Join the HARVEST with PRIME

Hazards in Agriculture Reduced by Valued Employment Support and Training (HARVEST)

Send examples of cases where farmers or businesses have aligned decent work for youth ages 15-17 within legal regulations and occupational safety and health standards and practices. If you are a company, employer, farmer, please see this link to a questionnaire that will help us learn more about the constraints and opportunities for adolescent youth to be employed and gain skills. The questionnaire is anonymous and secure.

  • Incentivize private sector to invest in youth for future sustainable Supply Chains

Promoting youth employment: One of the challenges for employers and trade unions in respect of hazardous child labour is how to promote youth employment for children who are of the minimum legal age for employment in their country (14–15 upwards according to national legislation). Under ILO Convention No. 182, no child (i.e., person under 18 years of age) shall work in hazardous child labour. However, if workplace safety and health conditions can be sufficiently improved to guarantee children in the 14/15 to 17-year age bracket “decent conditions of work”, including proper training for them on safety and health. … there is no reason why, in most jobs, these children should not remain at work, productively employed and earning wages. By sufficiently improving workplace safety and health conditions, the child ceases to be a “child labourer” and becomes classed as a “young worker”. The only exception to this scenario is small-scale artisanal mining – surface and underground – which has been judged by the ILO’s governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations to be so hazardous that no child under 18 should work in this sector under any circumstances. (Handbook for ACTRAV/ILO, 2011)

•Assist companies and governments to institute joint funds for competitive supports to safety provisions in work sites

•OSH – ensure youth have rest times, food, water, equipment protections and supervision

•Respect agricultural work in the education system and wider society.  Professionalization and upgrading of skills in agriculture, and the promotion of decent youth employment are essential (see Motivating Ghana’s Youth in Agriculture (https://siro360.com/motivating-ghanas-youth-in-agriculture/)