In Pakistan millions of kids get up each morning to a task rather than to school. They are not lazy and they don't work in the police because it isn't a good option for their families to survive, they work in the bricks in Lahore, the newspaper stalls in the intersections of Karachi, they crouch down, they sort waste in the informal settlements of Quetta because their families have calculated it is not a good option for them to be idle. Pakistan is being called to action on this World Day Against Child Labour, celebrated on 12 June with the theme ‘Red Card to Child Labour: Fair Play for Children, Decent Work for Adults', as the problem extends beyond parental neglect to the structural poverty. The answers as the Islamabad Center for Education & Peace has always said have to be in the realm of education and peace — and of economic dignity for the poor families.
The Scale of the Crisis
The Challenge of the crisis According to the Federal Ministry of Education, Pakistan had 26 million out-of-school children in 2024, ranking its performance on child education as one of the worst in the world. A provincial survey in January 2024 revealed that 0.9 per cent (more than 745,000) of children aged 5-17 in the Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are engaged in child labour, of which almost 74 per cent are involved in hazardous work. Although boys are not as exposed as girls, they do carry a heavy burden too, particularly in the form of invisible domestic labour. About 20 per cent of children in the same age group suffer the same fate in Sindh. According to the latest ILO-UNICEF estimates, there are almost 138 million children in child labour worldwide, of which 54 million are in hazardous work in 2024. The elimination target for 2025 has been missed and Pakistan has an undue burden for this unfinished target.
Why Poor Families Send Children to Work
The reasons that poor families send their children to work. Implicating parents in the moral failing of child labour is an unhelpful and persistent mistake. Its driving force is poverty and not indifference. Education is a luxury in low-income households in rural Punjab, southern Sindh, and peri-urban Balochistan due to school fees and lost income. A child earning Rs. A family's diet could be a matter of 400-600 a day. More than 65 percent of respondents in a KP study in 2024 said “economic hardship” was the determining factor. Parents understand the importance of education, but that is the only thing they have to survive by — and that is only for the moment.
Islamabad Center for Education & Peace (ICEP)
The Islamabad Center for Education & Peace (ICEP) has consistently argued that enforcement alone cannot solve Pakistan’s child labour crisis. Raids on workshops and kilns, while necessary, are insufficient — removing income without a replacement simply pushes children into less visible, more dangerous work. ICEP’s field research reveals that many poor parents are not hostile to education: they seek a model that lets children gain marketable skills while remaining in school. Pakistan’s TVET system targets youth aged 16 and above, leaving those aged 10–15 without support at the moment they are most vulnerable. ICEP recommends three responses: community skills micro-centers within government schools conditional cash transfers tied to skill-module completion; and parent mobilization programmes treating skills as a complement to schooling. Education and peace, ICEP insists, are impossible without economic security for families.
Skills Alongside Schooling
Skills Alongside Schooling The message to the poor parents of Pakistan on this World Day is not a lecture, it is an invitation. You cannot compare a 12-year-old child working in a workshop in Rawalpindi for twelve hours to a 12-year-old child who is learning a technical skill of electrical repair in school and getting paid for it during weekends, and later he will be able to use it to earn a livelihood. Afternoons tailoring classes may be held in a school in Rahim Yar Khan and the girls could earn money at home without endangering themselves. A mobile repair shop is a trade that is in growing demand and has low start-up costs, a trade that a school in Mardan could offer. These are models that are replicable but are encountered in fragmented forms throughout Pakistan, and need institutional will to scale.
The Role of Government and Civil Society
The role of government and civil society organizations. The legal framework in Pakistan, both National as well as provincial, mandates that children under 14 years of age are not allowed to work in factories or hazardous environment. However, enforcement is still very weak: labour inspectorates in the provinces are poorly funded, under resourced and corrupt. Community-level interventions have been shown by civil society to have an effect. Hundreds of thousands of out-of-school children have been reached by non-formal education centres, mobile school programmes and community learning hubs. UNICEF's vocational training programs in Pakistan engaged more than 13,000 youth in 2024 of which 70 per cent were successfully placed.
A Different Kind of Red Card
The results demonstrate that when education and peace are seen as interrelated objectives supported by real political commitment, results are possible. A Different Kind of Red Card Football and cricket bring people together from Gilgit to Gwadar in Pakistan and the ILO's 2026 campaign is raising a red card to child labour - an apt metaphor for the country. However, if there is no replacement for a red card, then it is just a punishment. Families need a new playbook where education isn't a tradeoff, skills aren't a distraction from school, and a poor parent's dream for their kid can't be in competition with this month's rent. Access to education and peace is through the poorest families in Pakistan. The child who is gripping a book in one hand while learning a skill in the other isn't a compromise, she's the future that the country desperately needs.
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