A "pantomime procession" took place in Grafton Street yesterday to highlight child poverty ahead of tomorrow's World Day Against Child Labour.
Eighty people took part in the parade including 40 children dressed as child labourers and stilt performers with whips pretending to beat the youngsters.
Bypassers were encouraged to sign a "human petition" opposing child labour.
Traditional paper petitions were also circulated in an effort to gather 20,000 signatures during the procession, organised by the development organisation Concern.
When 246,000 signatures have been gathered the petition will be presented to the Taoiseach in time for World Children's Day on November 20th, said Michael Doorly, head of development education in Concern.
"The idea behind 246,000 signatures is symbolic. There are 246 million child labourers in the world today," he said.
The Government had done good work in supporting education programmes that help alleviate child labour overseas, he added.
The significance of presenting the petition to the Taoiseach in November was "to encourage him to keep this an issue and to ensure that products coming into Ireland aren't produced using child labour."
The parade was inspired by the work of Concern's partner MV Foundation which successfully enrolled 400,000 children back to education in southern India, said Mr Doorly.