RHSF's Action Pledges for the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour

RHSF’s Action Pledges for the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour

RHSF actions Child Labour

Published on Mar 31, 2021

Upon the invitation of Alliance 8.7, we publically engage to reinforce our awareness-raising programme and are currently coordinating with our partner companies the way we will communicate the outcomes of our field experimentations to eliminate child labour by 2025. Here is our first Action Pledge.

Spread expertise: Awareness-raising being essential to RHSF, we commit to provide accurate educational information to citizens and organisations internationally.

How will your Action Pledge contribute to ending child labour by 2025?

Preventing the risks of child labour and forced labour in supply chains is the mission of RHSF. We experiment with pilot prevention solutions with stakeholders, and share our expertise to all publics based on three convictions: REFUSE, UNDERSTAND, ACT. We are convinced everyone has a role to play in ensuring that children are not exposed to abusive work in our supply chains.  

By 2025, we will put all our efforts to embark professionals in the detection and prevention of risks of child labour, as well as equip consumers to require goods and services free from any forms of indecent work.

How will you implement your 2021 Action Pledge?  

Concretely, we commit to scale-up our awareness-rising work in 2021 by 

  • Formalizing a three-year awareness programme that will capitalize on our resource center in order to expand our offer of tools and training programmes targeting professionals, volunteers, consumer organisation by 2025. We will also define and monitor the impact of our awareness programme with indicators.
  • Offering new tools and expanding existing ones. We commit to ensure a wider promotion of our existing Explorer, especially towards our members and via the cartoon competition as well as to add new content. Explorer is RHSF awareness-raising online tool openly accessible to all (professionals, citizens, companies…). We will issue a new version of our Country Risk Maps which is better adjusted to the expectations of the French law Devoir de Vigilance. We will define and seek for financing for the creation of a consumer kit. Finally we will launch a public version of our Flash info sessions – today offered to our Business Club members – and hold 2 sessions in 2021. 
  • Developing new training programmes. We will design and deploy 3 sessions of a training dedicated to RHSF members. We will define the training programme to engage our members to become voices of RHSF. We will deploy a minimum of 10 sessions of our training to professionals. 
  • Establishing key partnerships to leverage actions. 
    • We run the international cartoon competition on forced labour with ILO (International Labour Organisation) and Cartooning for Peace and dedicate a Special Award called the best cartoon on “Forced labour of children”. All drawings will then be leveraged in a travelling exhibition as well as a catalogue and leaflet. 
    • Additionally RHSF shares expertise with a key consumer organization so they can formalize their methodology to integrate the risks of child labour and forced labour in their comparative evaluation of products.

2021 is a very special year: the international year of the elimination of child labour. In addition, France has committed to become a “pathfinder” country of the Alliance. As a French-based NGO, we have decided to use the universal language of arts to disseminate a better understanding of the issue and instill each and every one to act against child labour. For RHSF, the cartooning competition is one tool. Furthermore, we produced a hymn and is creating a play reflecting on the first ever law on child labour in France. These will come in addition to the RHSF tools and trainings available online. 

How will you communicate about this 2021 Action Pledge? – This last one is key as regular communication about the implementation process will not only inspire others to follow your lead but will also show how these commitments are turned into real action.

Our ambition is that every child can dream about the future. We believe to be successful in our mission and ambition we can’t stay alone: everyone, at their own level, can make a contribution. Therefore we will continue to share our knowledge of the field and our expertise with all stakeholders as well as all publics to mobilise everyone in a voluntary and constructive manner.

Conscious of our limited financial and human resources, our communication strategy focuses on targeted and direct actions on key digital channels. Our communication will focus on key audiences and equip them to become voices for the elimination of child labour. Our effort in 2021 and beyond will also be to guarantee regularity in our interactions.  

We will mobilize our members and partners companies with direct communication tools via Flash info sessions, newsletters and press reviews. 

We will reach out professionals via LinkedIn as well as free online training sessions. We also grant them with open access to operational tools available 24/7 in our resource center.

We will sensitize consumers as well as citizens via our regular Facebook posts. Most of all, we will leverage our partnerships with key established partners such as ILO and a consumer magazine to reach out a much wider audiences. 

We will use editorial skills to push our expertise in the media at least in France. 

Finally, we will do our utmost to leverage our artistic pieces – cartoon exhibition, hymn and play – via social network and via our key partnerships to ensure the widest audience and to sensitize as many citizens as possible.