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The Worker Empowerment in South America project seeks to improve respect for labor rights in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru by strengthening democratic, independent workers' organizations in the agricultural, platform (gig) economy, manufacturing, and mining sectors.

The project aims to improve compliance with national laws related to internationally recognized labor rights in the port sector. These include, but are not limited to, the right to freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, prohibition against discrimination at work, elimination of forced labor and child labor, and rights to acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health.

Vamos Tejiendo aims to reduce the risk of child labor, forced labor, and other violations of labor rights by empowering vulnerable women and girls working in the production of unrefined brown sugar (panela) and the cut flowers sector and promoting a better understanding of labor rights.

This project works to improve the implementation of social compliance systems that promote acceptable conditions of work and the prevention and reduction of child and forced labor in palm oil supply chains in Colombia and Ecuador. It also disseminates best practices in social compliance systems in these and other palm oil producing countries, particularly Brazil and Peru.

This project is building the capacity of civil society organizations to more effectively detect and combat child labor and other unacceptable working conditions (OUWC) in artisanal and small-scale mines in Colombia. Pilares formed networks of civil society organizations and empowered local communities to build grassroots movements to improve working conditions and reduce the risk that children will be used in this harmful work.   

Colombia Avanza is building the capacity of civil society to more effectively combat child labor and other labor abuses in Colombia’s coffee sector. By raising awareness and connecting survivors of labor exploitation to services in two of the largest coffee-producing areas of Colombia, the project helps promote supply chains that are free of exploitative labor and that contribute to a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.

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.

This project supports the government of Colombia in meeting its commitments to the U.S. under the Action Plan associated with the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.

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.

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.