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President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver the keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour today, Sunday, 15 May 2022.
The Conference takes place at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, from 15 to 20 May 2022, with the opening ceremony scheduled for 12h30 on Sunday.
The government and the International Labour Organisation are hosting this conference in South Africa for the first time.
Despite progress in many regions, 160 million children are still in child labour. According to the ILO, numbers are rising and the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to reverse years of progress.
The Global Conference will discuss good practices implemented by the different actors around the world and identify gaps and urgent measures needed to accelerate the elimination of both child labour and forced labour.
The Global Conference will include 28 side events, one-hour sessions that will allow delegates to further share knowledge and experiences related to the main topics addressed in the event.
The conference will build on four previous Global Conferences, held in Buenos Aires (2017), Brasilia (2013), The Hague (2010), and Oslo (1997), which raised awareness of the issue, mobilised resources and established a strategic direction for the global movement against child labour.
This 5th conference takes place consistent with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, Target 8.7, which calls for the abolition of all forms of child labour by 2025 and the abolition of forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking by 2030.
The week-long conference brings together more than 4 000 representatives of government, trade unions, the private sector, civil society, regional and international organisations, as well as youth and children from all over the world for plenaries, presentations and side events.