Advancing Child Rights in India: Our Efforts to Combat Child Labour in Supply Chains

The Centre for Child Rights and Business is deeply engaged in child labour and other key human rights due diligence focus areas within India’s supply chains, particularly in high-risk sectors like cotton, sugarcane, peppermint, apparel, leather and toys. With India poised to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2027, demand for services and expertise to understand and address child rights and human rights risks is growing. However, visibility into these risks in lower tiers remains low. 

Our on-the-ground staff in India focus on uncovering and tackling the complex challenges that drive child rights violations, especially in informal sectors and upstream supply chains where children, youth, women and working families are most vulnerable. We prioritise ensuring these insights are understood and shared with key stakeholders and translated into actionable steps that drive systematic, long-term change.

In India, we have facilitated child rights and human rights risk and impact assessments for seven international brands to date. These assessments are designed to identify risks of child labour and other rights violations throughout supply chains using a standardised approach and methodology that gives a clear overview of where actual and potential risks may be found, with concrete suggestions on how to make changes in a way that creates positive impact while respecting the need for long-term business-friendly solutions. These assessments include:

• Onsite visits, management interviews, focus group discussions with workers, one-on-one interviews, and consultations with key stakeholders

• Reports with risk matrices that help brands implement time-bound action plans to address identified risks

In India, we are currently working with four brands to provide child labour remediation support. We plan and design remediation efforts collaboratively with the state functionaries and line departments of the government, like the labour and women and children’s welfare department. When child labour cases are found, we design and implement individualised child labour remediation programmes and assign each child with a dedicated case manager who supports, visits and liaises with the child and their family throughout the programme’s duration. These programmes focus on providing education and alternative livelihoods until the children reach the minimum working age and are designed to uphold the best interests of the concerned children.

When child labour is found in the supply chain, we not only develop a remediation plan for the child, but we also offer specialised training for brands and their suppliers to prevent its recurrence. Our training includes raising awareness about child labour and children’s rights, promoting responsible recruitment practices, teaching effective age verification methods, and emphasising the value of decent work for youth as a key strategy to combat child labour. Three global brands have benefitted from our training programmes in India to date.

We are providing consultation services to brands and buyers in India, advising them on how to assess and mitigate child labour risks, particularly in sectors like agriculture that rely on informal and seasonal labour. Through this work, we are building a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on embedding robust human rights due diligence in a key agricultural commodity, and we are working towards the launch of a new Child Rights Action Hub in India’s peppermint sector in 2025 that will tackle the worst forms of child labour.

Please follow our social media and website for updates on these initiatives, and don’t hesitate to contact us to learn more about our work in India and how we can support you.