The project aims to prevent labor exploitation by improving the implementation of worker-driven social compliance systems that promote labor rights and acceptable conditions of work, including the elimination of forced labor in supply chains. The project will be piloted in the Indonesian palm oil sector to create a model for robust social compliance systems.

The Research to Action II initiative will improve information-sharing between researchers and decision makers on child labor, forced labor, and other labor rights issues. It will strengthen statistical and research capacities of partner governments and other stakeholders, produce research and research tools, and coordinate with policy makers on a shared research agenda to advance labor rights, with a focus on child labor and forced labor.

The RISE project works with governments, workers, and employers to respect, promote, and realize workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights globally.

The goal of this project was to research, identify, and develop indicators of progress being made in high-risk countries to eliminate child labor and forced labor in the cocoa sector; to research best practices utilized by the governments and the cocoa and chocolate industry, and to research the participation of worker organizations in addressing child labor and forced labor in the cocoa sector.

The project aims to build the capacity of civil society organizations around the world to advance the fight against child labor by raising the voices of workers, advocates, and other civil society representatives.

ILAB’s Global Accelerator Lab project will support broader and more effective action under Alliance 8.7, a global partnership to assist United Nations (UN) member States to end child labor, forced labor, human trafficking and modern slavery by 2030. 

The project will strengthen Alliance 8.7 partnerships to increase knowledge sharing among Pathfinder countries at the global level. It will facilitate dialogue on forced labor and child labor among regional institutions in East Asia & the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa and encourage regional and country ownership of initiatives to reduce child and forced labor. In addition, the project will support countries to achieve their commitments to eradicate child labor, forced labor, human trafficking, and modern slavery, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ Target 8.7,  by helping countries replicate promising practices and identify and implement new solutions.

The Global Trace Protocol Project by ELEVATE seeks to increase downstream tracing of goods made by child labor and forced labor. The project is designed to address the barriers in supply chain traceability, and result in the development and sharing of open, accessible and replicable tools that can advance the knowledge base on supply chain tracing and scale the adoption of traceability solutions by various actors in different sectors.

The STREAMS project seeks to increase downstream tracing of goods made by child labor and forced labor.  The project is developing a comprehensive analytical framework for use by a broad set of stakeholders to categorize supply chains and methods for tracing and validating supply chain connections.  The project will disseminate the supply chain tracing tools and methodologies to enable and promote adoption by diverse actors across sectors.

This project aims to promote increased use of forced labor research in policy and programmatic decision-making to help eliminate forced labor around the world. The project will achieve this by increasing knowledge through robust research on forced labor in the textile and garment sector and engaging decision makers and stakeholders to use this knowledge to take actions against forced labor.

The ATLAS project builds the capacity of governments to combat child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking by helping them strengthen their laws, regulations, and enforcement efforts and enhance coordination between law enforcement and social protection entities. After completing the implementation and institutionalization of interventions in Argentina, Thailand, and Paraguay in 2022, ATLAS will continue working in Liberia to help develop a new child labor law and advocate for its passage. The project will also support the dissemination, implementation, and institutionalization of best practices in support of labor laws and policies recently approved by the Government of Liberia.

This project enhances governments’ capacity to create, implement, and monitor the application of labor laws by working with ministries of labor, labor judges, and other judicial labor authorities. It seeks to use data collected from labor inspections to identify gaps that facilitate violations and to support legal reforms to address them. The project also uses data analytics to identify and combat labor inspection corruption, waste and inefficiency, and identifies regional inspection units in need of training and capacity building.

Workers and civil society organizations help to supplement and support government labor law enforcement efforts by proactively identifying potential labor violations and filing justiciable complaints with the appropriate authorities.  This project works in U.S. trade partner countries to improve labor law enforcement, as well as compliance with labor-related U.S. trade provisions, by improving the involvement of workers and civil society organizations in this process.

The Research to Action (R2A) Project applies rigorous research methods in an effort to accelerate global action against child labor and forced labor. The project seeks to help policymakers and practitioners access relevant research and evaluation tools, identifies key knowledge gaps, and facilitates the development of a global research agenda to guide new policy-relevant research efforts. To that end, the project also seeks to broaden and diversify the researcher pool, increasing both the number and capacity of researchers working to shed light on these abusive labor practices.

The United States is the leading importer of coffee, with Brazil and Colombia as the top suppliers. But before that coffee reaches our cups, tens of millions of workers globally select, pick, and process the beans. Many of those workers are children – toiling in the fields rather than learning in school. To address this, the COFFEE project is supporting coffee workers and communities, bringing their voice, concerns, and solutions to the table. The project is helping businesses to establish systems to prevent, detect, and eliminate child labor, forced labor, and other forms of labor exploitation from their supply chains. COFFEE is also working with an international coalition of coffee buyers to collectively incentivize suppliers into compliance.

