White Paper

A Brighter Future: Eradicating Child Labor in Agriculture

152 million children worldwide are engaged in child labor. The vast majority (71 percent) work in the agricultural sector—performing tasks that can be dangerous and exhausting. While great strides have been made in recent years, more needs to be done to ensure the root causes of child labor are being tackled in an effective and integrated manner. Tracking the number of cases of child labor is important, as is the remediation of individual cases, but we are not going to eradicate child labor without ensuring access to quality education for all children, a living income for parents, or functioning national social security and child protection systems.

That's why the Rainforest Alliance is committed to bringing the diverse members of our global alliance together to advance coordinated actions in farming and supplier practices, schools, government policies, and community development programs.

Acting together is the only way to prevent and remediate child labor.