The Global March is a grassroots popular movement built on solidarity and constructive and coherent collaboration between civil society, trade unions and teacher organisations. It has been a long-time partner of the ILO, particularly its International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), and other organisations, including UNICEF, and has an established reputation worldwide as a respected child rights organisation. 

Global March focuses on knowledge management, advocacy and campaigns as primary mechanisms to highlight the importance of eliminating child labour as one of the central pillars for human development. The organisation is present in wide-ranging regional and global discussions that touch on child labour, education for all (EFA) and poverty alleviation, highlighting the inter-linkages between these development goals. Child labour remains an obstacle to the achievement of EFA and, vice-versa. Child labour will never be eliminated as long as hardest-to-reach children remain out of school.

Eliminating child labour requires sustainable social change, underpinned by evidence-based knowledge, awareness and a determined, informed, coordinated and coherent social movement from local to international level. The need for a stronger worldwide movement has been a recurring feature of communications from the ILO and IPEC on the elimination of child labour and the Global March plays a central role in fulfilling this need. It is the largest and most established active global coalition that specifically targets child labour elimination and particularly within the more coherent broader social policy framework of promoting education, poverty alleviation and decent work. The impact of the current global financial crisis has highlighted the importance of Global March being able to play a more focused role in trying to stem the tide of children being pushed out of the classroom and into work.