In a side event at the 6th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labor in Morocco, Alliance 8.7 marked its 10th anniversary with a clear focus on what comes next: turning global commitments into real protection for children. The session brought together governments, employer and worker representatives, international agencies, business leaders, and survivor advocates around a shared reality. Progress is possible, but the world is still falling short, and child labor persists in too many communities.
Ten years in, and the work ahead
Ambassador Claudia Fuentes (Chile), Chair of Alliance 8.7, opened the event by thanking Morocco for hosting both the global conference and this anniversary gathering. She reflected on how Alliance 8.7 has grown over the past decade into a platform designed to accelerate progress toward SDG 8.7, ending child labor, forced labor, human trafficking, and modern slavery.
Her message was both hopeful and practical. Alliance 8.7’s strength, she noted, is its ability to bring together actors who do not always work side by side, support national leadership through the Pathfinder Country process, and strengthen collaboration across sectors. She also emphasized the Alliance’s growing commitment to centering survivor voice, not as a symbolic addition, but as a foundation for solutions that are credible and effective.
With development resources under strain globally, Ambassador Fuentes underscored the need to align funding and strengthen collective investment. She pointed to the Alliance 8.7 Multi-Partner Fund and highlighted the importance of complementary partnerships such as the Global Coalition for Social Justice and regional initiatives working to reduce child labor.
Global Leadership and Shared Priorities – Collective Progress and Shared Priorities Emerging from the Sixth Global Conference
The first dialogue focused on leadership, what it looks like when global commitments translate into concrete change for children and families, especially in Pathfinder countries.
Nour El Amarti, Acting Secretary-General of Morocco’s Ministry of Labour, brought the conversation to the heart of implementation. The question, she emphasized, is no longer why child labor must end, but how countries move from shared goals to measurable results in communities. Morocco highlighted the importance of coordinated governance across ministries and addressing root causes together, including education, social protection, decent work for adults, and responsible supply chains.
UN Special Rapporteur Prof. Tomoya Obokata reinforced that urgency with a call for sharper, more practical collaboration. He encouraged Alliance 8.7 to pursue more targeted, time-bound thematic dialogues, including on emerging challenges like informality and technology. Solutions, he stressed, must be built with those closest to the problem, children, parents, and local leaders. He also urged the global community to move beyond tracking laws and commitments and focus on what works in practice, including peer learning and accountability approaches. He emphasized the importance of using political platforms, including regional bodies and global forums, to strengthen momentum while addressing the deeper drivers that put children at risk, such as inequality, poverty, and discrimination.
Jacqueline Mugo, President of the International Organization of Employers, emphasized that progress requires deeper engagement with employers’ organizations and businesses on the ground. Companies shape supply chains, employment practices, and workplace conditions, and they can strengthen prevention and remediation when the enabling environment supports responsible business conduct. At the same time, she stressed that ending child labor means tackling root causes such as informality, weak access to quality education, and the shortage of decent jobs. In a time of limited resources, she called for building on existing tools and initiatives rather than duplicating efforts, and keeping the focus on outcomes in communities.
Rajeev Sharma, South Asia Sub-Regional Representative, Building and Wood Worker’s International, pointed to one of the most persistent barriers, the informal economy. Informality often means unclear employment relationships, weak enforcement, and limited social protections, conditions that increase vulnerability for families and raise the risk that children are pulled into work. He emphasized that social protection must be meaningful, not only “on paper,” but strong enough to help families withstand shocks. He also warned that climate impacts, livelihood disruption, and distress migration can increase risk, pushing families into impossible choices.
When asked to name one action most critical for turning commitments into results, the panelists’ answers converged on essentials:
- decent work for adults,
- stronger enterprise capacity,
- enabling environments to create decent jobs and formalize work,
- problem-solving grounded in local realities and evidence, and
- reliable access to education so children are supported to stay in school.
