NGO warns of rising rates of child labour

Child labour remains an overriding concern in Iraq, according to one local NGO. “We found that child labour has increased by nearly 15 percent, with many children working in unsafe environments,” said Saleh Muhammad, spokesperson for the Baghdad-based Children Saving Association, one of the few organisations dealing with the issue. “We developed a study on child labour, which is less extensive in the north of the country, where the situation is considered more stable.” The phenomena had emerged before the launch of the US-led invasion and occupation of the country in 2003, with reports of child labour increasing during the period of UN-imposed sanctions against the regime of former President Saddam Hussein. In April 2005, a survey conducted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs found that children between the ages of two and five years (some 7 percent of the total) were engaged in child labour, usually in the form of street-begging. “We’ve begun to see more children on the streets of the capital compared to last year,” said senior ministry official Haydar Ahmed. “And many of them are begging rather than working.” The report further indicated that 16 percent of boys and 43 percent of girls were illiterate. Only 50 percent of the children surveyed reported that both their parents were still alive. Children are also vulnerable to abuse. The ministry is currently working with UNICEF to ensure that children living and working on the streets are eventually re-united and reintegrated with their families and communities. “UNICEF is engaged in a project for out-of-school children, so they’re in school acquiring knowledge and skills rather than working,” said Patrizia Di Giovanni, child protection officer of UNICEF. “This is being organised through the Ministry of Education through an ‘accelerated learning’ project.” Di Giovanni went on to explain that further support was being provided to street and working children via a number of children-friendly drop-in-centres, supported by UNICEF, designed to help children in need of special protection. In the meantime, though, many children continue to work gruelling jobs, in hopes of improving the lots of their families. “I hope one day to return to school,” said 9-year-old Hussein Abdel Rahman, who sells cigarettes on the streets of the capital. “But now, I have to help my father because he’s sick and alone, and he can’t put food on the table.” AS/SZ/AM