The Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion of Peru, through the General Directorate of Fundamental Rights and Safety and Health at Work and the Office for Cooperation and International Affairs, with the support of the ILO, organized the strategic workshop “Peru, Pioneer country of Alliance 8.7: towards a country free of child labor and forced labor ”.

More than 100 people representing public and private institutions, employers 'and workers' organizations, NGOs, academia and the media participated in the meeting. The Minister of Labor and Employment Promotion of Peru, Sylvia Cáceres; the Minister for Women and Vulnerable Populations, Gloria Montenegro, and the Director of the ILO Office for the Andean Countries, Philippe Vanhuynegem, chaired the event. 

In her speech, the Minister of Labor reaffirmed the political will of the Peruvian Government through its different sectors and throughout the national territory to accelerate the processes of elimination of child labor and forced labor.

He argued that integration into Alliance 8.7 poses great challenges, such as accelerating intersectoral coordination processes and the allocation of resources under a territorial approach, based on better information and knowledge. He also thanked the cooperation of Spain, the United States and Canada, which for the last 20 years have been agents of support, support and change in the actions implemented.

For her part, the Minister of Women pointed out that in the country a coordinated action is being carried out with the Ministry of Labor to protect the rights of women and strengthen their capacities to prevent situations of abuse and mistreatment, which impact on boys, girls and boys. adolescents and that they are one of the causes associated with child labor. 

The Director of the ILO Andean Office congratulated the country and recognized the multiple advances made in the fight against child labor and forced labor, and emphasized the need to allocate a larger public budget to achieve the results reflected in national policies. and advance global goals. 

This workshop, which formalizes the inclusion of Peru in the list of pioneer countries of Alliance 8.7, aimed to present the country's progress in public policy related to the issue of child labor and forced labor, as well as to present the political commitments adopted by intersectoral way.

Peru is in the process of ratifying the 2014 Protocol relative to ILO Convention 29 on forced labor; has a National Strategy for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor 2012–2021 and is recognized as one of the promoter and founding countries of the Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Initiative free of child labor (IR).

Through the IR, Peru has managed to maintain a work approach aligned with the 2030 Agenda and its target 8.7; and to date it analyzes the results of the application of the Child Labor Risk Identification Model (MIRTI), a statistical tool built by the ILO and ECLAC to know the probability of child labor risk at the district level, with the aim of targeting and better articulate the offer of local preventive services that reduce vulnerability to child labor. 

It is important to highlight that, in addition to having the participation of representatives of the National Steering Committee for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor - CPETI, the National Commission for the Fight against Forced Labor - CNLCTF, and the regional and local governments of Peru; Representatives from the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion and the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation also attended, as one of the achievements made by the country in tackling child labor has been intersectoral work as a key factor in public policy.

On the other hand, José Enrique Velásquez Hurtado, General Director of Monitoring and Evaluation of the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion, spoke about the importance of information platforms for the management of Regional and Local Public Policy for the prevention and eradication of child labor . Within this framework, he highlighted the MIDIStrict tool, to which information on child labor can be integrated based on the results of the MIRTI.

Finally, Alfredo León Aguilar, General Director of Policy Monitoring and Evaluation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, announced that the next National Agrarian Survey (ENA - MINAGRI) and, later, the Agricultural Census, will become a tool to identify the child labor in rural areas. It is planned to know, according to sex, geographical area and educational level, the percentage of people between 5 and 13 years in agricultural economic activity and the percentage of adolescents between 14 and 17 years in intensive agricultural work in hours.

Thus, as a pioneer country of Alliance 8.7 and an active member of the Regional Initiative Latin America and the Caribbean free of child labor, Peru assumes a double commitment: with its citizens, to ensure the full exercise of fundamental rights and to do decent work reality; and with the region and the world, to share their experiences and learnings that contribute to leaving no one behind.