World Day Against Child Labour

TDS Desk:

Unregistered children may be pushed into exploitation and child labour due to difficulties in age verification and exclusion from protection systems, experts said.

They said, birth registration is a safeguard against child labour. It serves as the first step toward establishing a child’s legal identity and ensuring access to essential public services.

According to a press release served by PROGGA, World Day Against Child Labour is being observed today (June 12), under the theme “Red card to child labour: Fair play for children, decent work for adults.” This year’s global observance calls for stronger policy actions to prevent child labour and protect children engaged in hazardous or exploitative work. In this context, universal birth registration has been identified as a critical intervention.

Currently, the average rate of birth registration in Bangladesh stands at around 50%, while it is only 40% among children under five years of age. As a result, a vast number of children remains legally unrecognized. Without an official birth registration, verifying a child’s age becomes exceptionally difficult, significantly increasing their vulnerability to early entry into the labour market and leaving them exposed to various forms of exploitation.

Experts emphasize that amending the Birth and Death Registration Act 2004 to legally assign registration responsibilities to all healthcare facilities is the most viable solution. Currently, approximately 67 percent of children in Bangladesh are born in healthcare centres. Legally empowering these institutions would ensure that these children are automatically registered at birth, rapidly escalating national registration coverage.

It will also accelerate Bangladesh’s commitment to achieving universal registration under the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Decade by 2030 and fast-track the progress toward Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 8.7, which calls for the immediate eradication of child labour and all forms of child exploitation.

On the occasion of World Day Against Child Labour 2026, ABM Zubair, Executive Director of the research and advocacy organization PROGGA, stated, “Ensuring universal birth registration through legal reform can significantly reduce child labour, as well as exploitation and deprivation faced by children.”