The ILO Convention 182 requires each country through tripartite arrangements to develop a list of hazardous sectors and activities guided by ILO recommendation 190. Although section 91 of the Children’s Act (Act 560) provides a list of hazardous child labour activities, the list is limited and not in full conformity with ILO Convention 182 and its recommendation.
The Child Labour Unit (CLU) of the Labour Department, Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare of Ghana, began a major initiative to produce a comprehensive Hazardous Child Labour Activity Framework (HAF). The HAF approach, by allowing child-centred strategies into which both risk and beneficial child work are considered, localises issues within each sector thereby avoiding over-generalisation of child labour activities or developing a broad-brush hazardous activity list.
The overall objective of the HAF project is to develop a comprehensive, age-appropriate contextually relevant and acceptable hazardous child labour framework to drive research, intervention, monitoring and enforcement. The framework will facilitate identification, quantification and evaluation of hazardous child labour and raise evidence for future studies. It will also provide the best options for intervention and evaluation to safeguard the health, safety, development and education of the children.
