United Nations, Sha'ban 28, 1436, Jun 15, 2015, SPA -- The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) issued a new handbook Monday seeking to establish guidelines to prevent the use of child labor across the world’s agricultural communities. The Handbook for Monitoring and Evaluation of Child Labor in Agriculture will attempt to fill the gaps in many agricultural development programs that fail to monitor or evaluate the impact they have on child labor, especially in those communities where increased labor demands are met through child workers. “In recent years, we have seen an increase in awareness of child labor and its role in producing export crops such as cocoa, coffee and cotton,” FAO Social Protection Division Director Rob Vos said in a statement. “As a result, we see much more effective action to prevent child labor in these value chains. However, child labor on family farms not connected to international commodity markets has remained largely untouched. The new guide tries to fill this void.” The FAO said that the handbook provides an easily accessible toolkit of research and data collection methods for assessing child labor in agriculture and the impacts that various types of development programs can have. It also encourages the identification and use of practices to prevent child labor such as the promotion of labor-saving technologies while also offering practical advice on how to collect information. --SPA 18:52 LOCAL TIME 15:52 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w