Nearly one in 10 children globally is a victim of forced labour

More than 150 million children, or nearly one in 10 globally, are victims of forced labour and progress in reducing that number has slowed, Reuters has reported a leading United Nations' anti-slavery group as saying on Tuesday.

"Nearly half of children in forced labour do hazardous work, and more than a third of them do not go to school," said a report by the UN labour agency, the International Labour Organisation, ILO."

The Thomson Reuters Foundation report goes on to say that although the number of child labourers has technically fallen by 94 million since the year 2000, the decline actually slowed from 2012 to 2016.

The faltering progress imperils efforts to end child labour by 2025 as laid out in the United Nations' latest set of global goals agreed in 2015 to tackle poverty and inequality.

Houtan Homayounpour, technical specialist on forced labour at the Geneva-based ILO, said that the world was not on track to end child labour in eight years, with estimates that 121 million children would still be in child labour in 2025 at this rate. "We need to pick up the pace," he told the foundation.

A total of 152 million children, 64 million girls and 88 million boys, are victims of child labour, according to the latest ILO estimates and more than two-thirds of these children are working on a family farm or in a family business with 71 percent overall employed in agriculture.

Nine out of every 10 live in Africa and the Asia and Pacific region, the ILO said, with sub-Saharan Africa experiencing a rise in child labour from 2012 to 2016.

"Africa, where child labour is highest in both proportionate and absolute terms, and where progress has stalled, remains a particular priority," the ILO said in its report, which noted a strong link between child labour and conflict and disaster which caused joblessness and displacement that make children vulnerable.

Among children in forced labor between the ages of 5 and 14, a third, or 36 million, do not go to school.

The ILO said that its findings came from surveying households in all regions of the world and using data from the UN and world governments.