Stop Child Labour - School Is Way To Stop,

The Stop Child Labour campaign is a joint lobby; education and awareness raising campaign that seeks to eliminate child labour through the provision of full time formal education. 

Hivos has been leading the campaign during the first two EU co-financed phases and continues to do so with IBIS, Cesvi and People in Need.

The campaign has four guiding principles:

Principle 1: 
Child labour is the denial of a child’s right to education
The elimination of child labour and the provision of full time formal education are inextricably linked. The focus of attention must be to actively integrate and retain all ‘out of school’ children into formal education systems. Children have the right to education at least until the age they are allowed to work which is 15 (while developing countries can choose 14). In addition efforts must be made to remove all barriers to local schools as well as ensuring the necessary financial and infrastructural support for the provision of quality education.

Principle 2: 
All child labour is unacceptable
The Convention on the Rights of the Child along with a host of other international agreements unequivocally affirm the right of all children to live in freedom from exploitation. Approaches to the issue have tended to prioritize and segregate solutions to different types of child labour depending on certain categories. These range from children working in hazardous industries to children doing so-called non-hazardous work -including domestic work- but missing out on school.
The Stop Child Labour campaign believes that such distinctions, while helping to cast a spotlight on the worst abuses, tend to be too narrow in their focus and offer only partial solutions. Efforts to eliminate child labour should focus on all its forms, preferably aiming at all children in a certain community.

Principle 3: 
It is the duty of all Governments, International Organisations and Corporate Bodies to ensure that they do not perpetuate child labour.

All governments have a duty to ensure that they do not permit, or allow child labour to exist within their state. Furthermore they have a duty to ensure that state agencies, corporate bodies as well as their suppliers and trading partners worldwide, are fully compliant with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international agreements protecting the rights of the child. 

As part of their corporate social responsibility, all transnational and other business enterprises using child labour should create and implement a plan to remove children from their workforce, including their supply-chain, and enrol them in full time education.

Principle 4: 
Core Labour standards must be respected and enforced to effectively eliminate child labour
The eradication of child labour is closely linked to the promotion of other labour standards in the workplace: the right to organise and collective bargaining, freedom from forced labour, child labour and discrimination. A living wage, health and safety at work, and the absence of forced excessive overtime are also crucial. Child labour undermines the opportunities for adult employment and decent wages. Experience has shown that child labour is highly unlikely to exist when a free trade union is present and where core labour standards are respected.