The project aims to improve compliance with national laws related to internationally recognized labor rights in the port sector. These include, but are not limited to, the right to freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, prohibition against discrimination at work, elimination of forced labor and child labor, and rights to acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health.

EQUAL/Colombia aims to reduce the risk of child labor, forced labor, and other violations of labor rights by empowering vulnerable women and girls working in the production of unrefined brown sugar (panela) and the cut flowers sector and promoting a better understanding of labor rights.

This project works to improve the implementation of social compliance systems that promote acceptable conditions of work and the prevention and reduction of child and forced labor in palm oil supply chains in Colombia and Ecuador. It will also disseminate best practices in social compliance systems in these and other palm oil producing countries, particularly Brazil and Peru.

This project will build the capacity of civil society organizations to more effectively detect and combat child labor and unacceptable working conditions in artisanal and small-scale mines in Colombia. It will form networks of civil society organizations and empower local communities to build a grassroots movement to improve working conditions and reduce the risk that children will be used in this harmful work.

•   Midterm Evaluation

Colombia Avanza will build the capacity of civil society to more effectively combat child labor and other labor abuses in Colombia’s coffee sector. By raising awareness and connecting survivors of labor exploitation to services in two of the largest coffee-producing areas of Colombia, the project helps promote supply chains free of exploitative labor and a fair playing field for workers in the U.S. and around the world.

•   Final Evaluation

The United States is the leading importer of coffee, accounting for over 18% of total coffee imports in the world, with Brazil and Colombia as the top suppliers. But before that coffee reaches our cups, tens of millions of workers globally select, pick and process the beans. Many workers are children – toiling in the fields rather than learning in school.

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  Interim Evaluation

This project supports the government of Colombia in meeting its commitments to the U.S. under the Action Plan associated with the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.

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  Impact Evaluation
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  Interim Evaluation
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  Interim Evaluation Infographic Summary

The United States supports the goal of bringing meaningful change to the lives of the 152 million child laborers and the 25 million adults and children in forced labor around the world by eradicating child labor, forced labor and human trafficking.