The Reducing Incidence of Child Labor and Harmful Conditions of Work in Economic Strengthening Initiatives (RICHES) project integrated the issues of child labor alleviation and acceptable conditions of work into women’s economic empowerment initiatives. By putting a new toolkit directly in the hands of policymakers and service providers who work with women entrepreneurs, RICHES helped to ensure women-led enterprises can improve livelihoods responsibly without resorting to child labor or other harmful labor practices.

The United States supports the goal of bringing meaningful change to the lives of the 152 million child laborers and the 25 million adults and children in forced labor around the world by eradicating child labor, forced labor and human trafficking. USDOL’s MAP 16 project supports this goal through efforts to (1) improve the knowledge base on child labor, forced labor and human trafficking; (2) improve awareness of these issues through the use of data-driven techniques; (3) strengthen policies and improve the capacity of governments and other stakeholders to combat child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking through national, regional, and global initiatives; and (4) strengthen partnerships to accelerate progress in combatting child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking.

The project will help enhance the sustainability of child labor and forced labor program efforts by contributing to the overall body of knowledge on how best to assess child labor and forced labor interventions. The project will undertake assessments and develop practical tools, templates, and guidelines for monitoring cross-cutting sectors related to child labor and forced labor, including occupational safety and health of youth, youth employment, strengthened technical and institutional capacity on labor issues, gender and diversity, persons with disabilities, migration, and sustainability.

The Promoting Apprenticeship as a Path for Youth Employment Project (GAN) worked directly with employers, workers’ organizations, and governments to help increase the number of apprenticeship opportunities for vulnerable youth in Argentina, Costa Rica, and Kenya. The project created and strengthened private sector networks in support of apprenticeship and other types of work-based training, such as internships, in all three countries. It helped employers launch quality work training programs while ensuring these programs were accessible to disadvantaged youth.

In 2016, the Department of Labor (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT) in the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), and funded contractor Mathematica to develop Resources for Quantitative Surveys on Child Labor. The goal of this project was to identify challenges and develop accessible guidance related to sampling, data collection and analysis for researchers. The resulting resources and videos can be used by researchers, including OCFT grantees, who want to conduct household-based surveys to understand the nature and prevalence of child labor in a given geographic area.

This Department of Labor-funded study arose from ILAB’s learning agenda. It contributes to the labor evidence-base to inform ILAB grantee’ data collection design, analysis and reporting.

Note: this project was funded by the he DOL Office of the Chief Evaluation Officer and no ILAB funds were used.

Our impact evaluation projects use rigorous quantitative techniques to evaluate the impact of interventions on reducing child labor, forced labor and human trafficking—part of a broader ILAB effort to build rigorous evidence on what works to secure and protect the rights of children and adults. Such evaluations support our partner governments’ evidence-based policymaking efforts, and also help identify proven strategies to inform ILAB’s future investments in global programs to combat child labor and forced labor.

This global, multi-country project sought to improve occupational safety and health issues of young workers, and to promote a culture of prevention of occupational illness and injury.  Programming placed a particular focus on those aged 15-24, who, as they join the workforce, may be positioned to contribute to a sustainable and prevention-focused OSH culture.    

Our impact evaluation projects use rigorous quantitative techniques to evaluate the impact of interventions on reducing child labor, forced labor and human trafficking—part of a broader ILAB effort to build rigorous evidence on what works to secure and protect the rights of children and adults. Such evaluations support our partner governments’ evidence-based policymaking efforts, and also help identify proven strategies to inform ILAB’s future investments in global programs to combat child labor and forced labor.

Our impact evaluation projects use rigorous quantitative techniques to evaluate the impact of interventions on reducing child labor, forced labor and human trafficking—part of a broader ILAB effort to build rigorous evidence on what works to secure and protect the rights of children and adults. Such evaluations support our partner governments’ evidence-based policymaking efforts, and also help identify proven strategies to inform ILAB’s future investments in global programs to combat child labor and forced labor.

Our impact evaluation projects use rigorous quantitative techniques to evaluate the impact of interventions on reducing child labor, forced labor and human trafficking—part of a broader ILAB effort to build rigorous evidence on what works to secure and protect the rights of children and adults. Such evaluations support our partner governments’ evidence-based policymaking efforts, and also help identify proven strategies to inform ILAB’s future investments in global programs to combat child labor and forced labor.

Our impact evaluation projects use rigorous quantitative techniques to evaluate the impact of interventions on reducing child labor, forced labor and human trafficking—part of a broader ILAB effort to build rigorous evidence on what works to secure and protect the rights of children and adults. Such evaluations support our partner governments’ evidence-based policymaking efforts, and also help identify proven strategies to inform ILAB’s future investments in global programs to combat child labor and forced labor.

Our impact evaluation projects use rigorous quantitative techniques to evaluate the impact of interventions on reducing child labor, forced labor and human trafficking—part of a broader ILAB effort to build rigorous evidence on what works to secure and protect the rights of children and adults. Such evaluations support our partner governments’ evidence-based policymaking efforts and also help identify proven strategies to inform ILAB’s future investments in global programs to combat child labor and forced labor.

The project will provide a conceptual and structural framework for a global effort, facilitated by ILO-IPEC and implemented through the IAP, to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in agriculture.