UNICEF, the ILO, and the Inconvenient Truth About Child Labour

IOL News

3 days ago

Ten years after the UN's promise to end child labour, are UNICEF and the ILO truly protecting our children, or are they merely safeguarding their corporate funders?
Image: Pixabay
Ten years after the UN promised to end child labour by 2025, the very institutions tasked with protecting children are failing them — and protecting their funders instead.
To mark the World Day Against Child Labour, June 12, UNICEF and the International Labour Organization (ILO) jointly announced that global child labor has declined to 138 million children. This figure, however, is not only misleading—it dangerously understates the scale of one of the world's most brutal human rights crises.
In reality, the number of children who are working today is closer to 400 million. This estimate is backed by research from Lichand and Wolf, academics from the Universities of Zurich and Pennsylvania. UNICEF and the ILO fail to account for tens of millions of child labourers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as in the United States and the European Union.
Why do the leading global organisations on children and labor systematically underreport these figures? One reason may be found in who funds them. Both UNICEF and the ILO are partially financed by corporations—some of which directly or indirectly benefit from the exploitation of child labor. That conflict of interest has serious implications for their credibility and effectiveness.
Over the past two decades, I have been in Davos during the World Economic Forum (WEF) fifteen times. There, I have seen UNICEF, the ILO, and many NGOs raise tens of millions of dollars from companies that depend on child labor to reduce costs and maximise profits. These same organisations rarely—if ever—criticise the exploitative business models of the corporations they court for funding.
An estimated 75 million children work in the supply chains of nearly 1,000 WEF-corporate members. These companies have long claimed to be 'Committed to Improving the State of the World.' Yet in all my visits to Davos, I have never seen UNICEF or the ILO condemn these corporations for exploiting child labor or for having business models that are the opposite of the Sustainable Development Goals. They show up to fundraise—not to confront power.
Even more disturbing is the inaction within their own institutions. A full decade after the UN General Assembly committed to ending child labor and forced labor by 2025, neither UNICEF nor the ILO has managed to eliminate such practices even from the supply chains of the coffee, tea, and chocolate consumed in their own offices, or from most of their own supply chains. Why? Because doing so would risk their relationship with powerful corporate donors.
Their silence also extends to powerful countries. Take Norway, for example. Through its $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the largest in the world—Norway holds shares in nearly 9,000 companies. Hundreds of these companies use child labor or forced labor. Yet UNICEF and the ILO have never publicly criticised Norway for profiting from this exploitation. Instead, they continue to praise the country, which also happens to be a major financial contributor to the UN system.
Meanwhile, media organisations across the globe routinely echo the sanitised statistics released by these institutions without question. On June 11 and 12, news outlets on every continent parroted UNICEF and ILO talking points, without even mentioning the discrepancies raised by independent researchers. This is not journalism. It is propaganda disguised as reporting.
Today, far too many journalists have become passive amplifiers of official narratives. Their role should be to hold power accountable—not to serve as stenographers for institutions that have grown comfortable with complicity.