It seeks to understand the reasons, based on economic necessity, why many children work, and takes a strong position in favour of abolition while making a distinction between (light forms of) child work and child labor.
Major projects that have been concluded are on Working Children and Agency, Child Labour Unions, Child Labour Migration and Deprived Children and Education.
Intensive research is going on in a dozen of countries across the developing world.
Research is conducted with the policy implications in view (https://web.archive.org/web/20070929021731/http://www.childlabour.net/docs/GIEPublicatie.pdf) The IREWOC director, Dr. G.K. Lieten, is a professor of Child Labour Studies at the University of Amsterdam and at the International Institute of Social History.
His inaugural address deals with the historical, sociological and ideological aspects of child labour.