The Andalusian Agency for International Development Cooperation (AACID) renews its commitment to support the Regional Initiative for Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labor for the period 2020-2021.

Next Monday, December 16 at 11:00 am (Spanish time), the AACID and the International Labor Organization (ILO) will ratify at the agency's headquarters in Seville, a collaborative relationship that materializes in the support of the Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labor, whose Technical Secretariat falls on the Regional Office of the ILO. The objective of the Regional Initiative is to contribute to the achievement of goal 8.7 of the SDGs in 2025, for which actions are developed in the field of political incidence, generation of knowledge, communication and generation of innovative methodologies, which seek the sustained reduction of work childish. This collaboration between the AACID and the ILO promotes South-South and Triangular Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, and joins an interregional dialogue with Africa.

The public act will be chaired by Rocío Ruiz Domínguez, Minister of Equality, Social Policies and Conciliation of the Junta de Andalucía; Mª Luz Ortega, Director of the AACID; and Joaquín Nieto, Director of the ILO Office for Spain.

During the event, the exhibition “Have they arrived?” Will be inaugurated , an exhibition that stages some of the spaces that the 10.5 million working children and adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean cannot fully enjoy because they use a large part of their time in long and exhausting working hours. In this way, it highlights the need to continue the fight against child labor to prepare the human talent that will make the future of work sustainable and fair.

The exhibition will remain at the AACID facilities from December 16, 2019 to February 16, 2020 and visits will be organized with groups of students and teachers from schools and institutes.

The AACID has accompanied the efforts of the Regional Initiative since 2015 through support projects with annual contributions that interact in a complementary and synergistic way with the cooperation of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) to achieve the results proposed in in line with the priorities of its 30 member countries.

According to the results of the external evaluation carried out in 2018 , the Regional Initiative, as a platform, has established itself as a regional benchmark aimed at accelerating the eradication of child labor, which is aligned with national, regional and global agendas, and has developed innovative tools and methodologies that strengthen public policies.

Along these lines, the design and implementation of the Child Labor Risk Identification Model (MIRTI) stands out, which to date has been applied in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru,and that is in the process of being applied in Guatemala, Guyana, Jamaica and Paraguay. The results of the MIRTI in the first group of countries are invigorating public policies aimed at preventing and eradicating child labor at the local level, and effectively contribute to the targeting of actions in territories, age groups and productive sectors, based on of the public offer of social programs and services. At the same time, they promote articulation between the different levels of government and between institutions and key actors, with competence and capacity to respond to the persistence of child labor.

The sustained support of the AACID has been one of the main success factors that has allowed the design of effective measures to reduce child labor in Latin America and the Caribbean , and has positioned it as a first level interlocutor, close to the constituents of the ILO - governments, employers 'and workers' organizations - and other social actors throughout the region.