Child labor, just like slavery, hasn’t disappeared, but evolved to operate under the radar in a modern world. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), around 50 million people worldwide, are ensnared in modern day slavery as of 2021, and around 138 million children are forced into child labor as of 2024. June 12 is World Day Against Child Labor, shedding light on the people behind the numbers.
Around a quarter of those imprisoned in modern day slavery are children, forced into dangerous situations. Modern day slavery comes in many forms, including but not limited to:
- Debt bondage (in which a person is manipulated through a debt)
- Human trafficking
- Zwangsarbeit
- Domestic servitude
- Child exploitation
WRAP is the world’s largest facility-based social audit and certification program. Our program is guided by Die 12 Grundsätze von WRAP, which a facility must comply with to receive certification. Certification requires proof of compliance, not merely ‘absence’ of non-compliance and ensures that any facility that is WRAP-certified is in alignment with all ILO indicators of forced labor.
Principle 3: Prohibition of Child Labor of WRAP’s 12 Principles explicitly protects against any form of child labor and states that certified facilities cannot hire anyone under the age of 15, with 14 years old being the minimum in lesser-developed countries. It also bars off employment that interferes with required schooling and mandates compliance with legal restrictions on the nature and the volume of work conducted.
Of the 28 non-compliances found under Principle 3 in 2025 around the world, not one involved a child working in a facility. Instead, these non-compliances relate to weakness in a facility’s prevention system, including:
- Inadequate policy communication & training gaps;
- Lack of age verification breakdowns; and,
- Shortfalls in young-worker protections for legally employed 16–17-year-olds.
Each facility certified had non-compliances corrected through WRAP’s Corrective Action Plan process which allows facilities to remedy non-compliances and implement the proper systems to prevent potential infractions.
World Day Against Child Labor is an annual reminder that keeping children out of the global supply chains is not a one-time achievement but an act of constant vigilance. That is why WRAP goes beyond a simple audit to work with facilities to ensure they have the process and systems in place to safeguard against human rights violations in the future.
