Consulting Agency to Support Development of Textbook on Child Rights and Child Labour

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Consulting agency to support development of Textbook on Child Rights and Child
Labour as an Integrated Course in the Master’s Programme on Human Rights

1. Background

The National Child Labour Survey conducted in 2012 shows that there are 1.75 children in child labour in Viet Nam, of whom over 34% work excessively long hours (more than 42/week). Of Viet Nam’s 1.75 million child labourers, an overwhelming majority (85%) live in rural areas and 15% in urban areas. Sixty percent of child labourers are boys and 40% are girls. The largest number of children in child labour fall in the 15-17 age group (58%), followed by the 12-14 age group (almost 27%) and alarmingly nearly 15% in the 5-11 age bracket.

The vast majority of child labour is in the agricultural sector with 1.18 million children or 67% of all child labourers. The manufacturing-construction and services sectors attract 276 thousand (15.8%) and 293 thousand (16.6%) children, respectively.

About 1.53 million are identified as children doing hazardous work, accounting for 87% of child labourers. Out of the group of children doing hazardous work, 39.9% are girls, nearly 85% live in rural areas and 66.4% are in the 15-17 age group.

A number of initiatives to tackle the problem has been developed. As the key international organization supporting Vietnam in combating child labour, since 2000, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has carried out a series of projects and programmes for the prevention and elimination of child labour in the country. These projects have made significant progress in assessing the situation, analyzing the cause of the problem as well as building the capacity of related local stakeholders to take action against child labour. In 2015, the “Technical Support for Enhancing National Capacity to Prevent and Reduce Child Labour in Viet Nam” Project (ENHANCE) was launched with the aim to further contribute to the Government of Vietnam’s efforts in combating child labour through strengthening training tools for building capacity of national partners and project implementers.

The ENHANCE project has supported the development of several types of training materials which target different stakeholder groups such as those working on child protection/child labour, labour inspection/law enforcement, education; employers’, workers’ and communicators in order to build their capacity in the prevention and elimination of child labour.

However, this support is mainly targeted at agencies/organizations/public servants directly working in the protection and care of children, usually through conducting short training courses.

While tackling child labour requires coordination and collaboration among multi-sectoral agencies, it has never been introduced intensively as a subject at universities in Viet Nam. The involvement of academia in this important work has not yet been tapped. As an important stakeholder, local universities can carry out and maintain education and research activities on the elimination of child labour in a sustainable manner in the country.

Being aware of the above, the project looks for a consultancy institution, hereinafter to be called Agency, to closely work with the Law School of the National University (VNU-LS) in order to support the School to develop a textbook and course syllabus on child rights and child labour related issues, as an integrated part of the master’s programme on human rights.

2. Objectives

The overall objective of this activity is to build capacity of diversified stakeholder group so that they can contribute effort to the long-term and sustainable prevention and elimination of child labor in Viet Nam, through integration of child labour and child’s rights related issues into the master’s programme on human rights.

3. Tasks

The Agency is expected to complete the following key tasks:

• Review the existing child rights and child labour international standards and national legislation framework, and other related documents and training materials;
• Review the master’s programme on human rights of the VNU-LS;
• Develop a detailed outlines of the text-book and course syllabus, in consultation with the concerned staff of the VNU-LS;
• Based on the agreed outlines, develop the text-book and course syllabus;
• Share the draft text-book with the VNU-LS appraisal Committee for technical inputs;
• Revise and finalize the Book

4. Outputs

The Agency will be required to submit the followings:

• A comprehensive and practical Textbook on Child Rights and Child Labour (in Vietnamese), for education and research purpose of VNU-LS and other law schools of Vietnam.
• A course syllabus on child rights and child labor for education and reference purposes of VNU-LS and other law schools of Viet Nam

5. Agreed timeframe

This proposed assignment is expected to be completed within a period of 3 months from the date of the Service Contract signing. One week after the signature of the Service Contract, the Agency is required to submit a detailed Work-plan which includes tentative timeline for each task requirement.

6. Submission of Proposal

The interested and relevant institutions are invited to submit their proposal to the ENHACE project with the following details:

• Technical proposal outlining key sections and contents of the text-book and course syllabus; and
• Detailed budget estimations

Please send proposals, including a cover letter and updated profile and the proposed consultancy fee to [email protected] with copy to [email protected] before 5pm, 25 September 2019. Late submission will not be accepted.