150 million children are victims of forced labour: UN
As per a leading United Nations' anti-slavery group, Higher than 150 million children are victims of forced labour and progress in reducing that number has slowed.
Half of the children in forced labour are a part of hazardous jobs while more than a third do not go to school, said a report by the UN labour agency, the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Although the number of child laborers has fallen by 94 million since 2000, the decline has slowed from 2012 to 2016, they said.
As laid out in the United Nations' latest set of global goals agreed in 2015 to tackle poverty and inequality, the effort to end child labour by 2025 seems slowed down subsequently.
Houtan Homayounpour, technical specialist on forced labor at the Geneva-based ILO, said the world was not on track to end child labour in eight years. About 121 million children would still be in child labour in 2025 at this rate.
A total of 152 million children - 64 million girls and 88 million boys - are victims of child labor, according to the latest ILO estimate.
More than two-thirds of these children are working on a family farm or in a family business with 71 percent working in agriculture.
"Africa, where child labour is highest in both proportionate and absolute terms, and where progress has stalled, remains a particular priority," the ILO said in its report.
The ILO said its findings came from surveying households in all regions of the world and using data from the UN and world governments.
