B.The informal economy The informal economy engages an important part of the economically active population in many countries and contributes significantly to gross national product. However, children’s rights can be particularly at risk from business activities that take place outside of the legal and institutional frameworks that regulate and protect rights. For example, products that are manufactured or handled in this context, such as toys, garments or foodstuffs, can be unhealthy and/or unsafe for children. Also, a concentrated number of children are often found in hidden areas of informal work, such as small family enterprises, agricultural and hospitality sectors. Such work frequently involves precarious employment status, low, irregular or no remuneration, health risks, a lack of social security, limited freedom of association and inadequate protection from discrimination and violence or exploitation. It can prevent children from attending school, doing schoolwork and having adequate rest and play, potentially infringing articles 28, 29 and 31 of the Convention. Moreover, parents or caregivers working in the informal economy often have to work long hours to obtain subsistence-level earnings, thus seriously limiting their opportunities to exercise parental responsibilities or care for children in their charge. States should put in place measures to ensure that business activities take place within appropriate legal and institutional frameworks in all circumstances regardless of size or sector of the economy so that children’s rights can be clearly recognized and protected. Such measures can include: awareness-raising, conducting research and gathering data on the impact of the informal economy upon children’s rights, supporting the creation of decent jobs that provide adequate pay to working parents or caregivers; implementing clear and predictable land-use laws; improving the provision of social protection to low-income families; and supporting informal sector enterprises by providing skills training, registration facilities, effective and flexible credit and banking services, appropriate tax arrangements and access to markets, inter alia. States must regulate working conditions and ensure safeguards to protect children from economic exploitation and work that is hazardous or interferes with their education or harms their health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. Such work is often found, albeit not exclusively, within the informal and family economies. Therefore, States are required to design and implement programmes aimed at reaching businesses in these contexts, including by enforcing international standards regarding legal minimum age for work and appropriate conditions of work, investing in education and vocational training andproviding support for the satisfactory transition of children to the world of work. States should ensure that social and child protection policies reach all, especially families in the informal economy. C.Children’s rights and global operations of business Business enterprises increasingly operate on a global scale through complex networks of subsidiaries, contractors, suppliers and joint ventures. Their impact on children’s rights, whether positive or negative, is rarely the result of the action or omission of a single business unit, whether it is the parent company, subsidiary, contractor, supplier or others. Instead, it may involve a link or participation between businesses units located in different jurisdictions. For example, suppliers may be involved in the use of child labour, subsidiaries may be engaged in land dispossession and contractors or licensees may be involved in the marketing of goods and services that are harmful to children. There are particular difficulties for States indischarging their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of the child in this context owing, among other reasons, to the fact that business enterprises are oftenlegally separate entities located in different jurisdictions even when they operate as an economic unit which has its centre of activity, registration and/or domicile in one country (the home State) and is operational in another (the host State). Under the Convention, States have the obligation to respect and ensure children’s rights within their jurisdiction. The Convention does not limit a State’s jurisdiction to “territory”. In accordance with international law, the Committee has previously urged States to protect the rights of children who may be beyond their territorial borders. It has also emphasized that State obligations under the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto apply to each child within a State’s territory and to all children subject to a State’s jurisdiction. Extraterritorial obligations are also explicitly referred to in the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Article 3, paragraph 1, provides that each State shall ensure that, as a minimum, offences under it are fully covered by its criminal or penal law, whether such offences are committed domestically or transnationally. Under article 3, paragraph 4, of Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, liability for these offences, whether criminal, civil or administrative, should be established for legal persons, including business enterprises. This approach is consistent with other human rights treaties and instruments that impose obligations on States to establish criminal jurisdiction over nationals in relation to areas such as complicity in torture, enforced disappearance and apartheid, no matter where the abuse and the act constituting complicity is committed. States have obligations to engage in international cooperation forthe realization of children’s rights beyond their territorial boundaries. The preamble and the provisions of the Convention consistently refer to the “importance of international cooperation for improving the living conditions of children in every country, in particular in the developing countries”.General comment No.5 emphasizes that “implementation of the Convention is a cooperative exercise for the States of the world”. As such, the full realization of children’s rights under the Conventionis in part a function of how States interact. Furthermore, the Committee highlights that the Convention has been nearly universally ratified; thus realization of its provisions should be of major and equal concern to both host and home States of business enterprises. Host States have the primary responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights in their jurisdiction. They must ensure that all business enterprises, including transnational corporations operating within their borders, are adequately regulated within a legal and institutional framework that ensures that they do not adversely impact on the rights of the child and/or aid and abet violations in foreign jurisdictions. Home States also have obligations, arising under the Conventionand the Optional Protocols thereto, to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights in the context of businesses’ extraterritorial activities and operations, provided that there is a reasonable link between