Are policies the solution to ending child labour?
A comparative analysis of why child-labour policies can produce partial gains without eliminating the problem, and why implementation capacity, poverty, education, and social context matter.
01 / Inquiry
The question beneath the paper
To what extent can policy-centred solutions on their own lead to the elimination of child labour?
The thesis compares Ghana and Vietnam, two developing countries with child-labour laws, action plans, and international commitments, but different records of progress.
It moves the discussion beyond whether a policy exists. The study asks what must be true around a policy, economically, institutionally, and culturally, for implementation to succeed.
Policies are necessary, but their effectiveness is conditioned by development: institutions need the resources, enforcement capacity, coordination, and social support to turn legal commitments into durable change.
02 / Approach
How the argument was built
Methods
- Comparative case study
- Expert interviews
- Document analysis
- Secondary qualitative evidence
Analytical lenses
- Path dependence
- Post-development
- State capacity
- Policy implementation
Geographic scope
- Ghana
- Vietnam
03 / Findings
What the analysis brings into focus
- 01
A policy is not its implementation
Both countries had formal commitments, but weak coordination across institutions and levels of government limited policy performance.
- 02
Capacity shapes what law can do
Poverty reduction, accessible education, enforcement resources, monitoring, and support for vulnerable families are not secondary to policy; they are part of the mechanism that makes it work.
- 03
Context changes the intervention
Cultural understandings of children's work were more visible in the Ghanaian evidence, while the Vietnamese case highlighted legal definition, coordination, and program-delivery questions.
04 / Portfolio perspective
What this work demonstrates
This is policy analysis in its most useful form: not asking whether an intervention sounds right, but identifying the institutional and social conditions under which it can realistically deliver. The comparison turns implementation failure into a diagnostic question rather than a reason to draft another law.
05 / Source & evidence boundary
The work in its original context
The page reflects the thesis's own research question, methods, limitations, and conclusions. Where expert interviews were unavailable in Vietnam, the study explicitly relied on documentary and secondary expert sources. The complete thesis is intentionally withheld from public access.