There are an estimated 168 million children engaged in child labor worldwide. In order to continue the fight against it today Deputy Secretary of Labor Chris Lu released a new report 2014 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child and launched two mobile applications to help some of the most vulnerable people worldwide by utilizing the power of digital technology. Verité’s CEO Dan Viederman was a panelist at the release event in Washington D.C to discuss ways to leverage data in support of innovative strategies to tackle human rights concerns. As he commented about the release earlier today: “Data about child and forced labor are sparse.
We are thrilled that the U.S. Department of Labor has taken this step to open their research to the public so it can be used by NGOs, researchers, regulators and companies that seek to take practical steps towards ending inhumane working conditions. We are dedicated to finding the stories that the data contains and using them to recruit more of the companies, suppliers and employers to use best practices in eradicating forced and child labor from their operations and supply chains.”
As required by the Trade and Development Act of 2000, the new report examines the prevalence of the worst forms of child labor in 140 countries and analyzes governments’ efforts to eliminate this problem. The report also assesses whether countries have made significant, moderate, minimal, or no advancement from year-to-year and suggests actions governments can take to eliminate the worst forms of child labor through legislation, enforcement, coordination, policies and social programs.
The first of the two new tools created by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs is the new mobile app, Sweat & Toil: Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking around the World, which will put over 1,000 pages of data on child labor and forced labor into the palm of your hand. Sweat & Toil will be available to download from Apple’s App Store at the time of launch and will be available from the Google Play Store by the end of the year. Deputy Secretary Lu will also launch the Department’s next generation Application Programming Interface, or API, which will make the open source data file that was used to develop the Sweat & Toil app available to the public. Verité was pleased to be a part of this event and continues to support emerging technologies that assist in eliminating the issues of labor abuse worldwide. To read the report, 2014 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child, click here and watch this animated video to learn how you can use the application and open data to help end child labor.