Child Labour After 2025: The Future Depends on Civil Society
“I was forced to collect heavy firewood as a child just to survive. I worked for long hours, often with little food, and I was injured many times. I lost my childhood to labour and pain. My life changed only when I was rescued and given a chance to go back to school and learn a skill. Education and training gave me dignity and a future. Today, as a youth leader and mechanic, I work to protect other children so that they do not suffer what I suffered.” — Emmanuel from Uganda.
Emmanuel’s story, common to most child labour survivors, is a journey from a burdened childhood to restored hope.
That hope was made possible through grassroots action by the civil society of community groups, child rights organisations and labour unions. Today, Emmanuel is no longer part of the 138 million children who will suffer without support and action. What he experienced is still the present and future of many children. Even as global aid shrinks and civil society is threatened with funding cuts and shrinking civic space, it has remained at the forefront, working directly with communities, protecting children, keeping the promise of UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 alive and holding the line where governments and the private sector have fallen short. With the U.S. cutting humanitarian assistance by more than half, France slashing €700 million, and the Netherlands halving NGO funding, initiatives like these will be the first to disappear. The OECD warns global aid could fall by 17% this year, a collapse that would unravel thousands of such lifelines across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
When these lifelines collapse, the world’s promise to children collapses with them. It also slows down progress towards achieving decent work for all, as promised under the SDGs and a key advocacy for the International Labour Organisation. Without enough investment in education, social protection, and strong community action, children grow up without the skills or opportunities for stable jobs, while adults remain trapped in unsafe and unfair work.
With civil society structures at risk, there is an urgent need for a space where governments, businesses, and institutions acknowledge that weakening frontline organisations threatens the global response to child labour. They must step up with concrete, accountable action to protect children and those working closest to them. As 2025 passes without achieving the global target to eliminate child labour, 2026 becomes a pivotal year for stocktaking and for defining a credible, action-driven and accountable pathway forward.
The upcoming ILO Conference in Morocco offers that essential moment. This conference should not just be another gathering, but a test of whether governments, businesses, and institutions are willing to stand by civil society, trade unions, and survivors at a critical moment. Ensuring space and voice for civil society is an important chance to course-correct, to promote civil society and survivor participation, and to move from token representation to qualitative engagement. Morocco must not produce yet another declaration destined for the archives.
Governments, businesses, and multilateral institutions must guarantee funded seats for CSOs and survivors, commit to sustained education financing, strengthen social protection floors, and enforce supply chain accountability. Most importantly, they must centre children’s voices, not as symbols, but as partners in shaping solutions. Child labour will not end without decent work for adults, safety nets for families, and accountability for corporations. And none of this is possible if CSOs and survivors are excluded from the table.
Every statistic represents a child denied education, dignity, and safety. The credibility of global commitments in 2025 will depend on whether civil society is recognised not as an afterthought, but as an indispensable partner in building a fairer world.