Despite a drop of about five million since 2000, there are an estimated 122 million working children in Asia, for 64 percent of the worldwide total, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). About 61 percent of the world's people live in Asia.

Though there are many causes of child labor, the ILO, a United Nations agency, says a key one is that many people want their children to stay in school, but either cannot afford fees or costs such as transportation and uniforms, or would find it hard to get by without the extra income.

Thus, many families send their children to work - in the fields, in factories, selling trinkets on the street, or even in dangerous work like mining.

"The problem is, the reduction in Asia is not as rapid as it should be," said Panudda Boonpala, senior child labor specialist at the ILO. "A large number of working poor means that we have a large number of people who are unable to support children to go to school."

Under the theme "Realizing Decent Work," government representatives from 40 countries and territories as well as workers' and employers' organizations met to discuss issues including youth employment, migration, globalization, competitiveness and productivity.

Participants in a session on youth employment watched a short video on child labor, in which children were shown working at a gold mine in Mongolia.

In a report on labor and social trends in the region, the ILO said that the number of child workers, defined as being between ages 5 and 14, in Asia fell to 122.3 million in 2004 from 127.3 million four years earlier.

South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, remains a center of child labor, according to World Bank statistics contained in the ILO report.

Perhaps nowhere is the problem more pronounced than in Nepal, where as of 2004, according to the ILO, nearly 40 percent of children aged 10 to 14 were working, sometimes for long hours and in jobs requiring strenuous physical labor, such as in mines, quarries and carpet factories.

The Philippines, which has a national plan crafted under ILO guidance, also has shown improvement, though problems remain in areas such as fireworks production, deep-sea fishing and mining.

"The laws are all there," said the Philippine undersecretary of labor and employment, Manuel G. Imson. He added that the government was working to enforce them by cooperating with nongovernmental organizations and national organizations such as the police.

"I think 10 years ago there was lots of denial," the ILO's Panudda said. Further progress, however, depends on how much effort and how many resources Asian countries put into the fight, she added.

The ILO is committed to ending over the next 10 years what it calls the worst forms of child labor and abuse, which include slavery, using children in armed conflicts, trafficking in sex and drugs, and hazardous labor.

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