To contribute to developing national capacities for ending the WFCL in Cambodia by 2016. “Towards Twenty Sixteen: Contributing towards Ending the WFCL in Cambodia”

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Of Cambodia’s population of 14.4 million , 35% live below the poverty line , pushing poor families to frequently seek means by which to cope with food and income shortages. One of these means is child labor (CL). More than 50% of children are economically active by the age of 10 and it is estimated that this will increase as the population is expected to pass 15 million by 2010. Youths in the labor market are estimated at around 3.15 million. Healthcare cost is one of the reasons for selling assets and becoming landless and the need to pay off debts was a major factor cited by girls who have entered into child domestic labor and are sexually exploited . Cambodia has one of the highest female labor force participation rates in the region at 73.5% among those over the age of 15, but women are often in low-paid, unskilled positions and are vulnerable to many forms of exploitation in the work place. Only a third of the labor force has completed primary school (grade 6) or higher and there is still a lack of schools with complete levels from grades 1-6. Those that do have complete levels are far from the villages and many poor families cannot afford the practical cost of sending their children to school. This leads to a high dropout rate, at 12-16% in the poorest provinces, with many drop-out children going into child labor. Cambodia has ratified Conventions 138 and 182 and has integrated child labor as an indicator in its National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) 2006-2010 and the Cambodian Millennium Development Goals (CMDGs) 2015. The CMDGs target a reduction of CL from 16.5% of the working children population in 1999 to 13% in 2005 and to 8% in 2015 among children aged 5-17. The percentage of WFCL against the total population of working children is at 16.72%, with the total number estimated at 253,475. Considering Cambodia’s achievements with regard to CL in the last few years, appropriate technical and financial resources can support the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) to attain the global goal endorsed by the ILO of the elimination of all the WFCL by the year 2016 through its National Plan of Action Against the Worst Forms of Child Labor (NPA-WFCL). ILO-IPEC through its projects in Cambodia, particularly the TBP-SP Phase I, has consistently provided assistance to the RGC’s efforts to eliminate child labor. The Mid Term Evaluation (MTE) of the SP to NPA Phase I highlighted several gaps in the support required for the implementation of the NPA WFCL. These gaps were: weaknesses in translating law and policy into operational systems and enforcement of laws and policies; limited reach of awareness raising efforts, and mobilization of workers, employers, civil society networks and inter-agency collaboration; need to address the growing incidence of urban child labor; improving targeted interventions in educational provisions, income-generation and youth employment aligned with poverty reduction measures; need to extend/ expand geographical spread of interventions against CL and the lack of an ILO-IPEC sustainability strategy; improvements on the strategies utilized in SP Phase I and strengthening and replication of several good practices identified in SP Phase I; and, the need for continuing the Support Project to the NPA that would lead to addressing the gaps in the implementation of the NPA WFCL to enable the RGC to achieve the twin goals. The SP Phase II will contribute to the strengthened implementation of the NPA-WFCL by addressing the above identified gaps and replicating effective strategies and good practices of Phase I. Challenges in reducing and eliminating CL will be responded to through enabling environment interventions and targeted interventions within four immediate objectives: 1) National policy and legislative frameworks: By the end of the project, national frameworks to combat child labor are revised and aligned to achieve national and ILO targets to reduce child labor by 2015 and

Project symbol

CMB/08/50/USA

Admin unit

CO-Bangkok

Start date

30/09/2008

End date

29/12/2012

Total allocation

4310000

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

4084407

Development Partners

USA, United States Department of Labor, Bureau for International Labor Affairs, Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor and Human Trafficking

Country/Countries

Cambodia

Outcomes

Child Labour