At a press conference, UNICEF Mexico director Yoriko Yasukawa said the campaign is based on the idea that society must guarantee children's basic rights to an education and to play.

Poverty, she said, is one of the leading causes pushing children to work, and child labor "is a way to pass along the cost of inequality and injustice to the weakest members of society."

Also attending the press conference were representatives of the International Labor Organization (OIT), the Labor Secretariat (STPS), and labor organizations the Revolutionary Confederation of Peasants and Workers (CROC) and the Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM).

According to the National Statistics Institute (INEGI), Mexico has 3.3 million underage workers while the OIT puts the figure at 246 million worldwide.

There is a "culture of exploitation" of children in Mexico, said Marķa Reyes Cordova, representative of the STPS. She added that child labor is widely tolerated, and for that reason there is a great need for public education on the issue. The campaign aims to raise public awareness through publicity, seminars, and education in schools.

Child labor exists across industries, with agriculture employing 48 percent of working minors. Large numbers of children are also found in the informal economy, where 20 percent work as artisans and 14 percent as venders, Reyes said.

In agriculture, children often work alongside their parents, particularly in families that migrate from poor southern states to find work harvesting crops in other regions of the country. To tackle the problem, the government aid program "Oportunidades" offers scholarships for the children of agricultural workers as an incentive to stay in school, said Reyes.

The integration of children into the workforce is also a reflection of the competition Mexico faces in the global market said CTM representative Fernando Salgado.

Asian countries have "bombarded" the nation with cheap imports, many produced with child labor, said Salgado. This has contributed to a loss of formal jobs, particularly in manufacturing, pushing entire families into the informal economy, he added.

The CROC and the CTM have been negotiating language into their collective contracts that specifically prohibits child labor. They are also using their national membership networks to educate union workers on the issue.

To combat child labor, it is necessary to create more jobs for adults and improve wages so that parents' income is sufficient to support their families, said Yasukawa.

Most working minors don't attend school, which impacts their future job opportunities. Children may also suffer job-related injuries that could result in lifelong disabilities.

"If we lose our children, we lose the future of Mexico," said Salgado.