Courtesy translation
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, has released the following statement:
«Art. 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of childrento be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous.
The European Union has opportunely launched initiatives aimed at applying these principles through recent provisions that hold companies accountable throughout the value chain and impose a ban on marketing goods produced through forced labour, all the more so if involving children.
The struggle against school dropout – a phenomenon also present in our Country – constitutes an important bulwark against the exploitation of child labour.
Wars and poverty strip little girls and boys of their lives, obliging them to drop out of school in order to undertake unfitting forms of labour – very often illegal and irregular – thus depriving them of their childhood and irreversibly jeopardizing their psychophysical development and their future.
Among migrants, the many unaccompanied minors risk becoming ghost workers, performing jobs that are incompatible with their age, and even disappearing into the realm of illegality before the very eyes of the communities they have been entrusted to after abandoning their countries of origin.
In order to do away with the deep-rooted causes of the phenomenon and protect the rights of the child, we need an approach capable of engaging governments, organizations, companies, communities, and individuals in creating an environment in which girls and boys can grow up healthy, educated, and free, without running the risk of being robbed of their childhood. »
