According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than 200 million children in the world today are involved in child labour, doing work that is damaging to their mental, physical and emotional development. Children work because their survival and that of their families depend on it. Child labour persists even where it has been declared illegal, and is frequently surrounded by a wall of silence, indifference, and apathy. But that wall is beginning to crumble. While the total elimination of child labour is a long-term goal in many countries, certain forms of child labour must be confronted immediately. Nearly three-quarters of working children are engaged in the worst forms of child labour, including trafficking, armed conflict, slavery, sexual exploitation and hazardous work.

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The Asia-Pacific Knowledge Network on Youth Employment (APYouthNet) is an ILO-sponsored community of practice that brings together youth employment experts, practitioners and youth from across the Asia-Pacific region.  It serves as a gateway and platform to the region*s collective resources, experiences, ideas and solutions to the problems that youth face everyday

Become part of this network which currently consists of over 280 members who are dedicated to finding solutions to the youth employment challenge!  Current members include practitioners, experts, professions and youth themselves.  To register, please click here

As part of this initiative, we also regularly host online discussion forums - the next one will be begin on November 23rd and focus on the rights and conditions of employment of young workers.  More details on this will be posted online.

If you have any further questions/comments, please do not hesitate to contact apyouthnet@ilo.org.

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More than 2 million children from some 60 countries took part in the 2009 international letter writing competition for young people organized by the Universal Postal Union (UPU). The theme chosen for this year was “Decent Work”, a notion at the heart of the work of the International Labour Organization (ILO). First prize was awarded to a 14-year-old girl from the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. Here is how her letter about a bar of chocolate lead to her realizing the value of decent work. Read more about this news, click here

By Pebbles B. Sanchez, Youth Committee of the Confederation of Independent Unions in the Public Sector (CIU)

Growing in a family of public servants, I had the privilege to witness various undertakings of and within the government whenever I went to visit the offices of my parents. Through years and years of observing a typical day of a bureaucrat and having indulged myself in the study of public administration, I have concluded that working in and for the Philippine government is not as simple as it appears to be.

Distrust has clouded the image of a bureaucrat. The culture of red tape and inefficiency has been attached not only with the systems followed by the government but also with the work force that runs its engine. People have come to think that government employees lack the enthusiasm to serve and the competence to deliver outputs. However, there is something more to this picture. There are several reasons why government employees appear to be laidback and tend to be lenient. 

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By Katie Rowsell, CPSU Organiser (Australia) and PSI Oceania Youth Network Coordinator

Once upon a time there was a new generation of worker. They were focused and knew what they wanted out of their careers. They had a high level of education, and equally high levels of student debt. They were technologically savvy and were frustrated when their parents couldn’t work the DVD player. They had been brought up by parents - both working and earning an income and who wanted their children to have EVERYTHING! When this generation started school, girls and boys alike were told “You can be anything you want to be” and they were confident that this was indeed the case. They basically got taught that they were the centre of their own little universe.

Suddenly, the new generation workers left the cocoon of family life and education and stepped out into the big wide world. The previous generations of workers could not understand them. They seemed to have no loyalty, flitting from job to job for more pay. Lifestyle came before their duty to work. They even checked that new fangled thing called Facebook during work time! The older generations thought “We’ll just have to ignore them and hope they grow up some day.”

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