GENEVA (Reuters) - Participants in a six-month „Global March against Child Labour“ won a standing ovation on Tuesday at the annual conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) at the end of their six-month odyssey. Delegates stood and burst into applause as the the first of 350 „core“ marchers — those who had taken part from the three starting points in the Philippines, South Africa and Brazil — entered the Assembly Hall at the U.N.‘s Palais des Nations. Outside, thousands of supporters waved banners proclaiming „No To Child Labour“ and calling on governments and businesses to take quick action to ban its most extreme forms, like work in mines, on construction sites and in prostitution. The 10-day ILO conference, which opened earlier on Tuesday, is to consider a draft convention on this issue, but it could only be adopted at next year‘s gathering. The agency has 174 member countries, and links governments, employers and labour unions. Signatories to a new convention would commit themselves to bring in legislation to implement its provisions, making violation of them a criminal offence. Among the marchers — who in the journey to Geneva from different parts of the world have been received by several heads of state and government — were many teenagers from developing countries who had been working since an early age. They included a 12-year-old boy from Brazil who worked from the age of four in a sisal plantation, a Kenyan girl of 16 who has sold shopping bags on Nairobi streets for eight years, and a 14-year-old Indian boy who works in a carpet factory. The ILO estimates that some 250 million children work, overwhelmingly in developing countries where many are forced into jobs — and miss schooling when it is available — to help support meagre family incomes. Of these, at least 120 million between the ages of five and 14 are working full time, according to ILO figures, in spite of the fact that most countries have ratified the 1989 convention on child rights. Signatories to that convention recognise that children have a right to be protected from economic exploitation, from carrying out work that could be hazardous, harmful to health or morals, and interfering with education.