Eliminating Child Labour in El Salvador through Economic Empowerment and Social Inclusion.

Executive Summary The most recent information on child labour available in El Salvador shows that around 1 out of 10 children (e.g., 188,884 boys, girls and adolescents) worked in 2009. 73.3% of these were boys and 68% of children belonged to female-headed households. A significant percentage of Salvadoran population lives in poverty. At national level, 37.8% of households live in poverty; among these, 12% are in extreme poverty, while 25.8% are in relative poverty. In rural areas, 46.5% of households live in poverty. The predominant cause of child labour in El Salvador is poverty. However, this issue interweaves in complex ways with other factors, such as socio-cultural patterns, lack of governmental resources, poor law enforcement, weak labour monitoring and inspection, uneven government capacity particularly at local level. In addition, the education and employment training systems are unable to contribute to human capital formation and asset accumulation of the poorest of households. The country is currently under a difficult economic juncture. The contraction of the United States’ economy has had severe economic repercussions in El Salvador as a result of its heavy dependence on trade and remittances from the US and the fact that the United State accounts for 50% of Salvadoran exports. Thus, after the international financial crisis Salvadoran exports dropped by 16.5% in 2009 and remittances, which account for 17% of GDP, dropped by 10.3%. Economic contraction followed and for 2010 the country’s projected growth is nil. El Salvador has ratified the ILO Conventions No. 138 on Minimum Age and 182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour. During the past decade, with the United States Department of Labor (USDOL) support and ILO technical assistance, the country implemented two Time Bound Programmes to Eliminate Worst Forms of Child Labour and participated in several other ILO-supported initiatives implemented both at country and the Central American Subregion level. These projects laid the basis for a common multi-sector platform on which to plan and project future action against child labour. As part of its commitment to the ILO 2006 Decent Work Agenda, El Salvador developed a Roadmap to reduce child labour to 77,887 by 2015, and to eliminate child labour by 2020. Components of the Roadmap include fighting poverty; improving education and health; strengthening institutions and laws to protect rights; awareness raising and social mobilization, and generating knowledge and information for policy and enhanced monitoring of child labour. Building upon the foundation established by the "first generation" of projects, the current project intends to go further, integrating more closely child labour elimination concerns with anti-poverty, job-creation, education, and other social safety net policies and programmes funded by the national government. The current project’s objectives and strategy are consistent and aligned with the objectives and strategies proposed in the “Roadmap to make El Salvador free of child labour and of its worst form”, the Five Year Development Plan (2010-2014), which outlines the national strategy for implementing a Universal Social Protection System, and the ILO’s Global Jobs Pact Strategy for El Salvador. This strategy includes a portfolio of policies to promote employment, protect people and re-balance policies in line with the process of a more sustainable growth, and which has been designed as a response to the recent global economic crisis. The project will work in three levels of engagement: macro (national policies and institutional framework), meso (target municipalities and schools) and micro (child labourers’ households). At the macro level, national childhood, youth, and child labour issues will be linked to broader poverty reduction and national development efforts. The project’s national component will strengthen and deepen the capacity of various government ministries or entities (Labour, Economy,

Project symbol

ELS/10/50/USA

Admin unit

DWT/CO-San Jose

Start date

31/12/2010

End date

31/08/2016

Total allocation

11260315

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

11260315

Development Partners

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

Country/Countries

El Salvador

Outcomes

Protection of workers from unacceptable forms of work