40. Calls on the European Community and Member States to provide more support to fair trade and labelling initiatives which encourage companies not to use child labour; recommends that compliance with voluntary codes of conduct regarding core labour rights should be better controlled and made transparent to European consumers; believes that public procurement contracts should be made conditional on compliance with international child labour standards;

Recalls the Millennium Development Goals, and stresses that access to education and health are basic human rights; believes that health programmes, including those covering sexual health, promotion of gender equality, empowerment of women and rights of the child should be prominent in the EU's development and human rights policy, in particular where gender-based violence is pervasive and women and children are put at risk of HIV/AIDS, or denied access to information, prevention and/or treatment; calls on the Commission to integrate core labour rights and the decent work agenda in its development policy, in particular in trade-related a ...[+++]ssistance programmes;

We cannot close our eyes to the situations of the several thousand street children and homeless children in the Member States of the Union, of whom many are forced into begging, stealing, illegal labour or prostitution.

Emphasis should be placed on areas where the ASEM process will be able to contribute a genuine added-value, including for example dialogue and co-operation in such fields as the environment (including for example elements such as the sustainable use of forests and water use), combating international crime, money-laundering, crime against women and children, and racism and xenophobia, exchanging experience in fields relating to conflict-prevention and peace-keeping as well as strengthening efforts to control the arms trade.

2. any form of traffic in children for adoption is totally unacceptable, not merely because it violates human dignity, but also because it constitutes an inadmissible inducement to parents living in poverty to abandon their children;

It is because child labour is so deeply intertwined with international trade that the international community has a large obligation to participate in the efforts to respond to the plight of child labourers and begin the process of eliminating child labour.