Bureau of International Labor Affairs

Description

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) within the Department of Labor, through intergovernmental organizations and bilateral relationships with other countries, supports the promotion of labor policies and labor rights, the enforcement of labor-related provisions in trade agreements, and the implementation of projects in developing countries to improve workers’ rights and living standards. ILAB works to protect vulnerable workers, including women and children.

What Does This Buy?

Funds are provided to partners through grants, cooperative agreements, and other mechanisms to implement programs and provide technical assistance that combats child labor, enforces trade agreements, and strengthens labor standards.

Justification for the Request

• Funds help reduce exploitative labor, combat forced labor, and provide technical assistance. ILAB contributes to the global effort to reduce child labor, seeing a reduction of 94 million children from labor since 2000.
• Since 1995, ILAB has withdrawn nearly 2 million children from labor and provided them with education, as well as helping nearly 170,000 families to meet basic needs without relying upon child labor.
• 152 million children are still engaged in child labor, 73 million of them in hazardous conditions.
• The cost of child labor to the global economy is as much as 6.6% of global gross national income.
• Annually, $176 billion of global income is foregone due to lost schooling by children in hazardous work.
• An estimated 24.9 million people are subject to forced labor.
• ILAB’s monitoring and enforcement activities work to ensure that U.S. trade partners play by the rules and that U.S. workers are able to compete on a level playing field.

U.S. Interest

ILAB supports a strong U.S. trade policy by:

• Enforcing the provisions of U.S. free trade agreements and trade preference programs to ensure that no country gains an unfair advantage.
• Negotiating labor provisions in new trade and investment agreements and enforcing eligibility criteria of trade preference programs and the guidelines governing lending by the multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.

Bold Vision

• Additional investment could enhance ILAB’s capacity to guarantee that U.S. trading partners are effectively implementing labor standards, leveling the playing field for American workers in global markets.
• Additional investment could allow ILAB to partner with more organizations to build the capacity of the private sector to address child labor, forced labor, and worker rights issues, including companies working in tobacco, rubber, tea, cocoa, sugarcane, cotton, and many other areas.
• Restoration of historic funding levels could help ILAB programming to reach an additional 10,000 to 15,000 children each year.

Impact of Cuts

• Cuts undermine efforts to address child labor and lessen the impact of interventions in other areas, such as health and education. Children’s engagement in hazardous labor prevents them from attending school and impairs their physical, mental, and social development. In FY 2015, ILAB accounted for 48% of all U.S. government spending on Violence Against Children projects.
• Proposals to end ILAB’s programming would end all U.S. programming to reduce international child labor and would directly impact roughly 150,000 children annually who benefit from ILAB.