How can operational-level grievance mechanisms help kids in situations of child labour? The Remedy Project and the Centre for Child Rights and Business published The Suitability of Operational-Level Grievance Mechanisms in Addressing Child Labour (June 2024), outlining ways that operational-level grievance mechanisms (OGMs) can support meaningful remedy for child labour.
Human Level’s Take: Child labour can be incredibly difficult to remediate—it is often a hidden issue with systemic causes that are tricky to identify, let alone put a stop to and remediate. This is why OGMs can be powerful tools for identifying and remediating instances of child labour, especially where companies don’t have direct oversight of activities in the supply chain. Because they are non-judicial mechanisms, they can be more accessible to children and their guardians, including for vulnerable children who are undocumented, unaccompanied or otherwise face barriers to accessing judicial mechanisms. They can also help companies, their suppliers and partners like civil society more quickly identify risk factors for child labour that can inform preventative, proactive measures and strengthen human rights due diligence. And, they put the focus on dialogue, mediation and remediation of the issue, instead of using punitive measures that might incentivise suppliers to use quick, ineffective fixes or even hide instances of child labour. Some of the key points for companies to keep in mind when designing OGMs that can address child labour? Make sure to consult with children and their proxies to ensure the OGM is accessible, understandable and safe for children to use. Take a holistic approach to remediation that goes beyond children’s immediate needs to include longer-term, holistic solutions that keep kids from re-entering work, like access to education, poverty alleviation, paying fair prices to farmers to help keep their own children out of work, and supporting community resilience to chip away at economic drivers of child labour. And, strengthen feedback loops: build a process where learnings from the OGM feed into broader human rights due diligence (and vice versa) to both tackle child labour where it arises and better prevent child labour from happening in the first place.
Key points from the report:
- Pitfalls of OGMs to address child labour: According to the report, there are a number of ways that traditional operational-level grievance mechanisms (OGMs) can fail to adequately investigate and remediate cases of child labour. For one, grievance policies can be overly broad to address all types of grievances and might look to capture all types of human rights issues—not just child labour—which can mean that the remediation approach is not child-centric and that the complexities of child labour cases may be overlooked. In addition, OGMs and grievance policies might push remedial responsibility onto the supplier, who is not always adequately equipped to address issues of child labour, or can sometimes seek to hide cases instead of handling them directly. Likewise, OGMs that put the focus on consequences for violating child labour policies—rather than outlining steps for remediation—can put more focus on risks to business and could incentivise business partners to simply “eliminate” the problem rather than looking at systemic factors causing child labour. OGMs are also not equipped to proactively address root causes because they are usually backward-looking and reactive by nature. Companies that fail to put in place parallel approaches to prevent child labour (and additional resources) by addressing root causes may not really be preventing new cases of child labour.
- How OGMs can support remediation of child labour: The report identifies different ways that OGMs can effectively remediate child labour in ways that traditional justice mechanisms cannot. For one, unlike judicial mechanisms, the value of OGM processes is that they can create safer, more accessible environments for children to express their experiences through dialogue and participation. To ensure that this is the case for their OGMs, companies should ensure grievance channels are accessible to children and their guardians and that investigation and engagement with children is conducted by specially trained staff. OGMs can play an especially important role in ensuring access to justice for undocumented and unaccompanied children or children with others barriers to accessing justice; in these cases companies may need to bring in extra supports like a pre-approved roster of guardians who can support children through the process. Under international standards, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, OGMs should also feed continuous learning and strengthen human rights due diligence. OGMs are therefore well-equipped to feed knowledge and trends back to companies in order to prevent child labour and proactively address root causes, including serving as early identifiers of systemic issues that can raise the risk of child labour.
- How to develop an OGM fit for children: There are six key points for companies to keep in mind when developing an OGM that can effectively address and remediate child labour. First, the OGM should be developed with meaningful engagement by children (or their proxies), communities, child rights organisations and independent experts. Second, to improve remediation, time and resources need to be invested in initiatives to identify root causes within the specific industry, sector and geography; this can be done in partnership with others. Third, companies should commit to resolving grievances promptly and providing tailored remedies that can include interim measures to limit ongoing and future harm to children. This should also include age-appropriate approaches to socialise the grievance mechanism with children and explain how to use it. Fourth, contact points should be easily and safely accessible to children and staffed by trained professionals. Fifth, direct complaints channels can be created by establishing referral points within the broader community; this can also be supported through Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) that are designed to identify and end instances of child labour through bottom-up processes. Sixth, regularly reviewing child labour policies and measuring the impact of OGMs and other mechanisms can help companies identify where there may be gaps in their current investigation and remediation approach.
