The ILO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean hosted a side event during the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40) on 21 March 2019. This event presented the Regional Initiative as a successful South-South Cooperation mechanism to end child labour by 2025 in the countries that make up the sub-regional groups of Mercosur, SICA, and CARICOM, and jointly reach Goal 8.7 of the 2030 Agenda.
Ms. María Olave, of the ILO Regional Child Labour Team, moderated the panel of experts including:
- Cecilia Garau, Director of Labor Protection and Equality of the Secretariat of Promotion, Protection and Technological Change of Argentina and Focal Point of the Regional Initiative;
- Cecilia Malaguti, General Coordinator of Trilateral Technical Cooperation with International Organizations of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC);
- Víctor Navalpotro, General Coordinator of the Technical Office of Cooperation in Uruguay of the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AECID), and
- Pedro Américo Furtado de Oliveira, Director of the ILO Office in Argentina, representing the Technical Secretariat of the Regional Initiative.
The event, held at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires, highlighted the following issues: (1) Regional integration and complementarity with effective national policies for the prevention and eradication of child labour towards the achievement of target 8.7 (2) Tripartite dialogue and promotion of South-South Cooperation – Experience in child labour and (3) The role of UN agencies and South-South and triangular cooperation in the perspective of decent work