Eliminating the Worst Forms of Child Labour in West Africa and Strengthening Sub-Regional Cooperation through ECOWAS

Executive Summary This proposed project seeks to contribute to national and sub-regional initiatives to combat the worst forms of child labour in West Africa. It has two main components: the first will support national efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, identified as the project core countries while the second aims at mobilizing sub-regional policy makers and improving sub-regional cooperation for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour among all fifteen member States of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). By linking these two components and through its strategies to foster knowledge sharing, the project will enable the project’s three core countries to serve as models and learning laboratories for the benefit of decision makers and other stakeholders across the sub-region. This project document represents a preliminary plan for implementation of the project strategy. The final project strategy/document will be refined and submitted to USDOL by January 2010. USDOL reserves the right to approve programme components after award, during this period of refinement of the project strategy. Component one: Project component one proposes a strategy, interventions and activities to assist Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria to eliminate child labour, with priority given to the worst forms by building a platform for broader actions especially by supporting the updated design and/or implementation of National Action Plans (NAPs). NAPs are strategic frameworks that identify and guide implementation of the measures necessary for time bound eradication of the worst forms of child labour. They are developed through participative processes which engage and commit the ILO’s tripartite partners (Ministries of Labour, and employers’ and workers’ organizations) and other relevant institutions and stakeholders at the national level (including government agencies outside of the Ministry of Labour) to pursue the provisions of the NAP. In Cote d’Ivoire, the Government finalised its NAP in 2005 but has requested ILO/IPEC assistance for a rapid update of the Plan, to translate (for the purposes of sharing with Anglophone countries in the region and with donors) and raise awareness about the plan for social and resource mobilization campaigns, and to build national capacity to implement its provisions, in particular, to strengthen the management capacity of the Child Labour Unit. In Ghana, official validation of the NAP is expected in early autumn 2009. The Government of Ghana has also requested ILO/IPEC support for strengthening the capacity of national, regional and local public servants, the social partners and other major stakeholders (in particular, the Ministry of Labour, the Child Labour Unit and members of the National Steering Committee) to perform their respective roles as prescribed in the NAP. In addition, it requested support for scaling up existing intervention models to become sector wide initiatives and for the establishment of an effective NAP monitoring and evaluation system. In Nigeria, ILO/IPEC will engage tripartite partners to update an existing draft NAP and undertake the process necessary for its official validation at the federal level. In addition, the project will respond to a request by the Ministry of Labour to support a national awareness campaign that links promoting education for all with a campaign on the hazards of child labour. This project will also coordinate and link its efforts with two global projects: SAP-FL and the USDOL-funded project, Cooperation to End Child Labour in Agriculture to leverage knowledge-sharing and achieve the greatest impact. The project will implement direct action on the elimination of the worst forms of child labour in two of the three targeted core countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, with a special focus on implementing interventions already developed and tested or developing to fill the existing

Project symbol

RAF/09/51/USA

Admin unit

CO-Abidjan

Start date

30/09/2009

End date

30/04/2014

Total allocation

7950000

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

7630003

Development Partners

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

Country/Countries

Africa - regional

Outcomes

Child Labour