Limiting the minimum age: Convention 138 and the origin of the ILO's action in the field of child labour

The chapter aims firstly at analysing the ILO (International Labour Organisation) Convention No. 138 of 1973, the so called Minimum Age Convention, from the legal point of view, taking into account the different interpretations of its provisions provided by scholars, on the one hand, and by the most important quasi-judicial body of the ILO, the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, on the other. Furthermore, the chapter tries to asses the real impact of this Convention in the domestic labour law systems of the Member States in the light of the new ILO “core labour standards” strategy, launched by the Organisation through the so called Geneva Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998).