World Day Against Child Labour 2022: All you need to know about history, significance and theme

World Day Against Child Labour is marked every year on 12 June. The day aims to raise awareness about the exploitation of children who are engaged in child labour. Children are classified as child labourers when they are either too young to work, or they are made to take part in hazardous activities that may have an impact on their physical, social, mental or educational development. The day also focuses on what more needs to be done to eliminate this practice. It aims to bring together governments and civil society organisations to combat child labour. History: The International Labour Organization (ILO) started observing World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 with an aim to highlight the plight of children who are the victims of child labour. The day serves as a catalyst to take forward the global movement against the practice. The ILO Convention No. 182, which deals with the worst forms of child labour as well as ILO Convention No. 138, that deals with the minimum age for employment, are the two main global conventions on the issue. What is the theme for this year? The theme for this year is “Universal Social Protection to End Child Labour”. The theme of the day focuses on increased investment in social protection schemes and systems to develop solid social protection mechanisms for protection from child labour. While significant advancement has been made in the reduction of child labour over the last two decades, the pace has slowed down over time, or even paused, like during the period 2016-2020. A total of 160 million children are still engaged in child labour, with some of them as young as five years old. Significance: The World Day Against Child Labour gives an opportunity to gain further support of individual governments as well as civil society, social partners and others in the campaign against child labour. According to the United Nations, one in 10 children aged five years and over, were involved in child labour worldwide at the beginning of 2020 – which is equal to an estimated 160 million children, or  97 million boys and 63 million girls. Africa has the biggest share of child labourers- 72 million. Several campaigns and seminars around the topic are organised on this day. The events aims to bring forward solutions to combat the global menace and ensure that children the world over have a happy and healthy life. Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.