By Yasmine Sherif
NEW YORK, Jun 12 2025 (IPS-Partners)

As we mark today’s World Day Against Child Labour, we must confront an urgent global truth: over 160 million children around the world are engaged in child labour – many of them in the most dangerous, degrading and life-limiting conditions imaginable. These are children forced to work in fields, factories and conflict zones – deprived of their right to safety, to dignity and, above all, to an education.

At Education Cannot Wait (ECW), we know that education is the single most powerful tool we have to break this cycle of poverty, exploitation and lost potential. Education offers children worldwide a pathway to a better life: a life where their dreams, not their circumstances, define their future.

In crisis-affected contexts, where children are most at risk, access to quality education is truly a lifeline – shielding girls and boys from violence, forced labour, child marriage, trafficking and other atrocities.

Together, we are doing something about it. Delivered with our strategic donor partners, ECW’s investments have already reached over 11 million children and adolescents in crisis settings. This is an investment in an end to child labour, an end to unfair working conditions, an end to cycles of poverty, displacement, violence and chaos.

This global crisis demands global action. We must increase financing for education in emergencies and protracted crises, strengthen child protection systems, and empower communities to keep children – especially girls and boys living on the frontlines of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises – safe and in school.

ECW calls on world leaders, donors, civil society and the private sector to unite in solidarity and take bold, collective action. Every dollar invested in education is an investment in sustainable economic development, global security and resilient societies. Every dollar invested in education is an investment to end child labour – now and forever.

Let us act with urgency. Let us act with compassion. And let us act with the unwavering belief that every child – regardless of who they are or where they live – has the right to a quality education and the freedom to learn, grow and thrive.

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