C. Sectors and geographies with child labour practices

1957), including “(b) as a method of mobilising and using labour for purposes of economic development.”

C. Sectors and geographies with child labour practices

In terms of economic domains, 70.9% of child labourers globally were engaged in agricultural work (108 million). The remaining child labourers worked in services (17.2%), and the others in some form of industry (11.9%) (International Labour Office, 2017a).

In terms of regional differences, the African continent is home to the highest number of child labourers, as well as the highest number of children performing hazardous work (see Figure 4). While Asia and the Pacific trail in second place, in absolute terms they do not have far fewer child labourers than Africa.

Figure 4: Child Labour and Hazardous Work by Region, Percentage and Absolute Number (in Thousands) of Children, 5-17 Age Range, 2016

Note: Bubble size is proportionate to absolute number of children in child labour and hazardous work in each region. Source: Global estimates of child labour: Results and trends, 2012-2016, (International Labour Office, 2017a), URL

Agriculture and industry are domains that have supply chains also reaching the EU: IPEC+ estimated that between 5-15% of child labourers are estimated to be working in global supply chains (ILO, 2017).

A study by Alsamawi et al. (2019) estimates the “extent to which child labour within a region is estimated to contribute to exports” (p. 19). Applying the symmetric input-output table method, the added value of products made with child labour destined for export is derived through information including “compensation of employees, gross operating surplus, and other taxes on production” (Alsamawi et al., 2019, p. 4).

Considerably more child labour occurs in production linked to domestic production and consumption than production linked to exports, as Figure 5 depicts. This is particularly the case in “regions where children in child labour are mainly involved in family-based subsistence agriculture" (ILO et al., 2019, p. 8). Furthermore, the “added value” of child labour in products destined for export varies from 12% in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia to 26% in Eastern and South Eastern Asia.

Figure 5: Estimated of Child Labour and Value Added for Exported Goods and Services and Domestic Demand by Region (2015)

Source: Measuring child labour, forced labour and human trafficking in global supply chains, (Alsamawi et al., 2019), URL

Drilling down further, particular industries of global supply chains are particularly exposed to child labour, as uncovered in a recent report by the ILO, IOM, OECD, and UNICEF, under the aegis of Alliance 8.7 (ILO et al., 2019). Depicted in Table 4, for each of the above featured regions, are the five exporting industries most at risk of having child labour present in their exported products. The column “By DIRECT contributions” counts only direct contributions in the final stage of production and the column “By INDIRECT contributions” counts only indirect contributions from upstream inputs of the supply chain. The table illustrates that child labour is a scourge that is found across regions and sectors, also where the practice is less well documented.