The Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean free of child labor, with the support of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), carried out the side event “Put an end to child labor by strengthening the intersectoral response in the territory ” . This was held within the framework of the III Meeting of the Regional Conference on Social Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Mexico and organized by ECLAC, the Government of Mexico and the United Nations Development Program ( UNDP).

The event aimed to: 1) share a vision of the reality of child labor from the perspective of inequality, and 2) show the lessons learned and good practices of the successful interagency collaboration carried out to accelerate the achievement of goal 8.7 in the region from the UN System, in particular between ECLAC and the ILO.

Laís Abramo, Director of ECLAC's Social Development Division, argued that child labor is the result of chains of inequality that affect children and adolescents throughout their life cycle. He emphasized that it is necessary to understand the prevention and eradication of child labor and the protection of permitted adolescent labor as a constitutive part of comprehensive social protection systems. He also added that -to advance in this process- it is necessary to strengthen intersectoral articulation policies from the national to the local level.

In his intervention, Juan Hunt, Regional Director ai of the ILO for Latin America and the Caribbean, referred to the three aspects in which the UN System can make a differential contribution to the achievement of target 8.7. The first is the strengthening of policy coherence, given that the UN agencies, due to their mandate and powers, have a high potential to promote coordinated actions between different levels and sectors. The second is the expansion of alliances and promoting networking, due to its ability to convene various actors. The third is the improvement of knowledge and generation of evidence at the local level of the countries, an example of this has been the joint development between ILO-ECLAC of the Child Labor Risk Identification Model (MIRTI), a statistical tool that seeks to provide information and evidence for decision-making in intersectoral, inter-institutional and multilevel policies from a preventive approach to child labor to accelerate its eradication by 2025.  

This space also had the participation of representatives from Mexico and Colombia, members of the Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean free of child labor who to date have implemented the MIRTI and who were able to share the main contributions of the model in their countries. 

In this regard, Omar Estefan, General Director of Social Welfare of Mexico, highlighted that his country was the first to launch MIRTI territorially, which has been institutionalized. He stressed that this tool has made it possible for the first time to have information disaggregated by municipalities to better identify the actions that each agency in its area of ​​competence can carry out. 

For his part, David Zamora, Secretary of the Municipal Economy of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas-México, the first town in which the 2nd phase of MIRTI implementation has begun, said that one of the main lessons learned was the need to learn to organize and take advantage of available information. In addition, he stressed the existence of political will at the national and local level, and the importance of making it official with public policy actions. Finally, he recognized the value of linking with the social sectors. 

On behalf of Colombia, Tatiana Buelvas, Secretary General of the Department for Social Prosperity, mentioned that the MIRTI contributes to the National Family Welfare System (SNBF) because, among other things, it increases the effectiveness of the prevention of problems, as it guides the execution of targeted actions, reduces the processes of reestablishing rights by preventing violations and evidencing specific situations of the situation of children and adolescents.