Child labour...is locking millions of children into lives of poverty, vulnerability and servitude...[G]overnments, donors and UN agencies...have failed to respond to a real and present child labour scourge that is destroying lives today on an epic scale...Half of all working children are employed in what the ILO describes as "hazardous conditions"...Millions of children are engaged in a daily struggle to combine school with employment – and most are losing that struggle...The tragedy in all of this is that education should be the most powerful catalyst for consigning child labour to history...Breaking the link between poverty and child labour is a vital step towards universal education.