At the meeting, tools that will strengthen the capacities of the actors in the care of migrant working children and adolescents in the region were validated, the main priority strategic actions were identified to address the issue by -sector, country and subregional level- and developed the main guidelines for the design of a monitoring program on this topic.

The meeting was constituted in the field of analysis between the officials of the Ministries of Labor, employers 'organizations and workers' organizations on the link between child labor and migration from the perspective of the main advances and challenges that the placement of this topic has in the agenda of the countries and sectors.

One of the reasons that prompted this meeting was the need to reflect on migration and its link with exploitation and child labor, a perspective that is a pending issue in the debates on migration and protection of children's rights and that translates into in the existence of fragmented policies that fail to protect or guarantee development opportunities for children and adolescents. The workshop was also attended by guests from international organizations such as the International Organization for Migration, IOM, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, and the International Labor Organization, ILO *.

The meeting was opened by the Director of the ILO Office for Central America, Haiti, Panama and the Dominican Republic, Carmen Moreno González, who highlighted the importance of the activity and expressed her organization's commitment to the social actors in the region They work on the formulation of policies that maximize the benefits of labor migration and help prevent people from suffering abuse and exploitation in this environment, with special attention to the most vulnerable groups, such as children and adolescents. 

Globally, an estimated 232 million people are international migrants and at least 740 million are internal migrants in their own countries.

Central America is not excluded from this phenomenon and given its geopolitical context, it is a region with long-standing migratory flows, characterized by a growing participation of girls, boys and adolescents who travel both alone and with their families, mainly to the United States. but also among the countries of the subregion, and internally within their own countries. 

* To contribute to information and capacity building on how to address the link between child labor and migration, the ILO, through the IPEC Program, has launched the project “Prevention and eradication of child labor and its worst forms in the population. migrant children in the countries of the Northern Triangle and Nicaragua ”.

The project is also part of the Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labor, made up of 26 countries, which have identified the link between migration and child labor as one of the challenges of priority attention and a factor of acceleration to achieve the goals eradication of child labor and its worst forms by the year 2025. The project is also part of the ILO's contribution to the actions of the RCM ad hoc group, specifically in relation to migrant working children, in coordination with the group United Nations agency that supports it (IOM, UNICEF and UNHCR).