Buenos Aires – IOM Deputy Director General, Ambassador Laura Thompson yesterday (15/11) participated in the 4th Global Conference on the Sustainable Eradication of Child Labour in Buenos Aires, where she spoke on the High-Level Panel From Work Without a Future to a Future of Decent Work – SDG 8.7 and Beyond.

The conference – which seeks to help strengthen global efforts to eradicate all forms of child labour by the year 2025, as required by the Target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – is focussed on the sustained eradication of child labour and the elimination of forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking, amongst others.

Ambassador Thompson was joined on the panel by Guy Ryder, Director General of the ILO; Kailash Satyarth, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; Linda Kromjong, Secretary General of the International Organization of Employers (IOE); Franciso Martinez, ADECCO Group CEO in Argentina; Christy Hoffman, Deputy General Secretary of UNI Global Union and Khouloud Mannai, a young Tunisian activist.

“The future of the work is today, not in five, ten or twenty years. A world without child labour and without forced labour is the basics, we have to start from there," said Ambassador Thompson. "In the globalized world of today we're looking for a world where labour markets are driven by qualifications and skills, and not by administrative measures," Thompson added. 

“We need inclusive societies which give women the possibility to access what men can access today. We don’t need to empower women, women are powerful, we just need to give them access to opportunities,” said Ambassador Thompson.  [Watch video].

During her visit to Buenos Aires, Ambassador Thompson also met with Argentinian authorities to discuss issues of common interest.

The conference, which ends today (16/11), is organized by Argentina’s Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security, in collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO). Delegates from the United Nations Member States and organizations of employers and workers from 193 countries also attended the event.

In parallel, IOM is participating in two side events at the conference, where IOM Specialists Mathieu Luciano from IOM HQ and Agueda Marín from IOM South America will talk about the importance of reliable data on victims, as well as the role of the GCM in tackling child labour.

For more information, please contact Débora Taicz, IOM Argentina, Email: dtaicz@iom.int, Tel: + 54 11 4815 1035.