This archive report was first published on 12 June 2021.
Kenya's progress in combating child labour is under threat from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has pushed more families to lose incomes and forced children into hazardous work.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, an estimated 1.3 million Kenyan children are engaged in child labour, with the majority working in the agricultural sector.
Wellington Chibebe, the ILO Director for East Africa, warned that the pandemic could reverse gains made in efforts to end child labour by 2025.
'We must act now and end child labour, keeping children in school and not in hazardous work,' Chibebe said during a high-level virtual meeting on ending child labour.
Statistics from 2008, the most recent available, show that 26% of children aged 14 and under were in child labour, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and the ILO.
Of the working children in Kenya, 90% live in rural areas, where they work in family plots or units involved in tea, coffee, sisal, sugarcane, tobacco, and rice plantations.
Kenya is also a hub and transit center for human trafficking, with traffickers exploiting children through forced labour in domestic service, cattle herding, begging, agriculture, and street vending.
Executive Director of the Federation of Kenya Employers, Jacqueline Mugo, called for concerted efforts to end child labour, saying 'If we all work together, if there is a concerted will, then we can end child labour.'
Globally, the number of children in child labour has risen to 160 million, an increase of 8.4 million in the last four years, with millions more at risk due to the impacts of COVID-19, according to a new report by the ILO and UNICEF.
