Dear all,

Greetings from Vienna. We hope this mail finds you well! I´m happy to invite you to join our campaign…find all infos below.

As in the previous years, DKA Austria has launched the campaign “Stop Child Labour” in an alliance with different NGOs in the run-up to June 12, the International Day against Child Labour. Through various activities, we are calling on European politicians to pass a strong European Supply Chain Act that effectively combats child labour and other human rights violations.

Under the title “Code Word Stop Child Labour” we ask our supporters to make so-called reverse graffiti in public spaces. They are created by partially cleaning a dirty surface with the help of a stencil. You can see how this works in our video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6yq_pMmL7A

Here are some photos of Reverse Graffiti actions: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjsoe/albums/72177720306695729

There is also a digital way to participate in the reverse graffiti action, using our social media filters. Here you can find the social media filters with the phrase “Stop child labour” in English

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/fbcameraeffects/tryit/755699076020671/

and Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ar/755699076020671/

This is how it works:

Take a selfie or a photo of an important building or the like with the filter and post it with the German hashtag #kinderarbeitstoppen (which means stop child labour) on your social media channels or directly on our social wall on http://www.kinderarbeitstoppen.at (link social wall). It would be great to get a similar colourful picture from different regions of the world as the last years.

Please make sure that you (and we) have the permission to publish the photos of all persons visible on your photo.

Kindly collect and post your contributions until end of June 2023. The more we get towards the mid of June, the international day against child labour, the better.

Don’t hesitate to come back to us, if questions occur.

All the best,

Clara

Some background information about the campaign:

For some of you, it is familiar that we are engaged in international and national networks in a campaign for a strong European Supply Chain Act for some time already. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 160 million children worldwide regularly have to work several hours a day – 79 millions of them under dangerous and exploitative conditions. As you might experience in your area of project work as well: Very often, children’s work prevents them from attending school regularly and, in many cases, damages the child’s healthy development. The Covid 19 pandemic pushed additional children into child labour. A supply chain law could make an important contribution to combating exploitative child labour.

Since the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2011, the main focus has been on non-binding guidelines and voluntary commitments by companies. However, the results are sobering: in a study commissioned by the European Commission, only one third of the companies surveyed stated that they care about human rights and environmental protection in their supply chains. The effectiveness of the measures taken was not evaluated. Therefore, there is currently a clear trend towards binding regulations.

A legislative proposal is currently being hotly debated and is to be adopted at EU level this year. The national states must then implement this in a national law. We see a great danger that this law will not be strong enough to actually contribute to change.

At different levels, we are working with DKA partner organisations to be able to tell concrete case stories of why a holistic view of child labour is important and why we in the Global North must also take responsibility for change in the area of responsilibity of multinational businesses. For example are we supporting partners who work on the issue of child labour in Cocoa farming-We also commissioned a study on the situation of Cocoa farming in Ghana (see: https://www.kinderarbeitstoppen.at/fileadmin/kinderarbeit/hintergruende/oefse_Potentials_for_Improving_the_Socioeconomic_Situation_of_Ghanaian_Cocoa_Farmers_2023.pdf)

In April 2023, the Dialogue Works campaign published the Kigali Declaration, the final document of the Global Conference of Working Children and Youth held in Kigali, Rwanda, in January 2023.

The Kigali Declaration was drafted by 63 participating children from 16 countries, including children and young people accompanied by our long-standing, Philippine partner organisation Cajden. Find the website of the campaign here (https://www.dialogue-works.com/)

If you are interested to get more detailed information about the campaign or possible ways of cooperation with Dialogue works or cases of child labour linked to value chains leading to Europe, don#t hesitate to contact: ute.mayrhofer@dka.at

Clara Handler
Project Department Asia

DKA Austria // kfb Austria
Wilhelminenstrasse 91/IIf, 1160 Vienna, Austria
Phone: +43 1 4810991-92
http://www.dka.at/en | http://www.teilen.at

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