The Arab League: The issue of child labor is a high priority on our agenda

The General Secretariat of the League of Arab States confirmed, in a joint statement with the Arab Labor Organization, that the issue of child labor was and still occupies a priority on their agenda, as it represents a flagrant violation of children’s rights, and a major reason for impeding their education and their psychological, physical and mental development, with the phenomenon exacerbated by the Corona pandemic spread.

She pointed out that the League of Arab States, the Arab Labor Organization, the International Labor Organization and the Arab Council for Childhood and Development had prepared a regional study entitled (Child Labor in the Arab Countries) in cooperation with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and this study was launched in March 2019, and was approved by The Council of Arab Ministers of Social Affairs in its 38th session, and the Arab Economic and Social Development Summit in its fourth session, held in Beirut in January of the same year, to be a guiding document to support the efforts of member states to eradicate the phenomenon of child labour.

The statement indicated that an Arab symposium on the issue of "child labor and the Covid-19 pandemic" will be held next August, with the aim of identifying the measures to be taken so that the crisis does not become an excuse to push more children into the labor market, and to discuss how to preserve legislative gains and protectionist measures to reduce of child labor, and focus on developing the social protection system to include the neediest groups.

The Arab League and the Arab Labor Organization renewed their commitment to make more effort to work to stop the worst forms of child labor before 2025 in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, and what all international conventions and agreements approved to protect our future generations, and to work together to empower and prepare these generations for a different future. Its features are formed soon after the end of the pandemic.

The statement coincides with the celebration of the International Day against Child Labor, which falls on June 12 of each year, as the Arab League considered it a recognition by the whole world of the extreme danger this phenomenon poses, explaining that the most dangerous is that it comes and the world is still groaning under the weight of the Corona pandemic.