Investing in the prevention and elimination of child labour – through social protection, education, decent work and related measures, as well as measures to identify and remove children from work and support their reintegration into the education system and decent alternatives – generates social and economic returns that far outweigh the costs. Global cost-benefit analyses have suggested that the economic gains from eliminating child labour could be several times greater than the financial investments required. Furthermore, more recent ILO work on social protection and public finance financing gaps confirms that spending on children and families is a foundation for inclusive and sustainable growth, not simply a budgetary expense. Yet despite the commitments made in the Durban Call for Action and recent discussions in the United Nations development financing process and the Seville Social Summit, many of the key systems that influence child labour – social protection, education, labour inspection and child protection – remain underfunded, and funding is often fragmented and unstable.

Against this backdrop, the session will focus on developing coherent and sustainably financed strategies to prevent, combat and eliminate child labour, relying primarily on national budgets and supplemented by international public funding and responsible private and philanthropic investment. The first part will briefly examine funding needs and gaps: what we know – and what we still need to know – about the resources needed to develop effective systems for combating child labour, and what existing cost and cost-benefit analyses, at global and national levels, tell us about the order of magnitude and returns on investment.

The second part will address financing strategies and mechanisms: how countries can strengthen domestic resource mobilisation and optimise the use of their fiscal space (through taxation, contributions, budget reallocation and reforms), how ODA and international financial institutions can be used more strategically as catalysts within national strategies, and how commercial frameworks, due diligence and structured mechanisms involving public, private and philanthropic actors can help to integrate responsible private and philanthropic actors.