Partnership Against Child Exploitation (PACE) Consortium

The Effective Approaches to Ending the Worst forms of Child Labour in Fragile contexts  (EAPEC) programme will be implemented by the PACE Consortium. The PACE consortium comprises of:

  • Child focused international NGOs (War Child & World Vision);
  • Niche organisations addressing child labour in supply chains in conjunction with the private sector (UN Global Compact Network & FiftyEight);
  • Media organisation with legal and digital expertise (Thomson Reuters Foundation); and
  • Research partner (Columbia University through the Care and Protection of Children Network).

With a budget of £12 million, EAPEC is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID). It aims to bring change to the lives of children so that they may enjoy their right to be protected from the worst forms of child labour. EAPEC’s target countries are Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. These countries, to a different degree, represent very challenging contexts, often ridden with conflict, a lack of respect for the rule of law and weak governance.

The programme refers to the ‘worst forms of child labour’ (WFCL) as defined by Article 3 of ILO Convention No. 182, which occurs when children are sold, trafficked, in debt bondage, serfdom or forced labour, or are forcibly recruited into armed conflict, used in prostitution or pornography, or engaged in hazardous work. By any measure, many WFCL can be classified as modern slavery.

The Programme will test and measure innovative approaches to understand what works in reducing WFCL.  It will address WFCL through tackling the supply and demand issues (which result in child labour) with a holistic intervention focusing on four main Outcomes:

  1. Increasing children’s agency
  2. Facilitating access to appropriate alternatives to WFCL
  3. Strengthening legal and policy environment
  4. Improving supply chain due diligence and duty of care from the bottom up

UNGC UK and partner FiftyEight, will lead on Outcome 4. We will support the private sector to strengthen their supply chains to prevent the use of child labour.

UNGC UK will convene a series of business roundtables in the DRC and Ethiopia to build greater awareness of the worst forms of child labour and serve as a forum to identify and share best practice for how to combat this problem. Coupled with interviews with targeted companies, PACE aims to generate evidence for a better model of due diligence which can be replicated by companies around the world.

Internationally, UNGC UK have launched a Child Labour Working Group (CLWG), alongside a Private Sector Strategic Advisory Panel (PSSAP) to further identify good practice at a global level and ensure the project benefits from existing expertise among some of the world’s largest companies.

For further information, please contact Senior Programme Manager, Bee Delgado or Project Manager, Marcella Mizzi.

Private Sector Strategic Advisory Panel

The Private Sector Strategic Advisory Panel (PSSAP) acts as a conduit between the private sector and the EAPEC Consortium; channelling private sector perspectives, experience, insights and knowledge, and opening up grass roots opportunities and private sector networks with the purpose of enhancing successful programme delivery in relation to Outcome 4.

Participation in the PSSAP will be assigned to highly experienced individuals already working globally on issues of child labour and WFCL in the private sector, not corporate entities; the purpose being to attract and retain those individuals, for the duration of the programme, with extensive experience which will enhance the effectiveness of the PSSAP.

PSSAP Objectives:

  1. Act as a platform to identify existing successful practice, communicate existing barriers & challenges, and contribute to developing effective interventions aimed at reducing and preventing WFCL.
  2. Support the analysis of existing value chains; including how the informal sector feeds into formal supply chains.
  3. Engage in the development and/or implementation of specific interventions on-the-ground.
  4. Engage with professionals in the transnational organised crime sphere to better understand how illegal operations utilise what we would consider to be ‘legitimate’ supply chain models; and to what effect.
  5. Engage with specialists on domestic supply and demand markets to better understand how this impacts upon WFCL and potentially inhibits any positive contribution from the private sector.
  6. Share the EAPEC programme journey with the private sector more widely resulting effective practice being pursued by individual organisation, sectoral collaborations and cross sectoral initiatives; initially via the Global Compact UK ‘Child Labour Working Group’ and the UNGC ‘European Learning Event’.

If you would like to find out more and/or register your interest, please contact Senior Programme Manager, Bee Delgado or Project Manager, Marcella Mizzi.