The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (the commission) joins the international community in commemorating the World Day Against Child Labour. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are approximately 168 million children currently in child labour. Although the prevalence of child labour has decreased rather steadily in recent years, the large number of child labourers that still exist today is a cause for deep concern.

Child labour poses a serious threat to the enjoyment of a child’s human rights including his or her right to health and right to education. Child labour deprives children of their childhood and is likely to be detrimental to their physical, psychological and emotional well-being, thus making it extremely difficult for them to achieve their full potential.

With the increasing recognition of the need for the corporate sector to respect human rights, the commission finds the theme of this year’s World Day Against Child Labour, which focuses on child labour and supply chains, very befitting.

It is imperative that business entities, be they multinational corporations or small and medium enterprises, ensure that their own operations do not engage child labourers and that the suppliers within their supply chains are not complicit in any activity linked to child labour.

The increasingly complex supply networks of today’s businesses, which often involve cross-border transactions, make this task very challenging and call for a more robust human rights due diligence exercise by business entities, among other efforts.

Similarly, government agencies must formalise a mechanism to ensure that the contractors and vendors appointed for their projects and for procurement purposes, as well as their supply chains, are not in any way involved in child labour.

The commission is of the view that in addressing child labour in the country, concrete measures must be put in place to compel businesses to respect human rights.

In relation to this, the commission reiterates the importance of developing a national action plan on business and human rights that embraces the three pillars of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, namely the State duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and access to remedy.

The commission hopes that the government will develop its own national action plan on business and human rights in consultation with various stakeholders such as the corporate sector and the civil society.

The commission wishes to highlight that the Strategic Framework on a National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights for Malaysia, which was formulated by the commission and launched in March 2015, could serve as a useful reference document for the development of Malaysia’s national action plan on business and human rights.

The commission believes that such a plan will pave the way for effective policies and measures that will be able to properly manage and address the adverse impacts of business activities on human rights, including those relating to child labour.