Ikea Foundation and Save the Children support the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and aim to ensure that their activities are always in the best interests of the child.
Child Rights in India and Pakistan
As one of the leading child rights organisations globally, Save the Children fights for children's rights and deliver immediate and lasting improvements to children's lives. In South Asia, the collaboration with the IKEA Foundation is a ground-breaking example of what can be done if stakeholders collaborating between sectors, join forces.
The IKEA Foundation has identified cotton and cotton-seed farming areas in India and Pakistan as areas where there is a great need to improve the rights and lives of children. This is why the IKEA Foundation supports long-term child rights and education programmes managed by Save the Children and UNICEF in a number of cotton producing states in India and Pakistan.
Children in India and Pakistan often lose several months of schooling or drop out of school altogether because they are in the cotton fields weeding or picking. Raising local awareness through women's self-help groups, child protection committees, children's groups and adolescent girls' collectives, plays an important role in strengthening children's rights, including the prevention and elimination of child labour.
By addressing the root causes of child labour the programmes aim to bring long-lasting improvements of children's rights, and by raising awareness among parents and local communities, the aim is to secure children's access to quality education. By listening to and learning from children, children's rights are made a reality for many children in India and Pakistan.
Children who have dropped out or never had the chance to go to school get access to education, sometimes through informal "bridge schools" before being eased into the conventional school system. The quality of mainstream education is enhanced by training school teachers in child-friendly teaching techniques and by introducing various learning aids.
Since 2006, the IKEA Foundation (then known as the IKEA Social Initiative) has supported UNICEF and Save the Children in implementing child rights programmes to prevent child labour and promote quality education in cotton and cottonseed farming areas. The aim is to create a protective and healthy environment for children in at least 15,000 villages in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan in India and in Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan in Pakistan.
