Decent work for youth

The session will examine the interconnected challenges faced by adolescents of legal working age, including those exposed to hazardous work amid fragile school-to-work transitions. It will explore gaps in protection, regulation and enforcement, particularly around hazardous work lists, occupational safety and health (OSH) systems, as well as weaknesses in policy coherence between child labour, youth employment including entrepreneurship, which lead to unsafe, low-quality apprenticeships and poorly supported self-employment and enterprise pathways. Moreover, it will highlight good practices, lessons learned and recommendations from existing integrated youth-support policies and mechanisms, combining social reintegration, rights protection, entrepreneurship support and continuous guidance from identification and skills development to wage or self-employment and professional development. It will also address adolescents’ limited voice, rights awareness and access to referral and protection mechanisms, especially for girls, alongside the role of household poverty, community norms and livelihood vulnerabilities in pushing young people into hazardous work or survival-based self-employment. Together, these issues frame how to build coherent, inclusive and protective safe transition pathways to decent work and sustainable entrepreneurship for adolescents of legal working age.

Interpretation is not available for the online broadcast.