Donat Bagula, Secretary General at the Ministry of Labor and Embployment from the Democratic Republic of the Congo reinforced the need for shared leadership and real partnership, including meaningful youth engagement and survivor-centered policy. They also highlighted the importance of keeping pace with a rapidly changing technological environment that can shape new vulnerabilities and pressures for young people.
Conversation II: Partnership in Action – How Collaboration Delivers Change
The second dialogue shifted from leadership to partnership, focusing on what effective collaboration looks like when it moves beyond coordination and into sustained action.
Dağlar Taşci, Policy Advisor, International Affairs, Government of the Netherlands, and part of the Supply Chains Action Group, emphasized that no single actor can solve child labor alone. Governments must create enabling environments, and businesses must act responsibly, but lasting progress requires coordinated, multi-stakeholder cooperation. He shared an example from cocoa supply chains where public-private partnerships helped connect farmers to health insurance, reducing vulnerability and the economic shocks that can push families toward child labor. The Netherlands also urged broader engagement in the Alliance as a way to deepen learning and expand impact.
Fauziah Muthoni Wanjiru, Secretariat Member and the Safeguarding Focal Point Person at Survivors Network Kenya, delivered one of the clearest messages of the session: effective partnership starts with meaningful survivor engagement. Survivors should be partners, not invited only to speak, but involved from the beginning in shaping roadmaps, policies, prevention strategies, referrals, and services. She described how survivor engagement in Kenya’s Pathfinder process helped strengthen survivor-led organizing and improved survivor identification and connection to services, especially when barriers to participation are removed.
Parul Mehra, Protection Officer, IOM, representing the Migration Action Group, highlighted the connections between child labor, trafficking, and migration. Migrant children often face heightened risk, and those risks are frequently missed when institutions work in silos. The Action Group’s aim, she explained, is to address those blind spots through better research, policy, and programming that reflect how exploitation happens across migration routes and supply chains. She called for moving beyond coordination toward co-creation, including shared indicators, joint research agendas, and sustained cooperation with Pathfinder countries so no child, including migrant children, is left behind.
Bernd Seiffert, Decent Rural Employment Officer, Rural Transformation and Gender Equity Division (ESP), FAO, and part of the Agriculture Action Group, underscored that agriculture remains a critical frontier. He introduced the newly established Agriculture Action Group, building on long-standing collaboration among agencies and partners working to address child labor in agriculture through training, guidance, and country support. The Alliance can help ensure child labor in agriculture is addressed more consistently in Pathfinder roadmaps and national action.
Yan Wyss, Global Head for Social Impact and Human Rights, Nestlé, and a representative of the Child Labour Platform, emphasized purposeful collaboration and argued that the private sector is still too often overlooked. Implementing child labor monitoring and remediation systems across supply chains takes long-term investment, and progress is limited when company systems operate parallel to national systems. A key challenge, he noted, is connecting company systems to national systems so efforts reinforce one another and contribute to sustainable change at scale. He described how the Child Labour Platform has evolved from best-practice sharing into more country-focused working groups that link companies with governments, the ILO, and national initiatives.
When asked to name the biggest challenge to effective partnership, speakers highlighted familiar but urgent barriers:
- resources to sustain and scale action,
- breaking down silos,
- ensuring inclusivity in practice,
- and building shared definitions and indicators that allow partners to measure success clearly and consistently.
Closing: From Celebration to Commitment
In closing, the representative from the UK Government reiterated its commitment to tackling modern slavery, forced labor, and child labor, including support for the Alliance’s Multi-Trust Fund and the Survivor Voice Working Group. The event ended with a simple but powerful symbol. Participants were invited to add words, drawings, and signatures to a shared canvas representing collaboration to end child labor, marking the Alliance’s 10th anniversary with a public commitment to keep moving from promises to impact.
Ending child labor will require sustained political will, survivor-centered solutions, and partnerships that reach beyond statements and into systems, so children are protected, families are supported, and exploitation has nowhere to hide.
Want to hear the full conversation and remarks from speakers? Watch the event recording here: https://live.ilo.org/event/alliance-87-10-years-partnership-and-action-2026-02-11
