Six years after the International Labour Organizatio6 (ILO) launched the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), reliabloata are still lacking. A recent ILO estimate places the number of child workers across the world at 73 million. With most nations not even recognising the problem - only 19 countries are participating in the IPEC - that is a conservative estimate. If children not enrolled in schools are counted, one could add another 90 million from India alone, most of them girls. The actual number probably runs into hundreds of millions - a sizeable percentage of the two billion who are under 18 years of age.