Investing in Decent Work: Financing the Fight Against Child Labor and Forced Labor

February 10, 2026

Investing in Decent Work: Financing the Fight Against Child Labor and Forced Labor

Progress against child labor and forced labor is at risk as global funding declines and priorities shift, leading many programs that address labor abuses to close mid-cycle. This event will explore the real-world consequences of shrinking budgets, including dismantled efforts to strengthen labor inspections, reduced identification of child and forced labor cases, and cuts to social programs that support livelihoods, education, and child welfare.

This webinar will present concrete solutions to protect essential services and reimagine effective programming to safeguard children and workers. Former government officials, donors, and representatives from multistakeholder initiatives, civil society organizations, and academia will outline how we can preserve critical resources, rebuild lost ground and relationships, and deliver on the promises of SDG 8.7 to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and eliminate child labor in all its forms.

Key Objectives

Assess the impact of funding cuts on national and community efforts to eliminate child labor and forced labor, including education access, child protection services, and labor inspection.
Amplify evidence and lived experience from governments, workers, survivor advocates, and frontline organizations on how shrinking resources affect real lives and outcomes and undercut progress, with examples of programs that have been curtailed or closed due to budget reductions.
Highlight cases of organizational resilience, where active programs have used innovative strategies to continue to support children and local communities despite funding losses.
Identify realistic financing pathways to protect essential services from unpredictable funding, including domestic resource mobilization, social protection integration, multiyear donor commitments, and responsible business models.
Highlight the role of the private sector in mobilizing resources to drive the development of new frameworks and reinforce existing ones at the local level.

This webinar, co-sponsored by the Georgetown University Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues, is an official virtual side event of the Sixth Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour, hosted by the government of the Kingdom of Morocco and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Marrakech from February 11 to 13, 2026.

Participants

Sarah Dekkiche

Sarah Dekkiche is director of policy and partnerships at the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI), a leading multistakeholder foundation dedicated to advancing the elimination of child labor and forced labor in the cocoa sector. In this role, she is among others responsible for leading ICI’s stakeholder relations and development of partnerships with members, partners, donors, and policymakers. Specializing in business and human rights, Dekkiche brings 15 years of experience working with businesses, international institutions, and civil society organizations.

Marcia Eugenio (moderator)

Marcia Eugenio is a global labor and human rights advocate with expertise in reducing child and forced labor worldwide. As a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues, she leads an initiative on international child labor and U.S. and international efforts to address it. Previously, she directed the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT). Eugenio is co-founder and principal at Better Trade Collective, where she partners with global brands, investors, and organizations to strengthen due diligence, meet regulatory expectations, and eliminate labor exploitation across complex sourcing environments.

Maró Guerrero Aguirre

Maró Guerrero Aguirre is an Ecuadorian anthropologist and regional coordinator at Desarrollo y Autogestión (DyA) with over 25 years of experience advancing efforts to prevent and eradicate child labor across Latin America. She has led projects on child labor, education, and sustainable development in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, advised the private sector on due diligence and child labor monitoring systems in agricultural supply chains, and contributed to public policy development, labor inspection mechanisms, and research on human, labor, and children’s rights across the region.

Thea Lee

Thea Lee is a distinguished visiting practitioner at the American University School of International Service Department of Politics, Governance, and Economics. She has been advocating for workers’ rights, domestically and internationally, for over 30 years. She served as deputy undersecretary for international affairs in the Department of Labor from 2021 to 2025, where she headed the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). She was president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive pro-worker Washington think tank, from 2018 to 2021. From 1997 to 2017, Lee served as chief international economist, policy director, and deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO.

Shawn MacDonald

Shawn MacDonald is CEO of Verité, a civil society organization that promotes workers’ rights in global supply chains. MacDonald has broad experience in labor rights, social entrepreneurship, workplace health, and multisector partnerships. Before joining Verité in 2003, he was the director of accreditation at the Fair Labor Association, vice president of Ashoka, senior advisor at Meridian Group International, and co-founder of the Development and Employment Policy Project. He holds a Ph.D. from George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution and a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard University.

Sadikshya Nepal

Sadikshya Nepal is GoodWeave International’s director of advocacy and communications. She leads the organization's efforts to raise visibility for child labor prevention, promote supply chain due diligence, and influence policy and practice at national and global levels. Most recently, she served as the senior international relations specialist at the U.S. Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau, Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT). Her area of expertise is in the worst forms of child labor, forced and bonded labor, changing trends in human trafficking, and labor rights in South Asia.

Ana Dammert

Ana Dammert is an associate professor of economics and international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research focuses on child labor, social protection, labor markets, and human capital formation in low- and middle-income countries, with a strong emphasis on rigorous impact evaluation and survey methods. She has been researching child labor for 20 years. In addition to her academic role, she has provided advisory services to various organizations and contributed to global research agendas on child labor.