GENEVA, 10 February 2026 – The International Labour Organization (ILO) has launched the Child Labour Observatory (CLO), a centralized global platform compiling country-level information on child labour across all 187 ILO Member States. Established following the Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labour, the CLO serves as a one-stop hub for data, legislation, policies, and evidence of progress, aiming to accelerate efforts to eliminate child labour worldwide.
The CLO is designed to support decision-making and accountability for policymakers, researchers, governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, civil society, development partners, international organizations, and other stakeholders. It helps users track trends, compare national and regional progress, and identify areas where intensified action is needed. The platform is organized around three core pillars: context, providing official statistics and visualizations of children in economic activities and household chores disaggregated by age and sex; national legal frameworks, detailing minimum working age, hazardous work lists, and legal provisions related to the worst forms of child labour; and policies and plans, including national strategies, action plans, and programmes aimed at child labour elimination. All entries are linked to original sources to ensure transparency and traceability.
The Child Labour Observatory complements the ILO’s Forced Labour Observatory (FLO), which provides comprehensive data on forced labour and human trafficking. Together, the two observatories strengthen the global evidence base for understanding labour exploitation, guiding policy development, monitoring implementation, and informing programmatic responses. The FLO offers information on national and international legal frameworks, enforcement measures, prevention strategies, protection mechanisms, access to justice, and international cooperation.
Both observatories are practical tools for supporting evidence-based action. They facilitate policy formulation and review by benchmarking legal and policy frameworks and identifying gaps, enable research and analysis by comparing trends across countries and regions, and support responsible business conduct through due diligence, prevention strategies, and informed engagement across supply chains. Stakeholders are encouraged to explore the CLO and FLO to track progress, strengthen evidence-based decision-making, and contribute to coordinated national and international efforts to eliminate child labour and forced labour.
