they would send their children to school if it led to“ increased potential for stable, highpaid employment in the future.” But, given Afghanistan’ s high unemployment rates, parents doubt education will result in“ greater job prospects for their children.”
In other cases, families are so stretched just trying to keep everyone alive that they don’ t even consider school.
“ I want to study and become a doctor but we don’ t have any money,” Nabeel Mukhtar told Reuters news agency in 2012. At the age of 6, the boy was forced to work nine hours a day, six days a week to help his family. His father had a job as a barber, but only earned $ 83 a month, not enough to support the family, which also included a younger brother and sister.
“ From the bottom of my heart, I want to send my son to school but we have so many expenses,” said Mukhtar’ s mother, Shazia.“ We struggle to put food on our table.”
His father was less sympathetic.“ He’ s learning to work and he also earns around 300-400 rupees. So what’ s wrong in that? We are poor.”
In Tajikistan’ s rural and mountainous Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, children are commonly seen on the roadside selling fresh and dried fruit, recycled plastic soda bottles filled with honey, or bags of nuts to supplement their families’ meager incomes. Children work in the fields on family farms. And they work in the bazaars, in mines and on construction projects.
The Tajik government actually enforces its compulsory education laws and nearly all the children attend school, according to UNICEF. Nevertheless, an estimated 200,000 Tajik children between 5 and 14 years old are also involved in child labor— about 7 percent of the under-18 population— and that number is growing, according to the International Labor Organization.
The reasons are varied“ Some children have been abandoned by their parents or relatives, or their parents have died,” according to a 2013 UNICEF study.
Others are drawn out of school and into the workforce when male family members go to work in Russia and abandon their families back home, the ILO reported.“ Non-return of their parents, mainly fathers, leads to family breakdown, increase of child labor, sending children to special institutions, neglect, violence, abuse, and exploitation of children.”
About 80 percent of working children“ come from a one-parent family or from a family where the father is a migrant worker,” ILO coordinator Muhayo Khosabekova said.
They carry heavy loads of everything from household goods and gemstones to small arms and drugs across the border.
For 12-year-old Safar, both migrantworker father and poor quality schools determined his fate. He is the village herder, taking all 160 households’ cattle to the mountain pastures each day, according to the ILO report. He’ s gone at least 10 hours a day. But he’ s glad to have a job that keeps him close to home, and to help support his family.“ Without my salary we will simply not survive,” he said.
As for school, his mother told the ILO,“ Our school is small and understaffed, and
A boy works on a car engine in an auto mechanic’ s shop in Ishkashim, Afghanistan.
Of the 58 million children age 6 to 11 out of school around the world, most live in conflict zones
Upwards of 215 million children are thought to be involved in child labor; 115 million of those children are involved in“ hazardous occupations”
Pakistan has the second-largest out-of-school population in the world at 7.3 million, including 4.2 million girls
12 million children ages 5 to 14 are working in Pakistan
Pakistan’ s government has not done a child labor survey since 1996, 18 years ago
Human trafficking: In some of the regions where CAI works, children are trafficked for profit. They are kidnapped and then rented or sold for work in agriculture, domestic service, prostitution or begging, according to the DOL. Girls sold into forced marriages are trafficked internationally for prostitution. Disabled children are sold or kidnapped and taken to countries such as Iran, where they are forced to beg and turn all money over to their owners.
Child soldiers: Various international groups have documented“ non-state militant groups” in Pakistan and Afghanistan recruiting children as soldiers and then trafficking them across the border. Some of the kids are kidnapped. In other cases, parents are coerced in giving or selling their children to spy, fight or die in suicide attacks, according to DOL. These children, some as young as 10 or 11 years old, are subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse.
Illegal work: Children along the border with Afghanistan are used in illegal smuggling operations. They carry heavy loads of everything from household goods and gemstones to small arms and drugs across the border.
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