Child Labor in Colombia

Introduction
It's estimated that there are 1 million children working in Colombia. The national policy for eradication of child labor has been developed since 1996. However the implementation of this national policy has not been evaluated.

Methods
Review of the data from the national survey of child labor and from the evaluation of eradication of child labor policy database.

Results
The national rate for child labor participation is 9.2% showing and increase compared with the data from former surveys. 40% of child workers do not study, 35% work more the 25 hour weekly, 45% of children working are between 5 and 14 years old.
30% of the capital cities of Colombia show low or critical performance in the implementation of the policies and 50% of the Colombian departments do not have any budget for the implementation of the policy.

Discussion
There is a lack of implementation of the programs of the national strategy for child labor eradication. The national estimates for child labor are not precise and the data are not coherent on a time tendency evaluation basis.