CHILDREN ARE THE LEAST REPRESENTED IN THE GLOBAL ISSUE OF CHILD LABOR
Parents struggle to find jobs to support their families with basic needs such as food, water, and shelter. Almost all live below the poverty line, so finding a sufficient amount of money is agonizing. Child labor hinders the possibility of a child going to school, which affects them currently and in the future in a negative way. As said on BBC, Children are forced to work to support their families, and some parents prefer that their kid starts working as early as possible because they know their child won't stay in school after a couple of years.
Raed Ahmed Moussa has been working at a Gaza workshop since he was 13. His father struggles to find a job and is unemployed. Moussa is forced to work to support his extended family of eight siblings and his father’s two wives. As said in The World Bank, 52 percent of Gaza’s population is unemployed. This affects children negatively because it leads to families relying on their children as a source of income. Moussa makes $18 USD every week and gives the money to father. His father gives him $2.80 back, which doesn’t even cover the transportation costs for Moussa.
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"My father has been out of work for years now. I'm the only breadwinner. One of my younger brothers quit school a year ago to work but he is doing nothing because there aren't any jobs in Gaza." --Raed Ahmed Moussa |
Children living in child-labor prone areas such as developing countries are completely powerless over their parents. According to BBC, some children even think they are not working hard enough for their parents. Children are the breadwinners, the person who earns money to support a family. But they shouldn't be working; they should be enjoying their childhood. As written by Aasift Nengroo and Ghulam Bhat in their case study, 65.91% of parents in Kashmir were against child labor, but 70.46% of parents said that the abolition of child labor would give a negative effect on the family. Without child labor, families would be more rooted in poverty and debt than they already are. Parents force their child to work for additional money, and some do it to escape the poverty cycle, like Pharady's parents. In a video by World Vision Canada, it explains how an 11-year old girl, Pharady, works a 12-hour shift in a brick factory. Her mother wishes for Pharady to go to school and get educated, but her family owes other people a lot of money. This is known as bonded labor, which occurs when a person is forced to work to pay off a debt. Instead of the mother stopping work to pay of the debt at another job, she substitutes her powerless child to help her. This is also seen in Iqbal, a novel by Francesco D'Adamo, inspired by the life of Iqbal Masih, where characters in the story are forced to make carpets all day, away from home and their families. For every carpet made, a tally is erased on the character's "progress chart," but throughout the story, the tallies never seem to be erased, therefore making the child work for its entire childhood.
Pharady wishes to go to school and become a teacher in the future, but instead, she worries that she does not work hard enough to pay off the debt.
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Although all working children are powerless, parents feel powerless as well because they cannot change the future of their child. Pharady's mother wishes for her daughter to go to school so that she does not have to work in a brick factory in the future. But working in the brick factory is inevitable due to the debt Pharady's mother has to pay.
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Almost all child laborers are born into poverty, but some are born in the sex trade, leaving them automatically powerless at birth. As shown in a video called "FORCED," by Pep Bonet, some women who work as prostitutes have their child in the Kandapara brothel, in Tangali, Bangladesh. When the mothers cannot work anymore, either by choice or by being too old, they substitute their daughters to work for them. This forces daughters as early as ten years old to become the source of income for the family. Children born in a brothel have lived there ever since birth, so they have no choice but to continue living there. Shabitry Dhor, a worker at the organization of CARE Bangladesh, explains the first step of mothers forcing their daughters into prostitution. "When the girls are ten years old, their mothers give them a tablet called Oradexon," says Dhor. Oradexon is a cow steroid that mothers use to make their daughters look older and fatter in 2 months. Not only are children forced to exploit their bodies, but they are forced to take harmful steroids as well. In the image, sixteen-year-old prostitute Maya waits for a customer inside her small room at Kandapara brothel. She earns $3.66-6.11 per day, but she has a four-year-old son living with her parents. Like many other girls in the brothel, she cannot save money for her child as she has debt and can barely afford daily expenses (The Atlantic).
Other families are powerless due to political conflicts, such as Syrian refugees fleeing to Lebanon. Many Syrian children lost their loved ones in Syria and fled to Lebanon for safety—but life in Lebanon for refugees comes at a high price. About 1.5 million Syrians, or a quarter of the Lebanese population, have taken refuge in Lebanon since the crisis began in 2011, according to the Lebanese government (Vox). Because of this, Lebanon passed a new restriction: Syrians can work in all low-paying, temporary jobs such as agriculture, construction, and cleaning. Otherwise, they need a work permit for high-paying jobs. This restriction gives Syrian families an insufficient amount of money, therefore forcing children once again to work for their families. Child labor is illegal in Lebanon, but the law is not enforced. Many employers prefer to hire children for their cheap jobs and "nimble hands." Mohammad Abdul Razzak, the boy in the image, was nine years old when he witnessed ISIS beheading men on the streets of Syria. (Vox). Now, at 12, he still hasn't had the time to process what happened. Instead, he spends 12 hours a day, seven days a week, working at an aluminum shop to help his family survive. At the same time, Razzak is physically at risk, using dangerous equipment like power drills to build windows and doors, meaning that he is mentally and physically harmed. With the family's focus on money instead of the child's well-being, the future for Syria and other developing countries struggle to maintain positively. These current uneducated children will later have a significant effect on the world, adding on to the poverty cycle and child labor.
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Razzak, 12, building windows and doors with a drill for 12 hours. He works to supports his family because his parents struggle to find jobs due to the restriction in Lebanon.
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