The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) is developing cutting edge innovative strategies to address forced and child labour.

Mr Mike Arthur, the National Coordinator, ICI, said such structures were being developed at the community level to help with the prevention of worst forms of child labour and reduce the exposure of children to risk of harm on farms.

“Our child labour monitoring and remediation system seeks to ensure effective peer education in the communities, collecting data and promoting remediation of identified children at risk or in child labour in the communities,” Mr Arthur said this on Thursday in Accra at the media launch of the 2019 World Day Against Child Labour.

This year’s World Day Against Child Labour is on the theme: “Consolidating Efforts: Children Must Work on Dreams not in Fields”.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the term child labour is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.

The World Day Against Child Labour, which falls on June 12, will be observed in Ghana at Effiduase in the Ashanti Region.

This year’s World Day Against Child Labour will look back at progress achieved over a 100-year of ILO’s support to countries on tackling child labour.

Mr Arthur said ICI understands what it means to be a child living in a condition where there was no hope for the future; declaring that every child had dreams which must be developed and harnessed for their tomorrow.

“As adults we once dreamt of becoming who we are today, and through hard work, dedication, discipline and focus a good number of us are able to get thus far,” he said.

“We must also not be oblivious of the fact that many of our friends though had dreams and aspirations as us, could not get far because of inhibiting circumstances such as lack of parental attention and guidance, lack of educational and social amenities in their environments, emotional and physical abuse, exposure to risk such as hazardous work activities and other worst forms of child labour.”

Mr Arthur said it was the responsibility of this current generation to ensure that an enabling environment was created for children to dream and blossom in health and psychological wellbeing.

He said this was so important because the challenges of today were even more uphill now than their days; adding that children need to be in school, and should not work for money or provide hazardous services to their parents to help their families survive.

“In ICI we put children first and this explains why since 2007 our work has focused on programmers which lead to promoting holistic child protection in cocoa-growing communities across the country,” he said.

“Our mandate does stop at just educating the communities, parents and children, we are also very active in the facilitation of community action plans and the strengthening of community child protection committees, child protection clubs, community service groups and school management committee.”

According to the 2017 global estimates of child labour, 154 million children are in child labour and almost half of them, that is, 73 million work in hazardous child labour.

This statistic reveals that approximately every one out of five children is engaged in child labor.

Mr Arthur said this was a precarious situation and calls for renewed commitment, innovative and integrated approaches to eliminate child labour and promote a culture of prevention on occupational safety and health for particularly young people.

Mr Bright Wireku Brobbey, a Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, who formally launched the event, urged the media to champion the fight against child labour in the country.

“The role of the media to protect children from all dangers particularly, child labour is non-negotiable,” he said.

Mr Emmanuel Kwame Mensah, National Programmes Coordinator, ILO Caring Gold Mining Project reiterated that the Sustainable Development Agenda’s deadline for eliminating child labour by 2025 was achievable.