The Promoting Quality Jobs in Infrastructure Development project aims to support safe, quality jobs on infrastructure project sites in Indonesia and the Philippines that are financed by Multilateral Development Banks. The project is part of the U.S. Multilateral Partnership for Organizing, Worker Empowerment, and Rights (M-POWER), and advances the goals of the  Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.

The ALFA project will strengthen the capacity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) sectoral bodies and member countries to coordinate and collaborate to address forced labor and abusive working conditions in the region’s fishing industry. ALFA will focus on ASEAN regional policy implementation, and increased engagement with the private sector, worker organizations, and civil society to mitigate forced labor and trafficking, and improve working conditions for a more sustainable, responsible and resilient fishing sector.

Despite the significance of the agriculture, fishing, and mining industries to the US’ trade relations with Philippines and Indonesia, these sectors are characterized by poverty and poor working conditions, especially at the lower tiers of the supply chain in rural areas. This projects aims to address these issues through a varied mix of coordinated and gender-responsive interventions to contribute to the strengthening of national frameworks (to include national and regional tripartite mechanisms) on labor, gender equality and OSH, and an enabling environment to promote compliance in these rural areas.

ACE seeks to strengthen governments and communities in Asia to address the worst forms of child labor, including the online sexual exploitation of children, and promote acceptable conditions of work through a unified and participatory approach in the Philippines and Vietnam.

The BuildCA2P Project works to build the capacity of Filipino civil society to more effectively detect and combat child labor and other labor abuses in the agricultural sector in Mindanao, Philippines. It leverages partnerships with academic and advocacy organizations to build a grassroots movement, empower vulnerable families, connect survivors to grievance mechanisms and services, and reduce the risk that children will be harmed by performing hazardous work in agriculture.

The SAFE Seas project works to counter forced labor and human trafficking on fishing vessels in Indonesia and the Philippines. The project works to strengthen government enforcement capacity and deepen engagement among fishers, the private sector and civil society. As a result, SAFE Seas helps to promote supply chains free of exploitative labor and a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.

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.

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.    

The ABK3 project raised awareness, strengthened advocacy, and built the capacity of community, government, and sugar industry stakeholders to reduce exploitative child labor in 11 sugarcane producing provinces in the Philippines. The project provided educational support to help children succeed and stay in school, and assisted families in increasing agricultural productivity, finding alternative sources of income, and linking to social protection programs in order to alleviate the root causes of child labor. ABK3 worked closely with the sugarcane industry and Government of the Philippines to integrate child labor prevention into policies, guidelines, and training to ensure that protections for children were addressed at every stage of sugarcane production.

Implementation of the International Labor Organization’s community-based training model, including:

• Developing community structures for microfinance support programs, management systems of community enterprises, and capital support for community corporations/cooperatives
• Providing skills training opportunities through needs-based vocational training and enterprise literacy and entrepreneurial programs
• Developing partnership agreements with government and non-government organizations and corporate linkages between the communities and the formal sector, especially with business corporations
• Implementing rural economic and income-generating policies and strategies at the grassroots level
• Creating public awareness of programs and strategies