Chile presents National Strategy against child labor 2015 - 2025

07 de August de 2015

Crecer Felices is the title of the Strategy for the Eradication of Child Labor and Protection of Adolescent Workers 2015-2025 , an instrument that constitutes the framework of action to fulfill the objective of making Chile the first country in Latin America free of Child Labor .

Regarding the instrument, President Michelle Bachelet declared that “as a country we cannot continue to say that we are advancing towards development, if we do not take charge of this fact that, among other things, perpetuates inequality enormously, because a child who he works, he is at a disadvantage ”.

The Strategy assumes the commitment to mobilize all existing and potential social agents who work in this area. In addition, it combines the different efforts, both public and private, to work and carry out interventions in the matter.

The thematic areas developed in the Strategy are education, social tolerance, the circle of poverty, and information and knowledge. These axes contain specific associated interventions that will serve as a framework for national and regional action. On this basis, each one of the regions should establish a regional strategy that faces the reality of child labor according to its productive characteristics. In addition, operational plans have been established that order and prioritize the specific actions that each region wants to carry out in the next two years, which will be specified in activities and projects.

To monitor its application, the Strategy contains monitoring plans and indicators for each of the planned actions. The Observatory of the Child Labor Eradication Program annually monitors regional activities and biannual operational plans, in order to measure the degree of progress. In addition, an evaluation of the Strategy is planned every four years to measure the degree to which the proposed objectives have been achieved.

The Observatory against Child Labor also administers different services to execute the decentralized plans that are available to the regions. Among them is the possibility of applying to the Project Development Fund, attached to the Program for the Eradication of Child Labor of the Undersecretariat of Labor. National and regional investigations related to child labor are also carried out and made available to the regions. In addition, trainings on the subject are offered to regional committees, experts and the community in general. It should be noted that the Observatory plans to incorporate additional services as required and in line with the National Strategy.
The National Strategy specifies that the effects of child labor on education require special attention: 41% of girls, boys and adolescents who work declare that their school performance is low, very low or regular. In addition, there is a difference of nine points in the school attendance of girls and boys who are in child labor, with respect to the group that is not. Therefore, guaranteeing the correct development of the educational process of the girl and boy is the cornerstone of the responses that aim to overcome poverty and eradicate child labor.

"We want children to go to school, to enjoy with their family, to play, to dream, to generate social and family ties that are the basis of their future life," said the President, Michelle Bachelet. 

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