A/68/274 legal reform, awareness-raising and social mobilization to prevent child trafficking and safeguard the rights of child victims. Protection from violence associated with domestic work 27. The ratification of the Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) of the International Labour Organization has been a core component of the Special Representative’s agenda. This treaty requires States to set a minimum age for domestic work and ensure that work by young domestic workers over the minimum age does not interfere with their education; and calls for the protection of domestic workers from all forms of abuse, harassment and violence. 28. Children engaged in domestic work, most of them girls, are highly vulnerable to violence. According to ILO estimates contained in the publication Ending Child Labour in Domestic Work and Protecting Young Workers for Abusive Working Conditions, there may be as many as 100 million domestic workers worldwide, 15.5 million of whom are children. 13 Most of them work as housekeepers, nannies or caregivers, and many are also migrants who hope to support their families through their remittances. Often isolated, with no formal protection structure, child domestic workers are highly vulnerable to labour exploitation, through having to work long hours without rest, being denied holidays or being deprived of wages, as well as to serious manifestations of violence and abuse. 29. In the same publication, ILO expresses special concern at the largely hidden nature of domestic work and its strong association with incidents of violence. Name-calling, threats, shouting and screaming, beating, kicking, whipping, scalding, overwork and denial of food, and sexual harassment and abuse are some of the incidents acknowledged in the report. If they become pregnant, girls may be dismissed and find themselves on the streets, afraid to return home. 14 30. The Special Representative will continue to join hands with partners for the swift ratification and implementation of ILO standards, for legal reform and for the consolidation of data and research on child workers’ exposure to violence. The third Global Conference on Child Labour, to be held in Brasilia in October 2013, will provide a significant platform for advancing this cause. Protecting children from enforced disappearances 31. The protection of children from enforced disappearances has gained renewed attention in 2013 with the adoption of the general comment on children and enforced disappearances by the Human Rights Council Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances at its ninety-eighth session, held from 31 October to 9 November 2012 (A/HRC/WGEID/98/1 and Corr.1). The general comment is the fruit of close collaboration between the Working Group and the Special Representative. It recognizes enforced disappearances of children as an extreme form of violence, preventable in all of its forms and unjustifiable under any circumstance. __________________ 13 14 13-41970 See International Labour Organization, International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), Ending Child Labour in Domestic Work and Protecting Young Workers from Abusive Working Conditions (Geneva, International Labour Organization, 2013). Ibid., pp. 34-37. 7/26