and social welfare areas.
These are, ladies and gentlemen, the conditions!
In Brazil, starting with the Constitution in 1988, it was forbidden the night, dangerous or unhealthy labor of people under the age of 18 and any kind of labor for people under the age of 16, except as an apprentice.
The protagonism of the Ministry of Labor and Employment was essential for fighting and eradicating child labor, especially due to collective actions of the Labor Inspection Department, among government sectors, public and private institutions and international organizations through CONAETI, the National Commission for the Eradication of Child Labor when, in 2004, they came up with the Plano Nacional de Prevenção e Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil e Proteção ao Adolescente Trabalhador (National Plan for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor and Protection of Adolescent Workers), in compliance with Conventions 138 and 182 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), as a strategic instrument to reach the goal of eradicating child labor until 2020.
The commitment of Brazil with the public policy of eradicating child labor is shown in the Agenda Nacional de Trabalho Decente (National Agenda of Decent Work) – launched in 2006 in partnership with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and with organizations from employees and employers.
The Plano Nacional de Emprego e Trabalho Decente (National Plan of Decent Labor and Employment) launched in 2010 represents a regulation milestone, a reference and a vector for deepening the debate under the perspective of new breakthroughs and changes.
On the other side, the Regional Labor Superintendencies subject to the Ministry of Labor and Employment develop permanent prevention and inspection work. Since 2000, the labor inspection has already removed around 125,000 children and adolescents from situations of illegal labor in Brazil.
The Ministry of Labor and Employment has made agreements for technical cooperation and exchange of experiences with 20 countries on that subject. It is also one of the founders of the Fórum Nacional de Prevenção e Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil (National Forum for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor).
The Apprentice program, in partnership with the production sector, has shown to be an excellent opportunity to access decent work and labor and the income transfer programs such as Bolsa Família (Family Grant) and Mais Educação (More Education) of the Federal Government have been contributing expressly for the reduction of child labor in Brazil.
According to the most recent Pesquisa Nacional para Amostra de Domicílios (National Survey by Household Sampling), PNAD, the level of children and adolescents occupation in Brazil from 5 to 17 years old decreased 58.2% in the period from 1992 to 2012.
Because it believes in the strength and in the importance of international cooperation as a strategic social space, Brazil will bring around 1.5 million dollars in the South-South Cooperation Agreement for the two-year period of 2014-2015, focused on the Project “América Latina Sem Trabalho Infantil” (Latin America without child labor).
May this 3rd Conference not be just a set of intentions, but a remarkable milestone in the perspective of effective, human and necessary eradication of child labor around the world.
I’d like to finish by wishing you all good work and that you may not lack inspiration, symbolically translated in the word of Hannah Arendt in her magnificent work, The Human Condition:
“The smaller of actions, in the most limited circumstances, brings the seed of illimitation, since it takes only one action and sometimes only one word to change the whole.”
Thank you very much!