Credit: Kay Chernush
Millions of children are not in school today because they are forced to work. Children as young as 5 years old are part of the global workforce. In factories and in fields, children work up to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
The Solidarity Center partners with unions around the world that are championing and negotiating economic benefits in the workplace which often enable adult workers to support their families without sending their children to work. Through collective bargaining with employers, unions also can bargain for worker access to schools or daycare facilities.
The Solidarity Center also joins with advocacy partners like the Child Labor Coalition and Global March Against Child Labor to champion legal and regulatory means to end child labor and with human rights organizations to address the structural conditions that lead to child labor. For instance, together with coalition partners in the Cotton Campaign, the Solidarity Center worked for an end to child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields where government-run cotton harvests have forced citizens of all ages to toil each fall.
Uzbek human rights defender Elena Urlaeva was released from a psychiatric hospital in Tashkent yesterday where she was imprisoned for 23 days with neither her consent nor a court order to forcibly treat her, according to the Cotton Campaign. Urlaeva’s release follows...
When the employer of a migrant domestic worker takes her passport and refuses to return it if she seeks to leave, that is forced labor. When a family works at a brick kiln to pay off a debt, their children prevented from attending school, that is forced labor. When...
Millions of workers in the global economy have been disenfranchised from their rights, either tacitly or deliberately by governments, exacerbating “global inequality, poverty, violence and child and forced labor,” says Maina Kiai, United Nations Special Rapporteur on...
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Through individual case studies and legal analysis, When the Job Hurts demonstrates the need for domestic workers in South Africa to receive the same coverage under the country's job safety and health compensation law as other workers. Download report.
Freedoms on the Move, a new report by Solidarity Center and CIVICUS, makes clear that many migrant workers and refugees want to have a say in their communities and their workplaces, and in the decisions that affect their lives—and is an urgent call to action for...
A Solidarity Center legal analysis shows the proposed ILO convention on gender-based violence and harassment at work is necessary because no global binding instrument exists that comprehensively addresses violence and harassment in the world of work, including...
While studies have shown the prevalence of violence against women at home and in their communities, no comprehensive data exists to document the extent of gender-based violence (GBV) at work. To better understand GBV at work, 23 activists and female leaders of workers...
While studies have shown the prevalence of violence against women at home and in their communities, no comprehensive data exists to document the extent of gender-based violence (GBV) at work. To better understand GBV at work, 17 activists and female leaders of workers...
