Mohammad Muneer, 14 and the oldest of six children, attends CAI High School in Kabul. His sisters also used to go to the same school, but after their father lost his job and the family couldn’ t afford the school fees, the girls shifted to a government school,“ even though the teachers and the lessons are better at CAI school,” the sixth-grader said.
To cover his school expenses, Muneer works every afternoon in a small shop, helping customers with photocopies, passport photos, computer supplies, and mobilephone repairs. He earns 100 afghani per week($ 2) for roughly 26 hours of work.
“ My father is educated to class 12,” but his job as a driver ended earlier this year when the international community began to withdraw from Afghanistan.“ Now he is jobless,” Muneer explained, tears filling his eyes.
“ So for three months I have worked there— every afternoon,” he said.“ After school I ride my bicycle home and eat. Then I come back to the shop here in this neighborhood. The low pay is because there is no business, no clients.”
Muneer knows the value of education. But the stress at home and the hours he spends at work each day take a toll on his academic success.
As he told his story, CAI-Afghanistan director Wakil Karimi listened. Afterwards he said the school has need-based scholarships for students and Muneer and his sisters would each get one.“ We don’ t know these things unless the students tell us,” Karimi said.“ There is so much pride in Afghanistan. No one will say his family is starving.”
Mohammad Muneer, 14, works in a small print shop in Kabul to cover his school expenses.
Poverty is at the heart of the matter for most families. School-age children are called upon to help families“ generate cash income to cover the costs of food, health, and the education of their siblings,” Gordon Brown, the United Nations special envoy for education, wrote in a 2012 report on child labor and educational disadvantage.
“ But many children are working at least in part because education is unaffordable, inaccessible, or seen as irrelevant,” he said.“ The relationship between education and child labor is complex.”
When determining whether a child should work or go to school, families do a sort of“ cost-benefit analysis,” the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit( AREU), an independent research institute in Kabul, found. Families consider three factors:
� School quality: In cases where schools are overcrowded and in poor condition, and / or teachers are unmotivated and even abusive, children struggle to learn. This leads some parents to conclude, as one mother said,“ What’ s the point?”
� Cost of education: Even in government-run schools families are expected to pay for uniforms, stationery, and even gifts for teachers in exchange for passing grades.
� Potential reward: Some families said
KINDS OF CHILD LABOR
Child labor covers a wide spectrum of activities, from caring for siblings, collecting water and firewood or helping with agriculture-related work at home, to manufacturing( soccer balls, bricks, carpets, textiles), often in sweat shops, child prostitution, slavery and armed conflict. Experts tend to group child labor into roughly five categories:
Family work:“ Unpaid family work accounts for an estimated 72 percent of child labor for girls and 64 percent for boys,” the UN reports.“ The most prevalent types of labor are sibling care and domestic household chores, dominated by girls, and agricultural tasks, dominated by boys.”
Bonded labor: Some children are forced to work as bonded laborers, also known as indentured servants, the U. S. Department of Labor’ s Bureau of International Labor Affairs reported. Families become bonded after borrowing money from a landowner to cover a medical emergency or even just routine necessities, money that they are then unable to repay.“ Their movements may be restricted by armed guards and they may be subjected to violence or resale.” Physical and sexual abuse is also common in these situations.
12 | Journey of Hope C E N T R A L A S I A I N S T I T U T E