South Africa: President Cyril Ramaphosa is going to deliver the Keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 5th Global conference on the Elimination of Child Labour on Sunday, 15 May 2022.
The Conference takes place at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, from 15 to 20 May 2022, with the opening ceremony scheduled for 12h 30 on Sunday.
The government of South Africa and the International Labour Organisation are hosting this conference in South Africa for the first time.
However, there is progress in several regions, but 160 million children are still part of child labour. According to the ILO, numbers are rising, and the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to reverse years of progress.
The Global Conference will discuss good practices implemented by the different actors around the world and identify the gaps and urgent measures needed to accelerate the elimination of both child labour and forced labour.
This global conference will be going to include a total of 28 events, one-hour sessions in which delegates will share their knowledge and past experience related to the main topics addressed in the event.
The meeting will create on four prior Global Conferences, held in Buenos Aires (2017), Brasilia (2013), The Hague (2010), and Oslo (1997), which created attention to the problem, mobilised resources and established a strategic plan for the global movement against child labour.
This 5th Conference takes place constant with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, Target 8.7, which calls for the abolition of all kinds of child labour by 2025 and the dissolution of modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labour by 2030.
The week-long Conference brings together more than 4 000 representatives of government, trade unions, the private sector, civil society, regional and international organisations, as well as youth and children from all over the world for plenaries, presentations and side events.
